What is your opinion of the Never Summer SL-R?

Not bad but give me a Burton any day.

An extremely agile, high performance freestyle board that does it all, the SL-R is not only versatile, but offers powerful edge to edge response and maintains a forgiving tip and tail. If you want a board that excels in the park, on groomers, or on backcountry kickers, this is it.

The "forgiving tip and tail" sold me on it.

Enjoy

Snowboarded for 12 years now, used to be a sponsored skater as well before my body gave out a couple years ago. . go with a trusted name like World Industries, Lamar, Libtech, or Burton. .

just my .02 cents. . .

Also step in bindings (not to be confused with fly traps) are a huge waste of money.

If you haven't rocked your Cruzer 165 lately, you haven't been snowboarding that long.  

Snowboard/ water board, it's all torture to me.

Sorry, just had to.

My friend rides a NS from a couple years ago that he seems to like, I  think it is the Legacy.  What kind of riding are you looking to do?  I ride a Rome Agent from time to time and it's  my favorite  board ever.  I can rip diamonds on it and it's fun as  hell for the park.  Last year though I switched to a K2 World Wide Weapon.  With the effective edge on it you can drop down 5 cm's for extra fun for thpark.  I'm riding a 148 and it holds up  just fine for all mountain use even.  I can take it in the pipe  and my friends still can't catch me bombing steeps.  Nowadays there's all  sort of boards out there..."serrated" edges, boards that camber up  like a rainbow instead of bowing out like a U, etc.  Don't be fooled that Burton is the  only way to go...  With that said, I'll say go Rome.  Artifact for straight park, Agent  for park/all mountain, and the Anthem for all mountain riding/ with a side of park.  I'm just throwing in Rome because I don't have any personal experience with NS.  Keep an eye on Brociety.com for a day..plenty of snowboards come up and you can get a crazy deal.  It's one item on sale at a time..usually up to 50%+ off and they seem to have plenty  of boards up lately.