The Easiest Kayak to Take Anywhere? | Oru Lake Sport Review

It packs down to the size of a small suitcase, weighs only 18 pounds or 8 kg, and it turns into a fun, comfortable, and stable kayak in a minute. Almost sounds too good to be true. I'm Ken Whiting and this is Paddle TV where you'll find paddling tips and gear reviews all designed to help you have a better and safer time on the water. And in this video I am testing and reviewing this boat right here. This is the Oru Kayak Lake Sport. Now, ever since Oru Kayak came out with their first boat almost 15 years ago, they really turned some heads and they turned mine as well. It was one of the most innovative kayaks we'd seen in a very long time. And after I tested my first Oru, I realized it wasn't just innovation for the sake of innovation. It really resulted in a cool product, extremely light, extremely portable, and fun to paddle. I've tested three Oru kayaks, but this is the most accessible, the least expensive of the Oru kayaks, and it's the most user-friendly. My question for this kayak is, even though it's the cheapest, does it still offer good value, a good paddling experience? And who specifically is it for? And the only way to find that out is to get it on the water. And so that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna take this thing for a test paddle, but first I need to build it. And while I'm assembling it, I'm gonna tell you a little bit more about it. The Oru Lake Sport retails for 699 US dollars. It's nine feet long, it's 31 and a half inches wide, and it weighs 18 pounds or eight kg. It has a capacity of 250 pounds or 114 kg. It also comes with a three-year warranty. Now the Lake features a basic seat and backrest and a skeg, but the Lake Sport that I'm testing has upgraded features, including an adjustable height backrest, a footrest, and an upgraded seat with 60% more thickness than the basic one, which you can even upgrade further with a gel seat. So there you have it, the Oru Lake Sport. It really is easy to put together. I mean, there's four clips to seal the hull together, and then a couple of clips for the footrest, a couple of clips for the back band, a clip for the seat back, and that's it. It's just clip, clip, clip. I mean, just knowing the order, the first time you do it takes an extra minute or two, but once you know it, this literally takes a minute or two to set up, and that is just amazing. And on top of that, I mean, not many other kayaks that you can do that with. Not very, very, very, very few kayaks. 18 pounds. So, so far, so good. I'm a fan of the concept of the setup process, and now it's time to get on the water and see actually how it performs. Let's do it. What a beautiful day for a test paddle. And here is what I can tell you from my test paddle, and let's start with portability like I always do. And there's a fair bit to talk about when it comes to portability, because that's the key feature of this boat, and it's designed completely around portability, and it's totally unique in how it works. There is no other kayak like the Oru kayak. Is that just gimmicky? No, absolutely not. This thing packs down into an awesome little package, a little suitcase-style bag that's easy to move around because it's so light. It's 18 pounds. What's that? Eight kg. I mean, that is one of the lightest portable kayaks I've ever tested, but on top of that, it is super quick to assemble and disassemble. I mean, when you're used to it, we're talking about a minute or two to put this thing together without a lot of effort, and that is amazing as well, because that is a barrier to a lot of portable kayaks is the time and the energy it takes to get it ready, to assemble it, to blow it up, to do whatever you need to do. This is a very quick boat, and so absolutely top marks for portability. Now let's talk about comfort. It is a comfortable kayak. Now the Lake Sport model has some major upgrades from the basic Lake kayak. They're comfort-related. You have an upgraded seat. Now I got a further upgraded seat from the comfort, the Lake Sport seat. I got the upgraded gel seat, but the standard Lake Sport comes with a seat with more cushion. It comes with a better back band that's adjustable, has an adjustable height, and it comes with foot rests. All of those things make this a surprisingly comfortable kayak for as simple as it is. Now, the only thing that I think could become uncomfortable, because it's so wide for your knees to sit on the outside of the kayaks, your legs are quite splayed out, and if you're paddling like that for a couple of hours, that can get a little tweaky on the hips. It's not a big deal because there's so much room inside the boat to move around and, you know, stretch out a bit. So that's a small thing. For the most part, for what this is and for how simple the outfitting is, it's a comfortable boat. Let's talk about stability now. This is a 31 1⁄2-inch wide recreational kayak, and that right away tells me that this thing is gonna be designed around being stable, not about being the most high-performing, and that is absolutely the case. It is a very stable kayak. It's not the most stable kayak. There's wider kayaks that are more stable, that have a flatter hull, a flatter bottom on the boat, that are a bit more stable, but that doesn't mean this isn't a stable boat. It's very much a stable boat. It's got great initial stability when you're just sitting there, but it also actually has decent secondary stability when you kind of put it on edge, especially with the skeg in the boat. That was a bit of a surprise to me, adding the skeg, because I tried paddling it both with and without the skeg, and what I found is with the skeg, that gave it better secondary stability. When I started shifting over to the side, that skeg slowed it down a little bit. Not a huge difference, but noticeable. Really solid stability. It's a kind of boat anybody can get in and feel very confident. Now, that stability comes at the price of some performance, and so let's talk about that. It's a nine-foot recreational kayak that's 31 1⁄2 inches wide. Clearly, it's not designed for performance. It doesn't have a very high top speed. I mean, you're not gonna be entering races with this boat, but with the skeg in, I was really pleasantly surprised by how well this thing tracked, and not only did it track while you're paddling it, but when you stopped paddling, it actually glided in a straight line, and that's really nice, because typically, short recreational kayaks, as soon as you stop paddling, they just spin out. Now, that is exactly what happens with this boat when you don't use the skeg. It doesn't track nearly as well, and it spins out as soon as you stop paddling, and so the skeg is a really nice feature for this kayak, and it really enhances its performance, how well it tracks and glides through the water, but it also has the benefit of adding a little stability, too, so that's pretty cool. So now let's talk about some of the accessories that I use, because Oru sent me a bunch of the accessories that don't come with the standard Oru Lake Sport, and the first one is the gel seat. This is a really nice upgrade. This thick pad here, and you can actually even see inside, it's got this honeycomb gel. It feels soft, it feels cushiony, and it is. I was in this boat for, I was paddling around for almost an hour and a half, and my butt never said any nasty words to me. I never felt the need to get out of this thing, and so that is a really nice upgrade. I would definitely recommend it. Now, the skirt up front, the skirt is designed here to help keep sun off your legs and water from splashing in the boat or dripping off your paddle into the boat, and it did a good job. You know, it kept more sun off my legs and stopped more water from getting in the boat. How essential is that one? I wouldn't call it as essential an upgrade, or not essential, as worth it an upgrade as the gel seat, but still, some people, it's going to make sense. It's not a bad upgrade. Then we have the float bags in this thing, and there's two float bags, one in the bow, one in the stern. It's important to clarify that these float bags don't change where you can take this boat. It doesn't mean, hey, I've got a couple of float bags in this thing. All of a sudden, I can take it into rough water, exposed water, no. This is a calm, a flat water boat, and all these float bags are going to do is make it easier to deal with the kayak if you get fully swamped or you capsize. And so a little bit of an insurance policy, if you are worried about capsizing, if you're prone to it, if you're like messing around in boats and it happens a lot, makes it easier to get that boat to shore, but far from an essential upgrade. Now, another accessory that I tried was Oru Kayaks PFD, but it's not really Oru Kayaks PFD. This is a PFD made by a company I know very well, NRS. I've been wearing their life jackets and gear for well over 10 years. This is NRS's Clearwater PFD. It's a great quality PFD. It's not the top of the line paddling PFD, but it's just a good, solid PFD. The real nice feature about this, aside from having pockets in there, is the open mesh back. It makes it cooler, not like cooler, but it makes it more cool to paddle when you're paddling. It prevents you from having foam between you and the back band. So it's a lot more comfortable. Your back is against the back band instead of a piece of foam pushing you forward. So nice PFD. Then you have the paddle. This is Oru Kayaks paddle. And what makes this a good paddle for this boat, this is their fiberglass paddle. They have a carbon one as well. So this is the cheaper of the two. It's a four piece paddle. It breaks down into four pieces in the middle and then the two ends come off like that. In the end, you've got four pieces that fit really comfortably into the folded down boat. So your paddle and boat can stay together. That's really nice. What I liked about the paddle itself is, even though it's a very simple connection, snap button connection, it doesn't have hardly any wiggle. It's a good, solid connection in the middle where they come together. It's designed so that you can have any twist you want on the blades. Plus you can adjust the length of the paddle by about 20 centimeters. Now I was using it around an extra five centimeters from nothing. And I found that to be a great length for me. And that's why I recommend, if you have it too long, if you're using it fully extended, what you're going to end up finding is your strokes are so far out to the side of the boat that your boat's going to turn more with every stroke you take. If your paddle's too short, then you have to reach over too far across the kayak for each stroke. And so I found somewhere around five to 10 centimeters extension to be great for me. Now, the other accessory that I think is really cool, but I didn't get a chance to test, it's these things right here. These are LED lights, and this is the remote to control them. And what you do is you can put some sticky Velcro here and attach them wherever you want inside the kayak. And because the kayak is somewhat see-through when the sun's low or at nighttime, you can literally light up the night with your kayak. And you've got 13 different colors to choose from, four different modes. I am definitely looking forward to testing this one night, going for a little night paddle on the local pond. So now let's talk value. 699 US dollars for the Oroo Lake Sport. It's not cheap, but it's quite inexpensive compared to most quality kayaks on the market. You can get cheaper portable kayaks. You can get a portable kayaks for 200 bucks, 150 bucks even, but it's a perfect example of you get what you pay for. And if you pay more for this boat than that 200 boat, you're getting a whole lot more kayak. You're getting not only one of the most unique portable kayaks, but one of the absolute most portable of portable kayaks. 20 pounds, less than 20 pounds, it's 18 pounds. Folds down into that great little package, assembles and disassembles in a minute or two, super quick. It also comes with a three-year warranty and you're not gonna get that out of a super cheap kayak. On top of that, it's a slick looking portable kayak. I really like the looks of Oroo kayaks, even though they have all those angles that's unlike a traditional boat. I think it actually looks really cool. So value, absolutely, it's worth 699, but the reality is it's only good value for somebody who this kayak is appropriate for. And so that's the next big question is, who is this kayak for? And this kayak is for somebody who wants a kayak for calm conditions. Someone who puts more value on stability and comfort versus speed and performance. It's for somebody who isn't too large, that the capacity of this kayak, the max capacity of this kayak is, they say is 250 pounds. Now that's the maximum capacity, you know, that this thing can safely float. But as a general rule, what I always tell people is the actual maximum functional capacity is usually 15 to 20% less than the maximum capacity that the manufacturers give you. And that means that they say 250. So, but I would say anyone more than 220 pounds, it's probably not the right kayak. You wanna get a kayak that has more capacity in this. And also is somewhat limiting length wise, really tall people won't be that comfortable in here. That being said, I'm six foot two with about a 34 inch inseam. I had plenty of room, I could be taller. I could add another, for sure, another couple of inches. So six, four, 36 inch inseam is probably the limit for the lake kayak. So there you have it. That's my review of the Oru Lake Sport. I think a final thing I'd like to say is, there aren't too many kayaks that really make me go, wow, no, that is, that's a smart boat. It showed a lot of innovation and innovation, not just for the sake of innovation, innovation to improve, to solve a problem, to provide a better experience. And that's what the Oru kayak, all of the Oru kayak models do. The origami style concept is really smart and it's well thought out. And it creates an ultra light package that just makes kayaking more accessible to more people. I mean, the weight of kayaks is a big barrier to people getting on the water more often. It's not a barrier with a boat like this. The ease of assembly, it breaks down that wall, that potential hurdle of getting involved. The fun factor on top of that, it's, yeah, it's light, it's easy to assemble, it's highly portable, but it's also a fun and stable boat to paddle. It offers a great paddling experience for the right person. And so I'm just really impressed with this kayak, like I have been impressed with the other Oru kayaks. This isn't a boat for everybody, but the neat thing about Oru kayak is they have a wide variety of models to accommodate most paddlers needs. The trick is really figuring out which is the right kayak for you. And so I hope this helps clarify whether or not the lake or lake sport is the right kayak for you. Either way, I hope you've enjoyed it. Give it a thumbs up if you have. Subscribe to Paddle TV if you haven't already. Check out my other YouTube channel, Ken Whiting Adventures, to watch paddling, real authentic paddling adventures, not just paddle on the local lake as I test out a boat. And thanks for watching. We'll see you again soon for another paddling tip, gear review, or paddling adventure.