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We have always had Yamaha and SeaDoo. We currently have a 3-Seater SeaDoo GTX 1500 and a 3-Seater Yamaha 1100. Both are 4-Strokes. We don’t ride them every weekend as we keep them up north, but both currently have around 100 hours on them. The Yamaha goes 49 mph and the SeaDoo goes 58. They are very reliable and we’ve never had to do anything to them. Compared to older 2-Strokes, they use far less gas and you don’t have to worry about always filling them with 2-cycle oil. A friend of ours is up with us this weekend with his fairly new supercharged SeaDoo and it is definitely quick. It comes out of the hole fast and pulls to around 71 mph with ease... with the additional speed comes more fuel. We put 6 hours on them today with a lot of full throttle riding. Both were full of fuel when we started. I used a tank and a half of fuel on my NA SeaDoo compared to his nearly 3 tanks.
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I guess the biggest question is what you want out of it. If your looking for the most speed out of a non supercharged ski, and not worried about the features/options I'd say the Kawa STX 160 is a no brainer. Best price/performance out there. The downside of that ski is it's gonna have manual reverse and no trim. There's always rumors of kawa pulling out of PWC's too. So parts/warranty could be an issue in the future. If you don't care about either of those I'd go for that ski hands down.
If you want trim and electronic reverse/neutral I'd look at the Yamaha GP1800R HO. It'll probably put you right at your 12k budget though. The kawa should be around 10kish I think.
If you want to do spins and jumps I'd go for the Sea Doo Spark.
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My opinion is this. Smaller ski’s are way more fun, older sea doo’s like the XP’s, gsx’s the rxdi’s are a total blast to ride and most are going to be in excelent shape at even $2000 with a trailer. The rxdi gets a little more expensive than that, but $3500 has you on a real nice low hour one. Yamaha’s to me are more reliable, but also boring to ride. It all depends on what you wanna do. For a first ski, I would go with a older 110hp 787 ski and call it a day for a little bit. Jet skis aren’t for everyone, and even the cheapest of the new ones is going to have a huge impact on your bank account, especially if you decide you don’t actually enjoy it like you were thinking you would.
Right now is not the time to buy one tho, and I hope the market comes back down to reality soon.
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In the 12k range I'd be thinking about a 10 year old jet boat. Mostly because when you get to larger ski the only difference is you get more wet.
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I am on a wait list of a 2021 Kawa stx160x.
I sold my Seadoo GTI today.