Tech: Jones Mercury FASE Snowboard Bindings Review: The Best Fast Entry System
The current landscape of snowboard bindings is a story of trade-offs. On the one side, you have the traditional two-strap bindings that offer maximum control and hold but are notoriously slow (skiers love to point that out). They require a fair amount of bending or sitting when you want to get in or out. On the other hand, you have step-on bindings, which have no straps. That allows you to stomp in and go, but it forces you to use specific step-on compatible boots. Unless they fit perfectly, you could have control issues.
In the past couple of years, we’ve started seeing hybrid solutions—systems that provide faster entry and exit but allow you to use your favorite boots from any brand and can provide the locked-in feeling that two-strap adherents demand.
The latest entrant into that category is the Fast Entry system (FASE), a new technology that has been licensed to legacy snowboard brands such as Jones, Rome, Bataleon, and ThirtyTwo, all of which have introduced models with it for the 2025-26 season. I spent the bulk of this season testing the Mercury FASE binding from Jones, and here’s what I found.
At first glance, FASE bindings look like a standard two-strap system. While it does indeed have two straps, the toe strap is different. It has a locking mechanism on it, so once it’s set to your liking it won’t move again until you manually adjust it. The ankle strap (which FASE calls the FastStrap) is much longer than is typical. It has the standard ladder teeth for the ratchet lever to grab onto and hold, but it also has an extension that’s totally smooth aside from a bump at the end that helps keep it from disconnecting entirely. That’s so it can open wide enough to allow you to step in and out with your boot while staying a closed loop. This will be important in a second.
The biggest change is in the highback of the binding, which is called the AutoBack in the FASE system. While it can still fold all the way forward for travel and low-hanging chairlifts, when i
