Nova Testival postponed.
I hope you all recall Jacopo the enthusiastic Italian pilot I helped get into Paragliding. Well he is in China now and has just got his new Ion 4. He wants to share his thoughts.

I have just found the time to write a little review of what I felt using the new Ion 4. I will make a little video although the camera finished the battery before having the time to properly do things..So hopefully can have the time to do again a reviewing flight and make a better video in future.

I would probably say that compared to Ion 2 it feels like having a sport car after driving a boring saloon car for years.
Control in the Ion 4 is more direct, precise and agile. Trim speed is much nicer than Ion 2.
Launch behavior is easy. Wing doesn't try to overshoot if just pulling up the glider with right amount of energy and can feel it enough. It's nice to control on the ground. The material is very thin and when building up a wall, if wind is not strong the front tends always to fall in front.
With stronger wind it raise much quicker and pulls more violently than Ion 2 with wrong input.

Full speed bar feels very stable and smooth.

Active piloting and surge correction is nice and doesn't require too much of the input. However, without any pilot's input, even if needed, I found it really forgiving and always trying to bleeding out in some way the energy by itself.

Big ears, like you mentioned before have one outer line for small ears and another line in the other split A where the front is attached to that can be used to achieve big big ears.Normal ears seems not to affect speed almost at all compared to Ion 2. This is a big improvement.
I just found strange that like in higher class gliders big ears sticks in and needs pumping out though.

I tried to fly without almost speed and and found it super forgiving at low speed...didn't feel like the glider wanted to stall even with a huge amount of break pulled. Just a bigger sink and parachutal stall but the glider still wanted to fly. I guess this is safe and confidence inspiring especially at top landing.

During wingovers it was an amazing feeling. It can build up energy straight away and it's very fast. Had loads of fun and couldn't stop doing them all the time. 🙂

Can have induced pitched more easily than the Ion 2. It's really forgiving glider but perhaps not all schools would adopt this for teaching purposes as it builds up energy much quicker and it's not as laggy in the controlling. A thing that I imagine is good in school because of a lot of wrong input from students not knowing yet what they are doing.
Also, the risers are very thin like in a sport glider and more difficult to manage with hands perhaps when ground handling the wing. I at the beginning felt like I was touching the risers of an Icepeak 6.

I'll make an initial video soon and hope this information can be useful 🙂

Please let me know in case I forgot something important to include in this review.

Best
Jacopo