Each of these manufacturers has carefully curated their collections to offer the broadest range of products catering to all budgets and you’ll recognize similarities in their strategies. If you’re seeing a pattern here, that’s no accident. The highest tier, Vintage, looks the most like real wood and come in six colors. Their mid-range offering, Arbor, improves on the wood-grain patterning and increases the color choices to seven. The basic Azek line (Harvest) has a simple wood-grain pattern and comes in three colors. They are also a wrapped (or capped) option, with a more durable outer shell wrapping a less-dense core. Unlike the first three brands, Azek deck boards are made from 100% Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) plastic. At the top end, Legacy boards feature the most realistic wood-grain patterns and six premium colors. Tropical loses the bottom grooves for a denser, heavier board and has more realistic wood-grain patterns in four color choices. A step up from Terrain is the Tropical line. Terrain offers basic wood-grain patterns and five simple color choices. Similar to Trex and Fiberon, the lowest priced option, Terrain, uses less material in the manufacturing process as a result of the grooves molded into the underside of the board. All three boards are capped (wrapped) on all four sides. Timbertech Timbertech’s three deck board options are also made from mostly recycled plastic and wood fibers. Their top-tier product is Symmetry and is capped on all four sides–making it a good choice when the underside of the deck is visible. Advantage loses the bottom grooves making for a stronger, heavier board and has a more realistic wood-grain pattern. Fiberon’s mid-grade board is called Advantage. It has a scalloped profile molded into the underside that uses less material in the manufacturing process. Fiberon’s lowest-price option, Good Life, is available in two colors and is wrapped on three-sides.

Wrapping refers to the hard shell that wraps the inner core of the deck board. The three options from Fiberon are ranked by how they look, price and how they are wrapped. Like Trex, Fiberon is also made from recycled plastic and wood flour. At the top end, Trex Transcend features multi-toned color streaking with a deeply embossed, more realistic wood-grain pattern, it’s also available in ten colors for the broadest choice. It also provides five color choices compared to three in the Enhance line. Trex Select loses the bottom grooves and the realism of the wood-grain pattern improves. The underside of the Enhance boards are grooved–this means less material is used and translates to a lower price. Their lowest priced line (Enhance) is a single-density, solid color material with a simple embossed wood-grain pattern–it comes in just three colors. Trex boards are capped on three sides–capped is an industry term used to describe a harder shell of material surrounding the core.

The Trex company is considered the inventor of composite decking and brought its first products to the marketplace in the mid 1990s. Each of these boards is manufactured from 95% recycled material and contains plastic and wood flour. Trex markets its good, better, best products under three brand names: Enhance, Select and Transcend. Before making comparisons, let’s get an overview of what each brand is all about. Because each brand offers both value- and premium-priced products, in some cases, value-priced options from one manufacturer can be more expensive than the premium-priced ones from another. That’s because lower-priced boards use basic coloring with simple wood-grain patterns and higher-priced boards introduce multi-color, more sophisticated wood-grain patterns that more closely resemble the real thing. You can also think of these tiers as good- ,better- and best-looking. Each of the major brands has tiered products providing the consumer with good, better and best choices. When it comes to comparing composite deck board brands, it’s not as simple as choosing a brand based on price and looks. Below are some direct comparisons between the most popular composite decking brands available today. This is a continuation from the article Comparing Today’s Composite Decking Prices in 2020.

Timbertech vs trex 2015