Last week I ordered a brand new Laminar which I can pickup just before the Aeros Winterrace starting March 21th.
I first wanted to wait untill my current Laminar from 2013 is sold, but so far it has not come to a deal with another Hangglider pilot.

About the size, from Icaro’s comparisons, the glide performances between the 14.1 and the 14.8 are not visible. Manfred Ruhmer prefers always the big one and Christian Ciech prefers the 14.1 but normally Manfred weights 85 kg that means 4-5 kg more than Christian.
With my 90kg the 14.8 is what I need and with the right settings and the right harness angle, I will get no penalization compare the 14.1 (info by Christian Ciech).

There is a bit of a trend going on to buy a full carbon hangglider with Icaro. There are some advantages, but better feeling on the glider and keep the fun factor higher is for me more important.
The new 2018 Laminar doesn’t need that much high siding, so that is great.
To improve handling even more, the combination of inner aluminum and outer carbon Leading Edge helps significantly. In this way the gain of weight compare the full aluminum LE is 550 grams (but where they are more important), instead of 1250 grams of the full carbon LE, but the glider have a more “soft” behavior and the high siding is reduced.
On the other hand, the roll speed is a little slower and the performance difference are small and only above 80-90 km/h (also info by Christian Ciech).

I think that a good feeling will help me more than 1% of extra performance on final glide.