This general style of kite -- steerable gliding one-liners -- is clearly one of the big waves of the future, a Very Good Thing! And the Aerobe is a great example of the style.
I can give you some comparison between the Aerobe and the Skate, because I bought one of each. Ended up selling the Skate, though it is a well-made kite that does what it claims to do. I just enjoyed the Aerobe more.
The Skate is a purer glider. With the right weighting (2 25-cent pieces in the nose pocket), it will glide slowly with no tending. I found that good and bad: The gliding is great when you get it right, but the lack of built-in "up elevator" also means that a diving kite will tend to keep diving. (Using less weight would change this.)
The Aerobe has more built-in "up elevator", mostly from the pronounced spine bend, so it self-rescues more -- but it won't glide long distances without "tending", i.e., applying some line tension to keep the nose from bobbing up.
The Aerobe is also much stiffer than the Skate, so it responds more/better to a yank-and-spank style of flying. More momentum, too, slightly less floaty.
Finally, the Aerobe does a few more different "moves" than the Skate, at least in my trials. Specifically, it's pretty easy to get the Aerobe to fly straight up then do a loop, all fairly low in the window. I could never get the Skate to make that turn/loop, and I don't see it on any of the Skate videos, either. You can see that move on many of the Horwath videos, e.g. of the Urban Ninja. It's a useful and fun move, and I missed it on the Skate while repeatedly pulling it overhead and letting it glide gracefully away, then turning it (or "lawn-darting" it!) and doing it again.
My preference between the two is clearly a personal thing, and lots of people love the Skate and probably prefer it to the Aerobe. YMMV. But I think almost everybody enjoys the Aerobe.
The fact that the Aerobe also has a huge wind range, between the tail and the two ways of assembling it, also means it can be "a 1-kite kite bag" and you'll never be shut out!
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