Ball machine recommendation

A

amptoyo

New User
Hi all,

I would like to purchase a tennis ball machine for my 2 boys (HS sophomore and middle schooler), obviously my older son will be using it only for next couple of years since he will be going to college, but younger son will use it for next 5+ years. I am ok with spending up to $3000 (including balls + accessories + shipping). I am in NYC metro area. I asked the coach at the club, and he is only familiar with Lobster. I did some digging this is what I thought I could get for my budget:

Lobster Elite Grand Four (maybe Five)
Hydrogen Sport Proton
Spinfire Pro 2 v2
Titan One

We will be taking the ball machine to the public courts and high school courts in the back of my SUV and with two boys, weight and form factor should not be a huge issue but if I can get all or most of features in lighter/smaller machine that would be the preference. It appears other than Spinfire the rest of the machines on my list have pre-loaded drills or customizable drills and that could be a big negative for Spinfire but I couldn't find sufficient info to confirm if Spinfire truly lacks drills.
 
In 2022, I bought the Tennis Tutor Plus Player machine. I added the fm remote control, which is a great feature that allows you to make adjustments (spin/height/pace/timing) without having to walk over to the machine each time. Their customer service has been great as well.

I went with Tennis Tutor because I have a neighbor who raves about their customer service. He bought a machine from them over 10 years ago.
 
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Another question:
Is internal oscillation (horizontal and/or vertical) big deal?
Looks like Spinfire Pro 2 and Titan One both have internal oscillation
 
Spin fire is fantastic. Cannot recommend it enough. It doesn't have "programmable" features, but it is easy to transport, has a large ball capacity, and their customer service is great. I recommend you get one with an external lithium battery

Titan One interests me as well. But they're a new name, so their track record is yet to be established
 
amptoyo said:
Tennis Tutor Plus Player looks good, a bit chunky - 20" cube, how is the reliability of the machine?
Click to expand...

Good.
I had a problem with the control panel, and the company sent me a replacement for free. I've had an issue with battery life, and the company sent me a replacement battery that I purchased from them. I would buy again.

My favorite option for the Tennis Tutor Plus Player is the fm remote. I can be standing on one side of the court and change any options: spin/height/speed without having to walk over to the machine.
 
amptoyo said:
Is internal oscillation (horizontal and/or vertical) big deal?
Click to expand...

Depends on the player. I would prefer internal to external. With internal, you can't tell if the machine will throw the ball left or right. With external, you can.
 
amptoyo said:
Hi all,

I would like to purchase a tennis ball machine for my 2 boys (HS sophomore and middle schooler), obviously my older son will be using it only for next couple of years since he will be going to college, but younger son will use it for next 5+ years. I am ok with spending up to $3000 (including balls + accessories + shipping). I am in NYC metro area. I asked the coach at the club, and he is only familiar with Lobster. I did some digging this is what I thought I could get for my budget:

Lobster Elite Grand Four (maybe Five)
Hydrogen Sport Proton
Spinfire Pro 2 v2
Titan One

We will be taking the ball machine to the public courts and high school courts in the back of my SUV and with two boys, weight and form factor should not be a huge issue but if I can get all or most of features in lighter/smaller machine that would be the preference. It appears other than Spinfire the rest of the machines on my list have pre-loaded drills or customizable drills and that could be a big negative for Spinfire but I couldn't find sufficient info to confirm if Spinfire truly lacks drills.
Click to expand...
I have spinshot plus 2 ,it's like titan,and they have collaboration titan and spinshot..it's ok machine with customise drills, I would like to have remote control like on spinfire pro which, I assume it's better and easier instantly to manage speed height et..of course you can do via phone but in reality its a bit boring.m
 
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Spinfire Pro2 V2 all day long with that budget. My second choice would be the Proton...plenty of threads in here on both and the Proton is a well-liked machine with a smaller footprint.
 
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USMC-615 said:
Spinfire Pro2 V2 all day long with that budget. My second choice would be the Proton...plenty of threads in here on both and the Proton is a well-liked machine with a much smaller footprint.
Click to expand...
Its not problem for you to not have drills customisable on spinfire? It's remote control practical on the court when you decide to change speed spin etc?
 
You can customize the provided drills as to width, random depth, spin, speed, interval and elevation up to 60 degrees. In addition you can cause the spin, speed and interval to vary up and down on their own without touching the remote.
 
Spinfire said:
You can customize the provided drills as to width, random depth, spin, speed, interval and elevation up to 60 degrees. In addition you can cause the spin, speed and interval to vary up and down on their own without touching the remote.
Click to expand...
How do you mean at the end of your sentence that you can do it without touching the remote?
You can also improvise to those drills for example, on one fire shot,approach balls near to service line and second ball to go forward near to the net for hitting a volley shot, am I right?
 
travis100 said:
How do you mean at the end of your sentence that you can do it without touching the remote?
You can also improvise to those drills for example, on one fire shot,approach balls near to service line and second ball to go forward near to the net for hitting a volley shot, am I right?
Click to expand...
You push a button on the machine control panel to cause one, some or all of the parameters to up and down. You can cause the machine to shoot long and short balls (ie farther and closer to the net or baseline) by pressing a button on the remote. For more detail please refer to the second video on the spinfireusa.com home page as it shows all of the drills being played.
 
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One of the huge benefits of the Spinfire, aside from internal oscillation and up to 60 degree lobs, is you do not have to carry it as it is designed to be pulled like luggage.
 
Spinfire said:
You push a button on the machine control panel to cause one, some or all of the parameters to up and down. You can cause the machine to shoot long and short balls (ie farther and closer to the net or baseline) by pressing a button on the remote. For more detail please refer to the second video on the spinfireusa.com home page as it shows all of the drills being played.
Click to expand...
Ok,it goes without saying that from the machine control you can manage ,as spinshot ball machine and other machine .but the edge of spinfire is a remote I think, if spinfire would have in addition some app phone it your be super
 
Actually there are many more advantages over Spinshot and other machines which are too numerous to go over here and some are nuanced and require a bit of explanation. Please give us a call if you are interested.
 
Spinfire said:
Actually there are many more advantages over Spinshot and other machines which are too numerous to go over here and some are nuanced and require a bit of explanation. Please give us a call if you are interested.
Click to expand...
To be honest each machine have plus and minus,for example spinfire is older and there no has app nor customiable drills, but of course it's ok machine.from the other hand spin shot has 12 customiable drills and you can customise each shot wherever you want. Every drill has 6 shot . Titan and hydrogen has better battery than spinfire and spinshot.. for us customer we need app,smaller battery,and remote control to manage speed etc as spinfire has , because some of us ( and me)dont like to use Phone!
 
The Spinfire was more recently designed than either the Proton or the Spinshot so it is not older and the drills are customizable to an extent as mentioned previously. As for the Titan and Hydrogen having a 'better' battery, it is lighter and smaller which may be a benefit to some, but it is at the expense of a much lower capacity and a fraction of the maximum # of charge/discharge cycles of the Spinfire lithium battery so their batteries will have to be replaced much more often. As well the Titan battery warranty is a mere 3 months, while Hydrogen's is 1 year vs the 11 year standard warranty provided on the lithium battery we supply in the US & Canada right now.

For those interested it would be best to call us for accurate information and comparisons.
 
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I am from Europe, but ok for lithium is very fantastic. And 11 years is impressive .and yes titan battery hold 2 hour only while spinfire more hours and has more benefits,but for the majority of us 2 hours is ok , unless someone use ball machine often and many hours.. for me personal I used spinshot and itd ok but 110 balls keeps ,balls falling.. App connection its not perfect,but now i am thinking to buy some new , machine as spinfire because of your remote control while others as I mentioned use only app or some not enough remote watch.. if you add on spinfire at least 3-4 customise drills with app and keep you remote control ,it woul be perfect for me!
 
Hi Travis100, you'll be happy to learn we have done just that (added customisable drills and an app). We have just released our Spinfire App for both iOS and Android along with the Apple Watch app. You can now program drills and even use AI to generate drills by using speech to explain what you'd like. You could say "Create me an intermediate drill with 3 wide deep forehands all with mild topspin, and then 2 shots to the backhand also with mild topspin, then give me a 20 second pause." The AI drill creator will instantly create this for you which you can play on repeat. The 20 second pause at the end allows you to treat it like a rally with a break for resetting in between.

We have spent a lot of time and hours on court creating this new app and we are still refining it every day. We welcome any feedback you may have. It has some amazing features like the ability to flip a drill to create a new one or to widen all shots within a drill or make them faster. We are proud of the flexibility it gives you and how much more exciting training with our machine has become. We hope you love it too.
 
Spinfire said:
Hi Travis100, you'll be happy to learn we have done just that (added customisable drills and an app). We have just released our Spinfire App for both iOS and Android along with the Apple Watch app. You can now program drills and even use AI to generate drills by using speech to explain what you'd like. You could say "Create me an intermediate drill with 3 wide deep forehands all with mild topspin, and then 2 shots to the backhand also with mild topspin, then give me a 20 second pause." The AI drill creator will instantly create this for you which you can play on repeat. The 20 second pause at the end allows you to treat it like a rally with a break for resetting in between.

We have spent a lot of time and hours on court creating this new app and we are still refining it every day. We welcome any feedback you may have. It has some amazing features like the ability to flip a drill to create a new one or to widen all shots within a drill or make them faster. We are proud of the flexibility it gives you and how much more exciting training with our machine has become. We hope you love it too.
Click to expand...
Nice news! You can save some drills that I am creating? If so how much drills I can save ? For each drill how many shot can I program?
Also other questions are ,can I both use remote control and app?
Also,if I program some drills to phone I guess that only through phone I can manage not from remote ,am I right? In any case nice improvement from spinfire!!
If you make in the future battery like titan or proton, I thin that you will have definitely the best ball machine up to 150 balls. But and now with app customisable driil and remote as well is something that sounds fantastic
 
Yes, you can create drills and save them. Each drill can have up to 30 shots and there is no limit to the number of drills you can create. We may even increase the 30 shot limit if there is demand for that (but that sure is one long rally).

Yes, you can use both the phone/app and also the slimline remote control. I'm sure you know it's not great to play tennis or pickleball with a phone in your pocket, so the slimline remote will continue to be available for quick adjustments. When you create a drill on your app, you can start it with a delay (eg 10 seconds) and then put your phone down to get started with the drill. You can pause it with the Apple Watch or the Spinfire slimline remote.

The Titan and Proton click-in batteries are great but they are a much smaller capacity. Our battery can also be external making it convenient to charge, so it's not too much different to a click in battery, yet you get the larger capacity.
 
Spinfire said:
Yes, you can create drills and save them. Each drill can have up to 30 shots and there is no limit to the number of drills you can create. We may even increase the 30 shot limit if there is demand for that (but that sure is one long rally).

Yes, you can use both the phone/app and also the slimline remote control. I'm sure you know it's not great to play tennis or pickleball with a phone in your pocket, so the slimline remote will continue to be available for quick adjustments. When you create a drill on your app, you can start it with a delay (eg 10 seconds) and then put your phone down to get started with the drill. You can pause it with the Apple Watch or the Spinfire slimline remote.

The Titan and Proton click-in batteries are great but they are a much smaller capacity. Our battery can also be external making it convenient to charge, so it's not too much different to a click in battery, yet you get the larger capacity.
Click to expand...
Yes that is fantastic,and of course the best thing is remote control to me because others they don't have . Battery if someone wants 2 hours to use machine you could with titan battery bugs its ok. In any case,nice news !
 
I have been using the Spinfire for one year now. Enjoying it very much. In my opinion, the machine is very well built, the remote is easy to use and small enough to be put into my pocket. I really don't like having my phone in my pocket while I am playing. The only thing I felt lacking was drill variety and the flexibility for drill customisation. However, I am very pleased that Spinfire will be sending out a mother board upgrade to me (at a moderate cost), with that upgrade, I will be able to use the recently launched Spinfire App and the drill customisation features. Spinfire's commitment to continuous customer support is very good.
 
travis100 said:
Why you say it? Do you have spinfire? I saw many reviews that its ok remote control.i have spin shot and even though has app drills I would like to have remote control like spinfire.
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I have a spinfire machine except It takes a while to get the shots you want using the remote.
 
KingCarlitos said:
I have a spinfire machine except It takes a while to get the shots you want using the remote.
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Hey KingCarlitos, are you referring to the need to adjust spin, speed, elevation, etc. to get to the shots that you want? Yes, that is required. I hope that the App will make this more automatic.
 
WalC2019 said:
Hey KingCarlitos, are you referring to the need to adjust spin, speed, elevation, etc. to get to the shots that you want? Yes, that is required. I hope that the App will make this more automatic.
Click to expand...
Whenever you start using it the balls just blip out of the machine, you waste about 10 balls for the machine to start hitting the shots you want
 
KingCarlitos said:
Whenever you start using it the balls just blip out of the machine, you waste about 10 balls for the machine to start hitting the shots you want
Click to expand...
I see. I don't have this problem though. When I start, the balls will be out according to whatever setting I have in the machine. I will then adjust to what I want and continue.
 
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