New Comparative racquet reviews now at TW

[TW Staff]

We pulled in some Talk Tennis members for a new review format. These guys took some of the latest and most popular racquets available at TW and playtested them side by side.

We strung all the racquets identically with Wilson Sensation 17 at mid+2lbs, supplied some fresh grips, gave them some guidelines for the review format and left the rest up to them.

Here are the results:

NoBadMojo's Racquet Playtest Comparison: Yonex RDX 500 MP vs Prince Diablo MP vs ProKennex Ki 5 vs Dunlop 200G
http://www.tennis-warehouse.com/playtests/NOBAD1.html

TripleB's Racquet Playtest Comparison: Babolat Pure Storm Team vs Dunlop 300G vs Volkl Tour 9 V-Engine 16x19 vs Volkl Tour 9 V-Engine 18x20
http://www.tennis-warehouse.com/playtests/TRIPB01.html

Rabbit's Racquet Playtest Comparison: Wilson nCode 6.1 Tour 90 vs Volkl Tour 10 V-Engine Mid vs HEAD Liquidmetal Prestige Mid
http://www.tennis-warehouse.com/playtests/RABBIT01.html


Stay tuned . . . more reviews to come.

Chris, TW.

 

[perfmode]

Could I do a playtest for you?

 

[Kirko]

agrre with rabbit on the LM Prestige. i have tried this racket and found it to be what he said about it being way to head light . had no "muscle at all when driving the ball .

 

[jings]

These are great. Very good idea - more please.

 

[kenyee]

Thanks. Great idea!
Now we just need Steve Huff to do a Ki5, Ki5x, Ki5PSE, Ki10PSE comparo review

 

[K. Wilson Moose]

Hey, where are Petra's reviews?

You've found the best rabbit. If you need a moose, you know where to find me.

 

[Tennis Guy]

TripleB really took his ratings seriously.

 

[Tennis Guy]

BTW, how did you choose the playtesters? This is a great idea. Very informative.

 

[AAAA]

Great customer service.

 

[Redflea]

Fun idea...and creative. You TW folks are aren't just sitting around twiddling your thumbs....thanks.

 

[CliffH]

wow. :shock:

It takes a lot of guts to have rabbit review the ncode6.1 90
after TW gave it a tough review and a bunch of us really liked it.

Congratulations.

 

[PrestigeClassic]

LOL Benjamin assigned ratings on a 100-point scale.

 

[Pro_Tour_630]

PrestigeClassic, we were told to use the 0-100 scale rating, I did not, I used 78-81 since the four sticks I playtested were similar in specs,

OK OK Chris, now you got my attention, just e-mailed you my review.

 

[Rabbit]

Wow, I do apologize for my comments not being more detailed. The other two guys did an excellent job of reviewing their frames and really put this quadroped to shame. Great job, Ed and Bennie & the Jets. Although I am confused about BBB's racket of record. I thought it was the Prince Original Graphite Mid!

 

[Bhagi Katbamna]

Great idea.
Well done.

 

[galain]

Great idea! Thanks guys

 

[BLiND]

I don't understand Rabbit... the Prestige is not stable enough, feels light, and is too head-light (350g, 340g swingweight, 7 points light).... and the wilson feels great (350g, 330g swingweight, 9 points light)?

You sure you didn't get these two mixed up?

 

[NoBadMojo]

thanks rabbit. when i did mine, i thought it was too detailed. it's hard to know what to do in the first round i think. ed

 

[Benjamin]

Rabbit,

I was using the Prince Original Graphite Mid up until about 3 weeks ago or so. I had a horrible night serving and at the net so I pulled the Hyper ProStaff 6.1 out of the closet and found tremendous success....on the next night I played I found that it was the best I had hit the ball in probably 7 or 8 years. That quality of play hasn't quite continued but I still find that, at this point, I like it better than my POG mid. Thanks for the kind words. Looking back on mine now, I think I should have put more information in there comparing the racquets to each other.

PrestigeClassic,

As playtesters we were asked to make comments in each of the six areas you see listed on our reviews. We were also given 13 categories in which we were to rate each racquet on a scale of 1 to 100 (like the Tennis Warehouse Reviews do). I tried to use about 73 or 74 as an "average" score in each category and then give a racquet higher or lower numbers based on that. It seems like an average racquet from the TW testers gets between 73 and 75 so I tried to be consistent.

Tennis Guy,

I tried to be as informative with my information and ratings as I could. I figured that if this information was going to be useful to others, I better take it as seriously as possible.

NoBadMojo,

I agree with you....it was hard for me to know exactly what to included and what not to include in my comments....tough to do the first time around. As I said above, I think I should have probably included more "comparison" comments on the four racquets.

GREAT work guys....I enjoyed reading each of your reviews!!!

Benjamin (TripleB)

 

[kenyee]

when i did mine, i thought it was too detailed

I actually thought yours was the best of the bunch. Showed very methodical testing. And the comparison info, along with your background info, was very detailed. Great job!

p.s., not to discourage Rabbit or Triple-B. Good reviews as well, but Ed's was at the TW staff level or even better since he tried the same drills w/ each racquet

 

[Benjamin]

kenyee,

Yea, NoBadMojo's wording kind of put my 8th grade language (that's what grade I teach) and descriptive words to shame didn't it?

Benjamin (TripleB)

 

[AAAA]

I don't understand Rabbit... the Prestige is not stable enough, feels light, and is too head-light (350g, 340g swingweight, 7 points light).... and the wilson feels great (350g, 330g swingweight, 9 points light)?

You sure you didn't get these two mixed up?

From experience I've found the flex/stiffness of the racquet head also affects how 'stable' a racquet feels. Some racquets I've used had heads like wire coat hangers so they twisted alot giving me the unstable 'sensation'.

 

[Pro_Tour_630]

Rabbit wrote:

Wow, I do apologize for my comments not being more detailed. The other two guys did an excellent job of reviewing their frames and really put this quadroped to shame

Rabbit, now I dont feel so bad with my review, I think too much information sometimes gets confusing to the average reader, I made my scores simple.

 

[Rabbit]

I don't understand Rabbit... the Prestige is not stable enough, feels light, and is too head-light (350g, 340g swingweight, 7 points light).... and the wilson feels great (350g, 330g swingweight, 9 points light)?

You sure you didn't get these two mixed up?

I am positive. To verify, the guy I was hitting with picked up both rackets. His immediate comment on the Prestige was "That's too light for you". The Wilson on the other hand was heavier. I didn't look at any specs prior to hitting, and can only say that IMO, the Wilson was a much heftier frame both in your hand and swinging.

The Prestige felt, for lack of a better term, cheap compared to the Wilson & Volkl. I don't mean that as a knock, but my impression of the frame was not favorable compared to the other two. The Prestige also felt like it was 1/2 the racket the Wilson was. It also didn't have, IMO, the solid feel of either of the other two frames. It's a good racket, no doubt, just not for me.

Additionally, TW sent me 4 1/2 grips on all frames. The Head felt more like a 3/8 or even smaller compared to the Volkl and Wilson. I also did not like the Volkl grip. If I were to use that frame, the grip that comes on it would have to go. They have holes in it and you can feel the plastic through them, definetly not for me. This isn't a show stopper though because I play with leather anyway. The Wilson grip felt like it filled your hand closer to 5/8, which I really liked as well.

p.s., not to discourage Rabbit or Triple-B. Good reviews as well, but Ed's was at the TW staff level or even better since he tried the same drills w/ each racquet

No worries here. I admit mine was the least detailed and informative of the bunch. I wasn't sure how much Chris was going to massage the reviews (mine are straight from the form) or what form they would take. I prefaced the review with a caveat for Chris telling him that if he saw any deficiencies, I would be happy to supply any other thoughts I had.

I do agree that this went over really well and TW should pursue it.

 

[D. Nelson]

.....it really IS a great idea......!!!!!!!!

 

[Rabbit]

Rabbit wrote:

Wow, I do apologize for my comments not being more detailed. The other two guys did an excellent job of reviewing their frames and really put this quadroped to shame

Rabbit, now I dont feel so bad with my review, I think too much information sometimes gets confusing to the average reader, I made my scores simple.

Common ground....ain't it wonderful?

Not that TW readers are average in any way, shape, or form! We're all one stroke away from the tour!

 

[TW Staff]

I would like to say that we thought all three reviewers did a great job. They each came in not knowing what to expect, and at the same time we did not know what sort of review comments we would get from this.
What we were really seeking here was to keep the voice of the playtester. We did very little to the reviews with only a little clean up and then formatting for the web.
All in all, we think this new review format has gotten off to an excellent start and we are currently in the process of getting the next round of playtesting up and running.

Chris, TW.

 

[intense2b]

great idea. You could take it a step further. Ever see the car website edmunds.com? Well they kt you pick out the racquet and it lists the specs of each car side by side. Check it out and www.edmunds.com. I love this feature because you can contrast all the specs on one page.....people will really be attracted to this. Edmunds already has a proven track record in this regard.

 

[NoBadMojo]

thank you very much kenyee, bennie, chris, and rabbit for the kind words. much appreciated. ed

 

[BreakPoint]

Hey Benjamin, great job!!

However, if the scale is 1 to 100, wouldn't 50 actually be the average? But I guess being a school teacher, 73 to 75 would be the "normal" average on tests, huh? I think you're right in that TW's rating probably averages around 74 or so since I've never seen any ratings below 50.

I'd like to say great job to NoBadMojo and Rabbit also!!

 

[b.]

Bravo!

Now you men become real insiders! I suspect next thing will be narrating fairy tales about new technologies... it's hard to withstand temptations :wink:

It was really a pleasure reading your reviews.

p.s.
Surprising were findings about LM Prestige Mid (as already noted). Maybe it was frame different from standard specs. Wish I got one of them... Bludgeon - that was my first impression. So much that extra s.w. masked otherwise pleasant feel... And the control was next to carrying the ball personally to the target.

Thank you very much.

 

[ChrisNC]

This is great. I'd say the only thing that could really improve it, is to have 3 or 4 people demo the same group of similar racquets and give them a format to use for the review.

Great reviews guys!

 

[Grimjack]

A hearty 'nice job!' to both the reviewers and the idea factory at TW for coming up with this format.

Even though I trust and admire the regular TW review crew, it gives perspective to see guys you've jawed racquets with for ages reviewing the racquets on their own terms. Very helpful, and I will now look at both the new PK5's and the nT90 a lot closer than I would have in the absence of these presumably independent voices.

Would love to see a future Battle of the Racquets that pieced together some of the missing data from your review catalog. Say, a comparative of the POG, Bab PC, PK Laver C/S, and maybe even an update of the FP1.

Thanks again for the excellent customer service and opportunity to make the voice of the everyman heard.

 

[Pro_Tour_630]

Breakpoint wrote:

However, if the scale is 1 to 100, wouldn't 50 actually be the average? But I guess being a school teacher, 73 to 75 would be the "normal" average on tests, huh?

another reason why I did not use 0-100. I did not want to include extreme #'s which might be based on my bias where it can skew the overall #, if a stick performed really bad in an area does it deserve a zero!? or if a stick performed out of this world like you have never seen before does it deserve a 100?!

I liked MOJO's #'s, maybe we should standardized the #'s and have them ranked between 60-90, in increments of 5, 75 being the middle or average to make things easy and less confusing. I have never seen any stick get above 90 or less than 60, most sticks fall between 70 and 80,

 

[kenyee]

if a stick performed really bad in an area does it deserve a zero!?

Absolutely. A bell curve has extremes. If that racquet is the most horrible thing you've ever tried (e.g. can't get spin on it for beans), give it a zero.

As the scores currently are now, we have to normalize the scores back out to 1-10 or something. Why have a limited range of 60-80? Why not just call it 1-20?

 

[Pro_Tour_630]

Absolutely. A bell curve has extremes. If that racquet is the most horrible thing you've ever tried (e.g. can't get spin on it for beans), give it a zero

nonsens, the Wilson ROK was given a very low score on spin, the stick is an amazing stick and could have been much more for an overall score, but with the right string, if you had 16g it would have a zero for spin, but if you had 18g it has excellent spin, what I am saying is the bias skewed the curve lower in this particular case, there are many others like this situation, I am just trying to rid the extreme #'s

Why have a limited range of 60-80 Why not just call it 1-20

no, 60-90, or 1-7, you need a mid point, in this case 4, or 75, between 1 and 20, 10.5 is the midpoint, not only it is a decimal but the range is confusing, we are used to numbers from TW that are between 60 and 90, so making it in increments of fives is simple with a midpoint of 75

 

[kenyee]

we are used to numbers from TW that are between 60 and 90, so making it in increments of fives is simple with a midpoint of 75

That begs the question: why does TW score racquets between 60-90?
(I actually mentally convert that from 0-30 when I look at racquets, but I guess I'm in the minority ;-)

 

[andfor]

Wow! I am blown away with the reviews given by our fellow board members. Great job guys, especially for the first go around. Congratulations to TW for making it happen. I know these reviews will be very popular and bring even more to the best website our game has to offer! TW and reviewers you are an asset to the game.

 

[Cruzer]

I think the customer playtest idea is a good one. I have one suggestion. The ratings (and I am assuming these are all USTA computer generated ratings) of the four playtesters are 4.5, 4.5, 5.0+ (not sure what that means) and 5.5. There are a comparatively few players at these levels in USTA play particularly since the USTA has been pushing ratings down over the past 4 or 5 years. Perhaps it would be more meaningful to the average hacker to have some 3.0 and 3.5 playtesters since the majority of players (TW read: customers) are at that level. It is interesting to read these reviews however having a 5.5 player tell me how the Wilson six-one 18 x 20 plays is like having Michael Schumacher tell me how his test drive of a car went. I don't play tennis like a 5.5 and I don't drive like Michael Schumacher

 

[NoBadMojo]

Cruzer I rate myself a 5.0+ because i am at least that. stroke production wise (if they still used USTA raters), i would easily rate as 5.5, but being older i compete well with the legit 5.0 crowd.

 

[Pro_Tour_630]

http://www.tennis-warehouse.com/playtests/MCHAHO01.html

I know I did not do a detailed review on the LM prestige Mid Plus by itself, but I think most will want to know how it plays compared to the i.Prestige Mid Plus, from that review and from the comparative # to the other sticks I think one can have a good idea on how it plays,

 

[Flatspin]

Great job guys! I'm impressed. It will be interesting reading about this whole experience. The biggest surprise was Rabbits positive comments on the Wilson frame after ready TW's review. Congratulations to all of you for a great job. NoBadMoJo .... totally understand what a little age does to your rating. It's just that, for me, it's hard to accept! LOL

 

[Colpo]

Very nice job by these posters, and an excellent idea by TW to take advantage of what may be the premier tennis-oriented board in the universe!