Hey all, I'm currently living in Saigon Vietnam and there's not much of a shuttlecock range from what I've seen. The middle ground between Vietnam made shuttlecocks and Yonex AS range (35USD+ for 1 doz) seems to be shuttles from Sunbatta. I've never played with them until now and can't find any information/reviews from players. Anyone know anything about these? Here are some pics
I will have to double check the price next time I'm at the shop, however I recall they're around one third (1/3) the price of AS40s, AS40s are about $35-40 a tube (12 shuttles) here, so these Sunbatta's are about $10-13 a tube. The shuttles seem to be duck feather, I've had varied results from the shuttles, I'll play around with them more this week and post some thoughts.
Sunbatta is an interesting brand. Although it says Japan I would say this maybe used to be the case. Sunbatta is now very much a chinese company. Possibly a similar story to the Kimony (Japan) Kimoni (china) story. My mate used to have a racket from the 70s that was a sunbatta, similar to kawasaki.
The shop that sell these shuttlecocks also have some sunbatta racquets for sale as well, so they're certainly still in operation. Google searches come up with Japanese listings, it looks like they're in operation in Japan, whether everything is made in China is another matter altogether... A quick update on the sunbatta shuttlecocks, they're 'okay', certainly not as nice as an AS40, but they seem to last 3 to 4 games of abuse. The consistency of quality is 'okay', a feather may have a slight malformation (as shown in the original pic), though it doesn't seem to affect flight too badly. The durability is good as mentioned, I've attached two pictures of a 3 game shuttlecock. Game was intermediate level, lots of smashes, clears, and a few miss-hits too. Flight is decent and I'm still conducting tests to give an overall evaluation on flight.
The three (3) game shuttlecock lasted for half a warm up, then pretty much died. After another session, these are my ratings. Ratings are against AS40 as being 10s for all areas except durability. Quality: 8 Consistency: 7.5 (consistency of quality) Durability: 9 Flight: 7.5 I took some pictures of the dead three (3) game shuttlecock, cut the cork in half to see the composition of the cork and if there was any compression or malformations from overall usage. I hope this thread is of use to someone who encounters these shuttlecocks from sunbatta, as there is absolutely no information elsewhere.
Went back to the shop today (restring on my Gosen), the price for the sunbatta shuttlecocks (1 tube / 12 shuttles) is around $9-10USD after conversion (190000VND). I also took the opportunity to snap a pic of the sunbatta racquets (bit blurry sorry), they had some interesting names like "Dragon and Tiger" and some obvious Yonex named references.
I trialed the Sunbatta 50s (red tube), they are better quality, however there is still a variance in quality consistency, albeit somewhat better consistency than the 35s. They are a faster shuttle, the 35s are more the speed my current group plays with (unfortunately).
