Badminton Racket Review - Min Requirement?

Nailed it, I agree with you.

 

Excellent insights you have there. I think that it's mostly Yonex going in the lighter and stiffer direction. Compared to their older lineup, they're getting really hard for most amateur players to use. (Eg. Duora 10 vs. Arc11Pro, ZFII vs 100ZZ etc.) Li-Ning offers more playable rackets across their lineup in my opinion, but most players go for Yonex.

I also feel like it's taboo to say bad things in general, so anyone who shares a negative experience gets ignored or attacked by the fans. More often than not I would just stay quiet and stick to what works for me, since it doesn't benefit me to share. I wish people were more accepting of differences in opinion sometimes.

 

Agree so users here are toxic. One comment that don't agree....they will ask admin to band you etc.

But I think that's the whole purpose of the forum for discussion. Everyone can voice their opinions.

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What's ur initial tension? 28lbs? Means u using 24lbs? 4lbs is alot of reduction.

I've actually tried 2 identical rackets with 24lbs vs 28lbs, same strings. The feel is very different. Can't get good control when the tension is low. Playable but everything at the net is NG.

We players most of the time has too big an Ego. We like to compare gears and tension. So when ur tension is way lower than others, it sort of reflective of one's manhood.....hahaha.

I think we have digressed very far form our original topic.

Lots of respect for many of the veteran contributors here, learnt alot. Dinkalot did alot for example.

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You gents play with 28lb string tension!, that’s very high,
in the old days I just left it at the stringers discretion,
when I bought my Voltric 60 and was told by the seller it was strung at 24lb’s,
pinging the strings it does feel the highest I’ve ever known my racket to be and it felt like a sword in my hand,
it was powerful, crisp, good control, felt great at the front court,
it just felt so right for me all round, the best I ever played with.

 

Interesting topic and a lot of good input already.

The longer I play and the more rackets I've tried over the years, the more I become a fan of the "the racket chooses you"-principle. The combination of overall weight and weight distribution, flex and vibration dampening (aka "feel") is so complex, that the decision if a player really likes the overall feel of a racket or not will only be determined while acutally playing it. Sure, if the specs are not too extreme it will be a matter of simply getting used to it, but I think we all have had these experiences when you hit the first dozen shots with a new racket and you just instantly feel at home (or the opposite). Even if most of this comes down to the daily form and motivation of the player on a specific day, this will form a significant first impression and bias in your brain that will be hard to completely change afterwards.

Regarding reviews and reviewers, I think it is vital that we differentiate between "professional" YouTube reviewers and actual user reviews in forums. The main goal of YouTubers is to generate clicks and getting a good status at the manufacturers (getting rackets for free or even get payed to produce certain videos). They have no interest at all to be really critical about a racket. This will bum out the manufacturers, and having the frustrated fanboys leave the channel.

My take on YouTubers: Don't buy a word they say except specs and measureable facts about a racket.

Actual user reviews also highly tend to have a positive bias since it's human nature to paint thing pretty that you have just spend money on. Especially during the honeymoon phase. Useful information (apart from specs) could be which rackets the reviewer has liked/disliked previously and to compare the new racket to those. But apart from that, there's not much to gain from these kind of reviews either. And that's why I also stopped writing those a while ago.

Personally, I am happy when I get an overview of specs such as overall weight, head weight and stiffness and some information about special features (compact head, weird string patterns etc.). With these I can make a good first judgement if a rackets is somewhere in my preferred range.

Looking at the post-covid releases, I have to say that I'm very underwhelmed. Most new rackets only seem to have the goal to reduce costs and increase the margin for the manufacturer (resulting in weak/sinking frames) or just feel completely random in terms of specs. So I have found myself now stuck on the same go-to racket since 2019 which I never thought possible before.

 

Yes, yours and a few technical and sensible tips by a few posters should be made a sticky, good tips.

 

I played 30/31 (to be honest because of ego, something I really regret because it hold me back) and now I'm using 26-27. During the lockdown I also couldn't play and started at 23 again due the long break.

I also thought until I got training from coach from Pakistan, who told me that I hit too much hard and also hold the racket especially at the net too tight and have a too fast movement on slices. I always thought I hold it quite loose, but there was much room to use it more loose and take some bounce from the shuttle away. Also the slices I learned the feeling of the shuttle on contact is important. I didn't dropped it from one day by 4 lbs, took nearly two years.

Exactly. I was the same, but try to learn to be more humble (difficult task). At the end nobody cares what gear you used when you lost the match and a higher tension compared to the opponent is not an excuse.

 

Before I had a machine I went to a shop for restrings. They strung requests lower, used flying clamps...preweaved etc. (I discovered this later) The result was for me always too low until I needed to request 13.5-14kg to get the feel I liked. This convinced me that I can play this tension with ease. When I got my machine my first own job I did was 12kg and much much harder than their 14kg. But I was stupid and sticked to this tension (they applied) due ego which was created for years by handing me something at 14kg with was just 10.5 or 11kg. Yes, my fault to not realize it earlier. This is my reason behind that.

Also the string frequency thread here was some kind of flexing and comparing of **** size. A few years posted ridiculous high pings at low tensions and felt cool, better than others and showed-off. The main aspect was to collect various data to verify jobs that they were string correctly but turned out quickly to a "I have the highest ping, your ping is wrong, I'm the champ" contest and only lower pings were blamed and the higher the better was the message.

 

This is so rarely mentioned! Differences between different stringers, strings and rackets can be huge. There are stringers locally who can never seem to do my rackets tight enough, and some whose 28 lbs feels borderline unplayable. I don't really care about numbers much anymore, unless it's my usual stringers. I wish I could explain this to fellow players, but without knowing how to string it's hard to comprehend I guess. It's hilarious what some shops turn out sometimes hehe.

 

Stringing is like a repair service. It's just something which pulls people regular into the shop, but you simply can't earn money with it. I guess it costs the shops more than they earn. It's just necessary to offer to give people a reason to come.

I strung alot in the past but I never earned more than the costs I spend for my hobby (badminton). So my motivation to offer it dropped as well because it was more stressful and killed free time. It's really hard earned money and not easy money to get your ass into a porsche.

 

I wish it were just 1 or 2 lbs difference. Some places have jobs that are more like 3 pounds too low, at the minimum. I asked them if they calibrated the machine and they have no idea what I'm talking about... sigh.

When people ask me what tension I use I give them a 4 lb range which includes the really unique stringers

 

Your post made me laugh out loud, your friends aspiration for her daughter,
“It’s o.k, she will learn and get better as I am”, lol…it’s not like a pair of shoes a few sizes too big she’ll grow into.
more likely she’ll develop bad technique to overcome too hard a string bed or worse still injury,
or could end up she’s not progressing, get bored and move onto another sport.

 

You had good intentions, shame it fell on over reaching parent.

 

To find a way back to the topic, can we agree that comprehensive reviews are related to level of play or not?

I think there is a difference when it comes to things like power. At lower levels you get more often instant winners with smashs, while in higher level games it happens more rarely due better lifting quality of the defenders, better countering of the defenders and also the understanding of the attacker to use this shot with a lot variations and more tactical understanding to break the defence instead of rely on just power. So a more beginner player will rate the same racket due the outcome more powerful than a higher level player? What does other think?

Also to @Budi s second question: From what kind of rackets and tensions can beginner and lower levels benefit and what types are more harm? Maybe we can find intersections to answer this questions and this can result in useful sticky threads.

 

They are. Beginners will mostly likely review anything expensive they've bought as positive and more experienced players will review anything which fits their technique as positive.

I've experimented recently using different mid to high end rackets borrowed from other players to smash against a training partner ranging from 6u to 3u with different weights and flexibility, but similar tensions. I'd advise anyone who's interested in this to try this out and post the results here.

There was some, but little difference in the speed of the shuttle according to them. They all came down around a certain range within the same speed that I smash with the racket I use. Some a bit faster some a bit slower, but not enough to say ooooh that's really powerful or ooo that's really soft. Some did feel a lot better than others though and made a difference to consistency and placement and some amount of power according to their specs and how well they fit with my technique.

I honestly can't see why this would change depending on level of play, that the technique really is the key factor. I think there's a bit of a placebo effect with beginners and this gets exploited with marketing. So many might say, oh this gave me a powerful smash when it really didn't, it just felt like it did so that made you smash more and get a better smash. After all if you've spent quite a lot on a racket then it's hard to go away and admit that you've wasted your money, and most likely beginners are presupposed to positive confirmation bias about their new expensive exciting racket because they don't know much about how their own technique influences its usage.

If you watch well known youtube racket reviewers comparing different rackets, you'll struggle to notice much difference in their smashes between rackets. You may hear different sounds, but ultimately when they say ooh this had little power, then they're obviously not being objective about it because you can literally see the shuttle coming down really fast regardless of what racket they use. It's more likely that they're highly sensitive to the differences so they're actually noticeable to them, in the same way they were for me, but ultimately have misjudged the amount of difference they're effectively going to make to anyone's game. Another thing is that anyone who's used to a 3u is probably going to be a biased against a 5u from a few hour testing session because their technique is simply not going to suit it. These racket reviewers don't even appear to acknowledge that the rackets might simply not suit their technique when they're saying something like this has no power. This has already been debunked as rackets have generally gotten lighten over time and some pros with strong smashes are using 5u when I've seen reviewers on youtube say it has no power.

There are certainly differences I noticed though, for instance for me rackets sub 4u I can lose some control over of the shuttle when returning smashes or at net play. There are similar tradeoffs with balance and flexbility. And of course higher weight rackets tire my arm out quickly. Some strokes felt better than my normal racket, and some didn't with different rackets. So again the main thing is whether it worked for me or not. It's literally impossible to extract this to an objective opinion about the racket.

The most important experiment though is that I've never ever seen a noticeable short term difference in someone's game when they've changed rackets. I have seen players over time beef up their smash, get more consistent, etc. but I cannot say whether this is due to more training, or the fact that they adjusted to the racket, or the fact that they liked the feel of the racket so played more.

Ultimately if I play with the same racket for long enough I get used to it in the same way I get used to the physiology of my body and it's advantages and limitations, so I think racket selection over the long term can influence your game. Changing rackets frequently to me seems to be a strange thing to do because I have no idea how you would adjust to that.

Really when it comes down to it when you think about how many things you can do to improve, from keeping your racket in the right position to knowing what shot to select it's something of a waste of time to focus on the ideal racket. Pro's have an advantage of having lots of choice and no doubt someone to advise them on the best fit whereas us mortals really should just buy something that will do without breaking the bank and focus on improving.

To answer your question in another way when people review a racket it doesn't matter what their level is, there's some kind of inherent lack of objectivity which makes it pointless anyway. Particularly in a 1 or 2 hour testing review. Really they should just say I liked this racket it felt good for me, here's why and remind people that it's not the most important thing to focus on.

Perhaps the rackets that get positive reviews the most are the ones that are most adaptable across techniques, or fit with the most common attributes, and are easy to use. If you've used a high end 4u slightly head heavy stiff yonex racket for a while then other rackets of the same ilk are going to feel positive to you.