Hi all,
So heres my thoughts on the free butterfly balls and also first review.
As like many others I Entered the butterfly easy ball competition, after a period of waiting they arrived!
So here are photos of what I received in the UK. I Compared them with some poly balls I bought this week as well.
There was a definite difference in appearance which some might argue are the quality of the balls... The balls are more dull looking and don't seem to have much of a matt finish to them which is very noticeable compared to the xushaofa balls.
As others have mentioned probably this is because there club practice balls not competition balls.
I heard that butterfly were doing a new batch of poly balls as the original ones weren't very good... Hoped these might be something along the lines of the new ones. (bit early to say but if the durability of these are the same level or better on the newly developed balls id say butterfly are onto a winner!)
In the pictures I also compared them alongside to an 40mm tsp ball as well as a xushaofa brand poly ball.
First impressions bouncing the ball on the table and a few brushes against my rubber, it felt like the balls are more "Lively" than the XSF polyball, so bouncier, but not giving off as much spin on the ball as the old 40mm balls do.
It felt like this would mean a slightly quicker game on the table with the BTY balls compared to the XSF balls or even Joola balls for example.
Joola balls I felt about the same weight (id have thought they all are the same weight though) as the BTY balls but are slow on the table during hits.
XSF balls always fell to me heavier/more dense than the BTY and Joola balls.
when playing with them maybe it was the hall that day, but it sounded like these balls had more of a 40mm ball sound to them. Much less plastic sound that was very noticeable when first switching to polyballs. It felt like the speed of play was faster than when playing with a XSF ball, but still not as fast as the old 40mm. It felt like the ball bounced higher off the table counter looping but also longer across the table too.
Last picture is after say 2-3 minutes knock up of forehands. So we had managed to scuff the ball surface quite easily from hitting the surroundings or edge of blades etc. Its visible (arguably not in the photo - my bad!) that the creases from stress when hitting the edge of the blade, a wall, edge of the table or something else look to be very much "internal to the ball", hard to describe but the old 40 mm balls you could kind of feel the crease on the outside of the ball. Also this did not feel like this "crease mark" effected the play of the ball at all - definitely a bonus!
Joola balls i found went soft spots and warped,
XSF balls on the other hand ive found get soft spots or shatter,
Stiga balls seemed to warp or crack,
Donic balls... never had any luck with these, maybe just a bad batch but they shattered very quickly...
After only a light hit with theses, They do seem better than the Joola ones and definitely other brands with exception to XSF, that said though I think it would be good to see how they get on over time and more play...
Compared to the training polyballs id say i think i probably prefer these,
its hard to make the comparison properly against a 3* ball but id say BTY are definitely onto something here if they let these lead onto new BTY competition balls.
So heres my thoughts on the free butterfly balls and also first review.
As like many others I Entered the butterfly easy ball competition, after a period of waiting they arrived!
So here are photos of what I received in the UK. I Compared them with some poly balls I bought this week as well.
There was a definite difference in appearance which some might argue are the quality of the balls... The balls are more dull looking and don't seem to have much of a matt finish to them which is very noticeable compared to the xushaofa balls.
As others have mentioned probably this is because there club practice balls not competition balls.
I heard that butterfly were doing a new batch of poly balls as the original ones weren't very good... Hoped these might be something along the lines of the new ones. (bit early to say but if the durability of these are the same level or better on the newly developed balls id say butterfly are onto a winner!)
In the pictures I also compared them alongside to an 40mm tsp ball as well as a xushaofa brand poly ball.
First impressions bouncing the ball on the table and a few brushes against my rubber, it felt like the balls are more "Lively" than the XSF polyball, so bouncier, but not giving off as much spin on the ball as the old 40mm balls do.
It felt like this would mean a slightly quicker game on the table with the BTY balls compared to the XSF balls or even Joola balls for example.
Joola balls I felt about the same weight (id have thought they all are the same weight though) as the BTY balls but are slow on the table during hits.
XSF balls always fell to me heavier/more dense than the BTY and Joola balls.
when playing with them maybe it was the hall that day, but it sounded like these balls had more of a 40mm ball sound to them. Much less plastic sound that was very noticeable when first switching to polyballs. It felt like the speed of play was faster than when playing with a XSF ball, but still not as fast as the old 40mm. It felt like the ball bounced higher off the table counter looping but also longer across the table too.
Last picture is after say 2-3 minutes knock up of forehands. So we had managed to scuff the ball surface quite easily from hitting the surroundings or edge of blades etc. Its visible (arguably not in the photo - my bad!) that the creases from stress when hitting the edge of the blade, a wall, edge of the table or something else look to be very much "internal to the ball", hard to describe but the old 40 mm balls you could kind of feel the crease on the outside of the ball. Also this did not feel like this "crease mark" effected the play of the ball at all - definitely a bonus!
Joola balls i found went soft spots and warped,
XSF balls on the other hand ive found get soft spots or shatter,
Stiga balls seemed to warp or crack,
Donic balls... never had any luck with these, maybe just a bad batch but they shattered very quickly...
After only a light hit with theses, They do seem better than the Joola ones and definitely other brands with exception to XSF, that said though I think it would be good to see how they get on over time and more play...
Compared to the training polyballs id say i think i probably prefer these,
its hard to make the comparison properly against a 3* ball but id say BTY are definitely onto something here if they let these lead onto new BTY competition balls.
