Well, Butterfly's marketing machine is at it again. The days of the celluloid ball are gone and we all need to move on. Butterfly promised us a ball that closely resembles the balls in the good ol days and they failed miserably in my opinion. Yes the ball is more consistently round, but that is about the only improvement I think they achieved. Out of the box, the ball sounds terrible, bounces incredibly high and feels light on your blade. The ball wears out fast and as a result, the high bounces quickly become unpredictable as the ball starts to skid on the table. As the surface of the ball wears, it takes a considerable amount of effort to grab the ball with your rubber. I guess if you are only using a ball for one match in a tournament, you would be fine, but don't expect to get a lot of quality play out of this $2.50+ ball. I'll stick with the Nittaku or the XuShaoFa for now.