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The Rising Dragon

After having opened the package i was a bit surprised because i've expected the rubber to come with some protection foil on the topsheet, but it didn't and i thought to myself: hmmm... but i didn't want to judge too quick and just glued it on my backup blade. My thought was, that the tack might get stronger once i played with it and out on a protection sheet after play.
To give you a bit more information, i used to play with a H3 National orange sponge before that, which needed to be replaced. Unfortunately I had no one around me using it, so i could try before i buy, which left me with the advertisement, which did sound quite promising to me, since i didn't want the hassle of boosting.

After the first hits, i was positively surprised about its speediness, but i was missing the tack and hence my serve receives and pushes missed the table and went pretty long, but nothing one couldn't get used to and kept playing.

Then i asked my practice partner if we could do what we call in german: einkontern, which basically means sort of driving with less spin [pretty close to flat hitting.] But i wasn't used to the low throw angle and nearly every ball touched the net. Took a little to adjust to, but after a while it got better.

So next my partner started looping and i was blocking, but finding the right angle took a little since i was used to a higher throw angle rubber. Some blocks went long while others landed in the net, which made me feel a little sorry for my practice partner, but after a couple of minutes it got better.

So next was my turn to loop, but the same as before some loops went long and others got stuck in the net and since i was used to something more tacky, the ball slipped once in a while on some brush loops with too thin contact. After a while this got also better as i've adjusted better. And then the loops were pretty spinny.
I left the rubber on my backup blade for about three months and in this time i've played 2 - 3 days a week with 2.5 to 3 hours of usage until i peeled it off my backup blade again.

So all in all i would say the rubber has a good quality. The topsheet's durability up to then was quite good and didn't show a lot of wear, except on the embossed printing you can see some wear from my thumb, but all my rubbers show this, and i think i could still use this rubber for at least 3 more months.

Generally i think this is a good rubber for someone who hasn't played with tacky rubbers before and wants to try out how it feels like. Coming from a tensioned rubber this is a good step to find out if one likes tacky rubbers. But i would place it closer to rubbers like Butterfly SpinArt than to Hurricane 3 Neo
Personally i was a little disappointed, 'cause i've been expecting something else, but for someone looking for the attributes i've described, this could be the right thing.

Here is a first quick Review of the new G40+ Ball: After the first 2 training sessions i´m gonna let you know my first impressions of the new ball. We (my clubmates and me) picked randomly 3 balls out of a pack of 72 and we also added the Nittaku 40 cell ball as well as the XSF 40+ to have a wider and better comparison. Compared to the XSF the 40+ felt faster and lighter, compared to the easy ball it felt way more solid. The sound it makes seems to be the only big difference to the cell ball. In every other way it felt much closer to the cell ball than the XSF. It als seems to better pick up spin than the XSF. Our league is still allowed to use cell balls, since the performance of the p-balls wasn´t very consistent. But with these new balls i think this is gonna change within the next couple of seasons and no more c-balls will be allowed. But that´s just my personal prognosis.
The durability seems to be ok, (if one can tell after the first two training sessions. But other p-balls didn´t even make it up to here)

I feel quite happy we have the chance to already get used to them... So far this has been the best p-ball i´ve ever played with.
(Gotta admit, i didn´t try out the NP 40+ yet, mainly ´cause it has not been available in my area, and i didn´t feel like ordering directly from japan. Now since its availability is getting better, i´ll be able to compare these two balls in the near future.)
But for now: The Butterfly G40+ is the best poly ball on the market (to me).

EDIT: Meanwhile i´ve also had the chance to use the NP40+ in comparison. These two balls are my favourite, with a slight tendency leaning towards the G40+.
I get the feeling that it´s faster. But that´s my personal preference.

We´ve been using this ball in our club for about 2 years now and still didn´t manage to break one(!!). Its durability is extraordinary. We still got the same two sixpacks of balls since then. No cell ball has been lasting that long. It is very close to the old cell balls, except of the higher bounce and the less speed. The spin ability isn´t the same as cell balls but it´s quite close. Another plus is that they´re not as hard to get as a few other 40+balls. Many stores in my area seem to have them on stock.
All in all i think it´s a pretty good ball.

As you can see from my ratings i really like this rubber.
It is fairly fast enough if you ovecome the tackyness, but it's not bouncy like e.g
T05. Also from mid distance the tempo was fast enough to make opponents sweat with counterloops. (that could be, cause i used it on a pretty fast carbon blade.)

It´s got a pretty long lasting topsheet, if you keep it clean after playing and put on a protection sheet after every play. (After two league seasons it still behaves almost like fresh out of the box on day 1...)

The sponge is a little harder than t05, its density seems to be equal and it also uses the spring sponge tech, which (in my case) didn´t wear off after nearly 2 years of constant play.
But it recquires a different technique than typical japanese or european rubbers. I would highly recommend a full arm swing while looping.
Now that's when this rubber shows its real potential and allows you to make fast and pretty spinny loops with beautiful arcs.

Great control at short game and serves cause it´s not bouncy at all. Also good for very spinful pushes.
Looping from table and mid distance is best, but also ok from a little further (if you use it on a fast blade) and the loops have a real nice arc.

The price is a bit high but worth it, ´cause of the long durability.

This rubber is definitely one of my favourites.

In general behaviour i find it is closer to factory tuned chinese tacky rubbers like e.g. DHS H3 neo, Yinhe Sun, etc. than to tenergy or tensor rubbaz.

After the first four hours of playing, i finally get to write my review. (my first one, so please be gentle)
;-)
After takin' them out of the box, my first impression was: gee, they look a bit fragile. Almost as if i could see through 'em.
Totally different than my XSF Balls. (But those are not training balls, so hey...)
And the second surprise was: they're not seamless(!!), which gives me another good point to test.
The sound from bouncing on my racket is sounding completely different than any other ball i've heard before. But these are just first impressions, so next i'm heading to our practice hall...
I gave two balls to my teammates for testing and two for me and my practice partner. One of my teammates is more a hitter with mid pips on his backhand. The other one is a spinner. Both of 'em playing more than 30 years. So they know pretty much what they're doing.
My partner is also more of a hitter and driver and myself i would consider myself as a both winged spinner. So we were also able to test durability (after 4 hours of play maybe a bit early, but still...)
Well, my first impressions seemed to be wrong, 'cause the balls seemed to be selected. The roundness was close to perfect, as far as one can tell by eye-sight)
They also seemed pretty spin reactive. And when i say spin reactive i mean spin reactive. My black rubber left marks on one ball. I never had that before, but it was real hot in the hall today...
(The hall doesn't have aircondition)
I'll post some pics of those marks in the thread, so you can see what i mean.

http://www.tabletennisdaily.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?10200-Win-a-new-batch-of-Butterfly-Easy-Ball-40/page4

Also the seam didn't seem to have ANY influence on the ball's bounce behaviour.
The bounce was pretty close to my XSF. Maybe not exactly that high, but still very constant. The arc they made while looping was pretty close to my C-Balls, and even closer to my XSF Balls.
Only irritating thing was the sound, but after 3 minutes, i didn't even think about that anymore..
The balls used by my teammates, didn't have any marks on 'em and the one guy's spin contains also a lot of rotation, but still no marks on the ball.
Well, both of 'em said they could hardly tell any difference to the XSF Balls we use every second training session.
But what one could see after they played, the ball was lookin' as if it had a little crack underneath the surface. It wasn't on it's outside, but more on it's inside. (I guess i have to post a pic of this in the thread as well.)
But that absolutely didn't seem to be having any influence on the ball's bounce. My teammates kept on playing with it for at least another hour.

So finding 4 hours is a bit short for a more objective review, i might update this review after some more hours of play.

Since i gonna rate them now, i'm gonna rate them 4 out of 5 stars.

They are almost comparable to competition balls, and seem to be pretty good for training balls.
I actually had competition p-balls that played much worse.


Thanks a lot for your attention.