General discussion
I was happy to try this rubber in max thickness both sides. Well I bought a pair for 38€, so I would not say that is an expensive equipment.
But first things first, the rubber comes in a simple package with a warning on it, which instructs the buyer to "dry" the rubber sheet 48 hours before glueing. The smell tells us that there is plenty of booster in the 50 degrees hard sponge. After that, please handle your bat carefully, because heat 30-40 degrees celsius may cause the booster oil to penetrate the topsheet of the rubber. To avoid that always keep your bat at arid places at least a month. Freshly cut, the rubber weighs 50 grams on normal Butterfly head shape (150x157mm), which is heavy. After two months the shrinking of the rubber is huge. I always cut my new sheets at least a millimeter longer than my blade, then I store the rest of the rubber glued in it's original paper box. So after two months the shrinkage was 1,5 mm in all directions! (That is 3 mm in total). Since the sponge is hard if you want to use the rubber furher, please reapply some booster oil. The durability of the sponge is outstanding, which is not a suprise if you consider that it is very hard. The topsheet begins to wear after 30 hours of gameplay. The topsheet has a little grippy layer which wears off, but this does not affect gameplay seriously. The loops and flicks will still work with a bit less spin, but the ball won't fall out of the rubber.
Strokes
Counterhits/smashes
I liked this rubber, maybe because of the hard sponge, my hits were very direct, overall controll was nice. Actually I was surprised that this rubber is not a fast one. It is around Bluefire JP01, or 80% of the Tenergy 05. Because of the hard sponge flat smashes are effective, the overall reaction to incoming spin is lower than expected from an attacking rubber.
Loops/counterloops
This rubber has a medium throw angle and the speed is average. Still 80% of the Tenergy 05. Opening loops behind the table are very consistent, with fair amount of spin. Counterlooping is easy doue to the hard sponge. Lower then average spin sensitivity comes handy when dealing with heavy and fast loops. At this type of stroke I could feel how deep the ball can bite into my sponge with a suprisingly high dwell time. So placement of the counterloops were a piece of cake and the sound was very pleasing. Since the hard sponge these strokes can be played far from the table with good consistency.
Flicks were one of my favourite, with this rubber, the were kind of fast and spinny.
Dropshots/blocks
The ball goes from the rubber on a fairly low trajectory back to the opponent, so I had to adjust, to open my racket a bit. Incoming spin was not a problem, I really lowed passive play with this rubber. Active blocking was nice too, but nothing special.
Pushes/chops
I had a similar feeling like tenergy when pushing, because the ball flies low from the bat and most times I had to lift a bit to get the ball over the net. Since this is an attacking rubber classical chops were really hard to preform, but I found out it was easy to hit some chop bloks away from the table. Close to the net game was a bit hard, because the rubber has some catapult effect on spinny balls.
Testing equipment and thoughts
Blades: Yinhe Venus 16 (M. Maze clone), Yinhe Venus 14 (T.B. Spirit clone), Timo Boll W5, Waldner Senso Carbon.
So the rubbers preformed wery good on each blade except the TB W5. The W5 is the TB ALC whithout the Arylate-carbon layers and it has a hard koto outer layer, which made the ball contact faster, so I had to be really fast, and I believe my shots were less spinny. It behaved well on the soft and flexible Waldner Senso carbon, but to be honest you have to make that blade simmetrical to dampen the vibrations from the blade, so don't use this heavy rubber on one side only. On stiffer carbon blades, which have soft limba outer plies like the two Yinhe blades, these rubbers work both paired or used with an other medium/ medim-heavy rubber (like JP1, M2, MX-P). So I recommend a softer blade.
Overall
This rubber has a very nice control, and it is easy to play with. But it actually does not shine at any technique or gamestyle. I recommedn this sheet to an attacking allround player who values control, and has some strength. I was a bit depressed, because this product featured so many new technologies like Geo-Sponge, Geo-Grip etc... that I expected something better. I believe this MAXXX 400-450-500 series is a good technologycal stepping stone for JOOLA to come up with better sheets. For example MAXXX-P, normal MAXX 450 does not have a grippy topsheet like 400 and 500, but it has the optimal sponge hardness, so JOOLA assembled it with grippy topsheet and this became the MAXX-P, which I believe is a nice (and better) product. Furthermore MAXXX-Tech is coming to stores, eager to try. Even more, many clubs use the Rhyzm-P, which indicates, that that rubber is probably the best attacking rubber that JOOLA has to offer nowdays. But Rhyzm-Tech is coming too.....
Thanks for reading
Product information
