Friendship/729 Super FX

Got the Blue Sponge in MAX thickness.

This is a solid rubber for a complete beginner who is just learning the basic strokes, how to serve, etc. It is quite slow and the rubber is dead and hard, but this gives it ample control and the tackiness gives it solid spin as well. On a flexible all wood blade this is a great rubber to begin learning how to loop properly, the chinese style.
Unfortunately for players beyond the beginner stage, unless you are into boosting or other gluing methods, this rubber doesn't have the speed you need to play a modern offensive game. It takes a ton of effort to generate reasonable speed during loops, and even third ball attacks run the risk of being blocked back. The tackiness, although fairly high, is still not as high as most DHS rubbers like hurricane and skyline, and there is occasionally some slipage after extended play. Combined with the dead sponge, this means the spin is also not quite as high as you would like for competative play. Shots like lifting underspin pushes and chops require very big and integrated motions that, again, are great for training, but not ideal for performance.

Although the $10 price tag is outstanding and makes the rubber hard not to recommend, this isn't a rubber I would chose for a developed player, or even a developing player. Dishing out a few extra $ for DHS hurricane or skyline will give you all the control this rubber offers, with a lot more speed and spin on almost all shots. It isn't a bad rubber by any means, but there are better options.

Not having too much reference, these are all observations not based on any valid comparison. This is my backhand rubber. I use the blue sponge variant on my forehand, which aside from a little more speed, is mostly the same in performance. There are more differences but I just can't feel them.

The best things about this rubber are that although the tackiness will wear out without extensive care, the topsheet and sponge will stay very much so playable for at least three months or more. It's easy to use in the short game and the better your technique and higher the spin, the easier it seems to control. I'm not too sure how it stacks up to other rubber in terms of serve spin, but serves are easy to control overall.

Blocking is easy, as long as you angle the racket down appropriately and block actively, because I feel it's a bit spin sensitive for a beginner's rubber. However that has been good for technique development. The rubber responds well to more racket head speed and gives good feedback on how well you're hitting.

Control overall is good and it easily allows for stronger shots even with a beginner's skill level. It's also very cheap.

My only gripe with the rubber's performance is that especially on the backhand, you need to be very active to produce faster shots and it's easy to spin shots into the net if you play too slow. However I feel that every time I've netted the ball due to slow speed has been a technique issue, not a rubber issue. From a beginner's standpoint this is good but I think for competition you would want something more forgiving.

Overall I've been satisfied with my purchase.

So i've used this rubber forehand and backhand on my first blade and recently when making up 5 blades for my dad and his friends from old pre-mades i used 10 sheets i aquired for £35 or 3.50 per sheet .
It is really good for forehand for a beginner as its slow, but unlike a lot of very cheap rubbers that come bundled with blade provided good spin when used with proper technique (i'm looking at you pan-Asia)
It is workable on backhand due to the controlled nature but again not optimal, really its an improvers fh rubber or a beginner rubber.
Looping: well i usually use H3 Neo or H3 50, and after using those for almost 2 years looping with 729fx was different, much slower so you have to adjust the stroke, but once adjusted it works fine, slow but fine.

Driving: really the best stroke with this rubber is driving, its more of a close to the table rubber. Not speedy but fast enough.

Serve: quite good really, it produced good spin and keeps low enough and controlled enough for good serve placement.

Blocking: hard, very hard compared to most rubbers, its spin sensitive like H3 Neo but slower so you have to actively block a lot more than usual. if youre coming from pan asia or any europian style rubber it will take some adjustment

Chopping: well it can do backspin well but its not IMO a chopping rubber as its too spin sensitive.

All in all get it if you're new or have no money, its similar to globe 999 but softer and slower and often cheaper. If you can afford H3 neo its better at every stroke and still slow enough for a beginner, but an excellent way into the sport.

I tried this really cheap rubber after playing for several months with tenergy 05 and aurus sound. The big difference with other rubbers is tackiness and you have to adapt your game,it just change your style completely.
Tried both on forehand and backhand.Even though they are really slow(a lot of players use to boost them),i was impressed on how much spin i could generate,but it's required a really fast and strong movement,maybe too much efforts are required for a match.
I was really satisfied by the spin and control that the 729 was providing during the loop phase.
What i found unpleasant was the control on block(especially on the backhand side),the 729 is really sensitive to opponent spin and at the same time really slow,so it was hard for me to find the right blade angle to play this specic shot.
The second negative aspect was the flip...i find really easy to do that with european rubbers(Aurus Sound,Tenergy05,Xiom Omega ecc...), but flicking with a chinese rubber was just too hard.

I don't think i will buy this rubber again,my playing style just suffers too much the tackiness of the rubber. If you share my perspective and you need a cheap rubber i suggest you to go more on a soft rubber like Palio Biotech or Dawei 2008 xp.

Alexander.

If you don't get a great backhand, you have to play with that rubber, control, spin and very cheap. It's great to prepare strong strokes

This is a fantastic rubber for it's incredibly low price. It is a typical cheap Chinese rubber, tacky surface for producing decent amount of spin. Firm sponge gives a crisp impact on the ball and the control ratio is OK. It's not the best rubber out there by a mile but for dollar value it's certainly a good one!