Butterfly Zyre 03

2.5mm review

The good;

The best thing about this rubber is the confidence it gives me to win with outright speed drives or powerloops from mid distance or further. Even at the short game, if the ball is returned to me just a little high, it's the end for the opponent. This rubber wants to kill with speed, and that fits my game style.

Next best thing, the feeling. The standard 'spring sponge X', with it's satisfying clicky feel, is further enhanced by making the sponge thick and giving the rubber a very thin topsheet. This allows players to engage and feel the sponge even more. When mid distance powerlooping, the feeling is one of its kind and out of this world. If you like the non tacky catapult feel, then this is the best you can get.

Thirdly, it's hyper grippy topsheet. Try rubbing your fingers without much force on it's new topsheet and your fingers ain't going anywhere. For a non tacky rubber, the grip levels are very impressive. This allows me to focus a lot on brushing with great confidence. Given, this rubber requires advanced thin brushing techniques, but it's high topsheet grip makes me just go for it without any hesitation. Of course D09C wins in this regard, but the Zyre-03 is not far off. If the weather isn't humid, ball slippage is virtually zero.

All this and you probably think, okay the control's gotta be bad. But it's not. Except for the short game (which I'll get to that later) this rubber with it's great feel and not very strong catapult, allows for good control. Granted, beginners shouldn't go anywhere near this thing, but in the hands of an intermediate with decent footwork and good strokes, this rubber can be used quite well.

Durability; 3 months in, 5-6 sessions per week, each 2 hours high intensity, topsheet looks a little roughed but plays like 95% new. At my intense use, I probably play about 40 hours monthly minimum, and it'll probably last me 4-6 months. It's quite sensitive to humidity though, ball slippage is there in humid weather, but nothing a wipe can't fix.

Cons

Price. Enough said. Absurd to pay so much for a rubber. If you want premium but don't wanna take a bank loan for a rubber, consider Dignics 05.

It has low dwell. If you want to spin the ball through sponge engagement, you must loop real hard to get that hard sponge to deform and meld into the shape of the ball. If you can get there, the ball will spin like a neutron star. But if you can't get there, then your only hope is thin brushing.

Short game control. It's mainly to do with spin anticipation. This rubber is quite sensitive to spin (but not as bad as T05). So when opponents serve short backspin sidespin, you really need to get your racket angles right to avoid springing the ball up. In this regard, D09C far outweighs it in short game control.

Overall

Good rubber, but get it 2nd hand from a player who bought it new and used it for a few weeks, then felt it is too demanding for them. I prefer the 2.5mm.

I waited to write a review until playing with it for a few months (around 3 times a week 6h total).
The first weeks/month it felt horrible, hard but not in a good way hard, just hard with the unpredictable extreme speed when you least expected it. In the beginning I also felt that it if I was just slightly off with my footwork I would get heavily punished by the rubber and not getting any engagement from it at all and a lot of ball slippage.
But as time passes the rubber softens up a little and am pleased to say that in my opinion this rubber plays very nice after having been broken in.
It has a much softer feeling while still being hard (I am a long time D09c player so used to the hardness) and I kind of like that, don’t know if that is the topsheet playing its part here and the pimples getting broken in as well?
It is now much more predictable and open ups against heavy backspin feels like a breeze to perform with power. There is the occasional ball slippage still but I guess that has to to with not engaging the top sheet as much as needed. Since coming from D09c and H3 before that I am a heavy brusher and I feel Zyre 03 requires a lot of brushing but a bit more direct engaging in the same time so a combination. Weirdly I find it not particularly spin sensitive but in the same time able to generate tons of spin, but it is hard to generate lots of spin without engaging sponge so passive shots don’t carry much spin and for serving you need to have good technique if you wanna serve short with lots of spin so it doesn’t travel long. I tested it on my stiga pure blade and the hardness of the rubber together with the characteristics of that 7-ply blade I think was a great combo.
Also after using it for a couple of months it really looks brand new still, durability seems to be top notch (if I remember I will get back and update here after a while more).

Usually I play with hard tacky Chinese rubbers like Hurricane 3 and Skyline 2, on a wood or woody-feeling blade.

My impression of Zyre 03 is that it's made for an all-out attacking game with little flexibility for anything else. This seems to be in line with how other amateur players feel.

I tried Zyre 03 2.7mm for a playing session on both sides my clubmate's Hadraw 5 FL (5 ply all wood blade). My first impression was that it completely lacks feeling -- to the point where the setup felt like 60 degree rubber on a carbon blade. The contact time is extremely little and there doesn't seem to be much vibrational feedback.

I was amazed at how well my attacking shots went in. Power loops went fast, with a big jump and safe arc. Looping from behind the table was especially nice -- I can't think of any other rubber that made such consistently powerful spinny shots from behind the table. Somehow power-looping is the only shot where you have any feeling -- everything else feels like nothing.

There are some shots I like to play away from the table which I found hard to play with Z03: strawberry slices, hooking forehand sidespins, and snakes. Playing with Z03 very much forced me to play a standard aggressive topspin game, whereas much of my usual style involves trying to confuse my opponents with strange spins.

My short game was terrible and I could not figure out how to push with heavy backspin. I'm sure there's a way to push, but I'd need to spend more time learning it. Any time I tried to push, my opponent would just flick or loop it with no issue at all. Even my long pushes were not so spinny. My best strategy was to serve fast and long every time, to get to open rally as quickly as possible.

I could not get any sort of feeling of gripping the ball. You have to be confident in your strokes without receiving feedback. Pushing underspin somehow feels like pushing underspin with pips -- the ball kinda rolls on it. It's very different from Tenergy 05, where you get a sharp crisp feeling of biting against the incoming spin.

Lifting backspin was pretty easy, but you have to add power. Slow looping is not an option.

Interesting experience overall, but I probably won't be using it again. Useful for a player who plays extreme unrelenting offense, but wouldn't recommend it to anyone else.

I played Zyre for the first time yesterday.
2.7 red on Viscaria Light.
Tremendous kick feeling on small effort.
Hard to control in the beginning definitely.
Push and receive is little bit tricky, ball goes upward and long.
No way to passive block, but aggressive and active block is really good. Counter is easy, just go forward.
If you play active the pressure is really big for opponent.
I' didn't play faster rubber before. Feeling is different.
It's not similar to eu hybrids in my way (metal feeling).
It's more like really heavy boosted Hurricane but sometimes like really hard Tenergy. Kick is special.
I think players like Gerassimenko, Alexis Lebrun, and Hugo would make great use of this rubber in the 2nd and 3rd zones. It's very easy to transition from defense to attack, and high lobs are really powerful. It's a bit ridiculous.
I think 2.5 will be more familiar for us amateurs.