One Standard For Plastic Balls

Table tennis has entered its new phase, the plastic ball. The question is...Is it time to create a standard and if so, what would be the standard for these plastic balls? I have played with various brands, some are softer while others are harder. Some are seamless and some are not. Some use this kind of plastic material where others use different plastic material.

Without a standard, the game of table tennis has become more challenging. For example, I generally play with Butterfly, Joola Nittaku SHA, Nittaku Premium, Yasaka, and some other brands from China. Each of these balls play differently. There is a huge difference between Nittaku SHA, and Nittaku Premium. For one, the colors are different. SHA is a brighter white, easier to see in my opinion, while Nittaku Premium is a darker white, a little harder to see. Nittaku SHA is softer, while the Premium has a hard shell.

When it comes to being durable, I find that the seamless balls which have the harder shell more durable. The Butterfly plastic balls except for G, which I have tried yet, break easier so does Nittaku's SHA. They have one major thing in common, these are the softer balls. So far I like playing more with the softer balls despite their durability problems. The harder balls, seem slower to me, and harder to see than the brighter softer balls but in a way, I like playing with the seamless harder balls too, but if I had the choice, right now I would choose, the softer. Which would you pick and do you think your preference should be in the one standard for all plastic balls?

AndySmith said:

Yes, incredibly frustrating. They're so different that they favor different styles, so we have different teams using different balls because they want to use the ones which suit them. Very messy.

As things stand anyone who uses chinese seamed balls is crazy. Very high breakage rate and inconsistent bounce (maybe things have improved in recent batches?). Nittaku Premium and Butterfly G40+ are very expensive. So the seamless ball is winning out locally at present, and although I prefer the Premium myself I can totally see why most teams are using seamless.

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Thanks for your response...I understand your frustration. I played against some who will only use certain plastic balls. The original promise was, plastic balls would be produced cheaper than the old non-plastic balls. But since there is so much experimentation going on, because there is no one suitable standard yet, they charge more for them.