Haven’t used Loki yet but interested to try.
The thing that attracts me to these cheaper rubbers is there seems to be more control based rubbers.
Any ESN brand product catalog will show the same trend. The expensive rubbers are attack-oriented and the cheaper ones are more controlled.
They're usually marketed to "beginners/learners" though, which puts a lot of people with a bit of an ego off.
The biggest difference between Euro and Chinese control rubbers in general is tack. A slow, controlled Euro rubber is usually slow throughout the power curve and often lacks spin capacity, too.
It's also a matter of what you're comparing. For example, I pay on average €15-20 for a sheet of AK47. That's the price of a Euro learning rubber. But the learning rubber will last twice as long.
Simply put, if you buy cheap-cheap, 99/100 times you're paying for it in one way or another.
Regarding hand feel, the Sanwei blades are just sublime.
Here's the thing: Sanwei makes good stuff and so does Yinhe. It's the grey market on AliExpress that f*cks it up. They sell anything surplus, duds, models not meant for the international market, you name it. There's no transparency or certainty about whether these items came through the front or back door of the factory.
I've had a Sanwei 75 Inner that was just bad and turned out to have a large break in the core. I'm fairly sure that any quality check would have picked that up and also fairly sure that it WAS picked up yet still ended up on AliExpress.
Similarly, people are raving about the Yinhe Pro 01, and rightfully so in my opinion, but there have been multiple reports of smallish sweet spots and inconsistencies, and all of those have come through Ali. "Ronin Team" has done a comparison with a Pro 01 bought through official channels and found the latter to be much better quality.
I can’t see any rubbers on the modern market for a blocker/touch player who likes to chop and flat hit a bit like me. It’s all 100 mph loop rubbers.
This Friendhip focus 3 snipe I have is a marvel in that area and great spin potential too. I’d never have searched it out if I could find something similar in the regular market. Any rubbers you think would fit my style in the major brands? I might try next time round
The *only* one so far that I have found to be cheap, reliable, controlled, and keeping its properties for longer than 2-3 months, is Yinhe Mercury 2. The downside is they can be inconsistent between sheets, especially in hardness and weight. I'm not all too sensitive in those things.
If I had to pick one single rubber, for FH and BH, for the rest of my TT life, this would definitely make the top 3.
Here's a couple of the rubbers I've tried:
Loki Rxton 3 Pro (the blue sponge H3 clone). Took a lot of breaking in before it started producing any quality. Then it produced decent spin for almost a month before dropping off really fast.
Loki Rxton 1. Might have hit a bad batch or something but this one just didn't have any grip. Loki's topsheets on both feel more like plastic, polyurethane. On the Rxton 1 I could make a dent with a finger that stayed for the better part of a minute.
Yinhe Moon 12 Blue M+. I seriously do not understand why people are raving mad about this rubber. The grip was zero, topsheet was slippery and the only way I could extract any spin out of it at all was changing it to my FH side and slamming the ball full force. It was good enough for pushing, but not with much backspin.
729/Friendship SuperFX. I've had this in the past and wanted to try it again. The club puts it on the budget beginner's rackets that you can borrow and one day I didn't have my gear on me but wanted to play and it worked quite OK. The sponge needs breaking in and the topsheet oxidizes really fast (put a plastic cover on!) but it's a well controlled, medium spin rubber which is just a little less lively than Mercury 2. Would not recommend going below max thickness, even 1.8mm is a serious deterioration in the spin capacity and 1.5mm is downright torture.
DHS PF4. The "training rubber" equivalent of H3. Plays 90% like H3 orange sponge. You lose a little bit on everything, weight, spin capacity, power, but it's great. I don't think I could reliably point it out against H3 in a blind test. I would still buy H3 Provincial simply for the more consistent performance.
Palio AK47. Red sponge is too hard and dries out very quickly removing any sliver of performance. Yellow sponge holds up longer but loses firmness well before the topsheet loses grip. You can feel it bottom out even on BH after a while. Blue sponge, as mentioned before, didn't get enough of a chance because it tore apart when I wanted to change it. I feel as if the Blue and Red sponges are the same material, and Yellow is something else. Yellow doesn't get brittle like the other two. Worth a try IMO but
NOT a control rubber. These rubbers are made for catapult action.
Palio HK1997. Yes, I was on the Palio hype train for a little bit. HK1997's yellow sponge feels somewhat resemblant of AK47's. The topsheet feels mighty thin making the "tacky FH" character disappear into the soft, pillowy sponge. I'm still divided on it but have moved on.
Yinhe Mercury 2 (medium). Starts out a little bit on the firm side but after a couple of playing sessions it softens and makes for a controlled rubber with good feeling and decent spin/power capacity. I would advise to get the soft sponge for BH if you play a 5-ply or otherwise thinner/lighter blade. On a 7-ply or anything carbonated the medium sponge is good.
Since these experiments, I will never again buy anything Loki. I hate the plasticky feel of their topsheets, and am no fan of their copying of designs. I do not believe in their ability to produce anything consistent and durable.
I don't think Palio will enter my home again, either, even though I am still curious how AK47 Blue would stack up against something like Xiom Vega Europe. I just personally don't have a use for these rubbers.
Mercury 2 as said I would buy again if I needed a well controlled rubber.
For reference, I play either Hurricane 3, Fastarc G-1 or Tenergy 19 on the FH nowadays (put in order of how much I like playing these) and on my BH I have Fastarc C-1, Mercury 2, Tenergy 05. I am still fairly undecided about my BH rubber.
