Xiom Ice Cream blades, AZX Review

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Has anyone heard anything about Azxi Pro?
I had the chance to hold a Xiom’s sample at a local store a few months ago and now they told me Axzi Pro is now offically released. I’m waiting for one with the right weight for me (86-88gr)
I’ve been using Azxi for 2 years and the fact that an upgrade version is out gives me chills 🥶
 

I have seen an Instagram post about it but no pictures, if you have any I would be most grateful

I have both the pro and orange ice cream blades. Only the alc.material is different from the regular blades. The pro versions are from their stocks for their pro sponsored players so the quality is higher.

 
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Recently I picked up the Joola Trinity blade I have and it is a really fantastic blade. And I got thinking: I have an Ice Cream AZX that I used during most of 2019 and in hindsight I achieved my biggest feats with it. I started using it right from the beginning of my transtion to Chinese like rubbers.
Initially I used it with a Big Dipper + Haifu Shark I think. It was really solid until my Haifu Shark got bubbled up and I changed it to a H3-50 35deg. That 3-50 was also excellent with it. Since I liked it so much I changed the Big Dipper to a 3-50 on FH too and I remember in the whole 2019 spring season I didn't lose a single match until I had a wrist injury, and I played like that and even like that I only lost 1 match because of that and because we played on the opponents turf and they used some weird ball. Then I changed the 3-50 on FH on to a 729 Battle 2 provincial version. Also a very good combo with this blade. So like Konrad Bak mentioned before it really paris great with sticky rubbers on the ALC side.
Since then I used a few blades, more than I care to admit and used D09c, Tibhar K2, H8-80, H3 BS, H3 orange, 729 B2 golden sponge. Tried most on Joola Trinity blade too and some others but Trinity is also very good with these sticky rubbers but man the AZX is a killer.

Okay let's step back a bit. My Ice Cream AZX is from a very early production unit, not sure if all of them have jointless kiri core, Xiom is not advertising it, but their higher end blades seem to have it.(same with Trinity)
My blade is at 90g dead on. Construction quality I would argue is even better than Butterfly. That South Korean factory makes excellent quality blades judging from the 2 that I own.
My only gripe is the handle, it is thin for me. So what I did is have some kinesio tape and I just stuck on a layer of that on the handle, now it is great. (protip: you can play with the weight and balance with this, and if you stretch the kinesio tape it will add less weight than if you don't stretch it)

So I glued on the blade 2 sheets of H8-80 since I find it quite compareble to D09c which I was mainly using on my FH. On the FH side (ALC) I had a black 38deg H-80, on ZLC side a red 37deg H8-80.
FH side was freaking insanely good. I actually find the H8-80 in many regards superior to D09c. For blocking, over tha table flat hitting, touch play it is just so much better. Where D09c usually wins is that it has more speed and catapult effect. But this blade is very fast in fact.
AZX measures around 1550hz on the frequency test. A normal Viscaria is around 1420-1450hz, Joola Trinity around 1400hz, Innerforce ZLC 1350hz, Mizutani SZLC 1500-1550hz... So you can imagine it is a very fast blade at 1550hz.
So the H8-80 on forehand felt like gold. Great speed, obviously great spin, and high and fast arc, I don't think I ever seen this crazy fast arc anywhere else before. Blocking was fast, controlled and so stable, much more stable than with Dignics 09c. I'm so impressed and this is not even the most crazy stuff.
Even the lowest and meanest backspin could be loop killed. I am completely impressed by this.

BH side with the H8-80 37 deg was just fine. It didn't click like the forehand, not at all. Okay I've been lately using Rozena on the BH and the H8-80 is quite different but I can interchange between D64 and H3N on BH very comfortably. H8-80 on BH has very high block angle, it is super fast on high speed balls, and quite dead when you want to open up. I'm sure I could adjust to it and this deadness has several advantages, but I feel a H3N would be even better as it further exaggerates both the deadness and the speed. But not all is bad and mediocore with it, chiquita was quite stable, just a push receive was very spinny and controlled, if you set your mind to a spinny open up to pivot FH finish is really nice. And loop killing on BH is also quite possible but you need to be there. I think it could work out quite well with practice and adjustment. It just didn't click with me for the first time. My other shortcoming was the 5th ball or 3rd ball finishing potential on BH. So if I did a spinny open up and it came back rather hight, if I didn't commit fully to the pivot FH kill and wanted to do the moneyshot on BH it was a bit of a gamble. It lacked the finishing potential or straight off missed. Please note these are my inner feelings and these are super subjective. I played like 45 minutes of warm up yesterday and 2 hours of matches and I destroyed 4 of my teammates uttery several times even like this. But I feel the moneyshot power is lacking on BH.
I am reporting this because if you are having a tight match, or you feel pressured or even scared a bit even if you can normally do a full commiting shot from BH but the pressure and stress can get to you. It can get to me too and if it's so much that you don't even dare to commit to a full powerful swing but shake and chicken out you are a goner...
So I am not goint to stick with H8-80 on BH, I am going to change it to the Double Fish Qiji "spin" rubber which if you want to know more you can search on this forum. The thread name is Double Fish Quji review or something misspelled but I wrote my honest opinion of that rubber. My thinking is that rubber will be more suited on this blade than H8-80. I will keep updating this thread on my findings, I also have Rozena, MX-P, and D64 lined up + the old trusted H3-50 or even H3N 37 deg national. If the Double Fish Qiji doesn't work out I will go to MX-P next and honestly I have some ideas that I do not have the material for. I am insanely interested in Mizuno Q Quality for BH. I really hope TT11 will carry it soon so I can buy it. If they don't I actually don't mind buying the Q4 or Q5 for my BH. The Mizuno Q series are such a polite rubbers with better controll than Rozena that I am kinda rooting for that all other rubbers fail and I can try them. They are not cheap tho, so my team's wallet is rooting for some chinese rubber or Rozena :) . I also really adore Rozena for BH. I think it is not fluke that Zhu Yuling used it extremely sucessfully on her backhand during her "prime". From my bottom of my heart I wish her the best of luck in her fight for recovery, stay strong Sichuan girl.

I apologise for not actually talking about the blade that much but about the rubbers used with it. I believe the racket is a combination of the baseplate (blade), glue, and the rubber (with or w/o sponge). So for me it is very difficult to talk about just the blade itself. It is a combination of several characteristics.
However the Xiom Ice Cream AZX is a very solid blade with a basically Viscaria/Zhang Jike SZLC/Lin-Jun-Yu SZLC speed target, or attributes in mind that might surpass the Butterfly counterparts. In fact I have huge issues with recently manufactured Butterfly blades with ALC, ZLC, SZLC: namely on flat hits they make a weird sound and totally drop the ball, no it's not the rubber, it is coming from the blade. The Xiom AZX doesn't do this so in this regards it is superiour, but so are man Chinese clones.

I will be back with updates.
 
says Or is it more legit...
says Or is it more legit...
Member
Sep 2019
264
46
492
Recently I picked up the Joola Trinity blade I have and it is a really fantastic blade. And I got thinking: I have an Ice Cream AZX that I used during most of 2019 and in hindsight I achieved my biggest feats with it. I started using it right from the beginning of my transtion to Chinese like rubbers.
Initially I used it with a Big Dipper + Haifu Shark I think. It was really solid until my Haifu Shark got bubbled up and I changed it to a H3-50 35deg. That 3-50 was also excellent with it. Since I liked it so much I changed the Big Dipper to a 3-50 on FH too and I remember in the whole 2019 spring season I didn't lose a single match until I had a wrist injury, and I played like that and even like that I only lost 1 match because of that and because we played on the opponents turf and they used some weird ball. Then I changed the 3-50 on FH on to a 729 Battle 2 provincial version. Also a very good combo with this blade. So like Konrad Bak mentioned before it really paris great with sticky rubbers on the ALC side.
Since then I used a few blades, more than I care to admit and used D09c, Tibhar K2, H8-80, H3 BS, H3 orange, 729 B2 golden sponge. Tried most on Joola Trinity blade too and some others but Trinity is also very good with these sticky rubbers but man the AZX is a killer.

Okay let's step back a bit. My Ice Cream AZX is from a very early production unit, not sure if all of them have jointless kiri core, Xiom is not advertising it, but their higher end blades seem to have it.(same with Trinity)
My blade is at 90g dead on. Construction quality I would argue is even better than Butterfly. That South Korean factory makes excellent quality blades judging from the 2 that I own.
My only gripe is the handle, it is thin for me. So what I did is have some kinesio tape and I just stuck on a layer of that on the handle, now it is great. (protip: you can play with the weight and balance with this, and if you stretch the kinesio tape it will add less weight than if you don't stretch it)

So I glued on the blade 2 sheets of H8-80 since I find it quite compareble to D09c which I was mainly using on my FH. On the FH side (ALC) I had a black 38deg H-80, on ZLC side a red 37deg H8-80.
FH side was freaking insanely good. I actually find the H8-80 in many regards superior to D09c. For blocking, over tha table flat hitting, touch play it is just so much better. Where D09c usually wins is that it has more speed and catapult effect. But this blade is very fast in fact.
AZX measures around 1550hz on the frequency test. A normal Viscaria is around 1420-1450hz, Joola Trinity around 1400hz, Innerforce ZLC 1350hz, Mizutani SZLC 1500-1550hz... So you can imagine it is a very fast blade at 1550hz.
So the H8-80 on forehand felt like gold. Great speed, obviously great spin, and high and fast arc, I don't think I ever seen this crazy fast arc anywhere else before. Blocking was fast, controlled and so stable, much more stable than with Dignics 09c. I'm so impressed and this is not even the most crazy stuff.
Even the lowest and meanest backspin could be loop killed. I am completely impressed by this.

BH side with the H8-80 37 deg was just fine. It didn't click like the forehand, not at all. Okay I've been lately using Rozena on the BH and the H8-80 is quite different but I can interchange between D64 and H3N on BH very comfortably. H8-80 on BH has very high block angle, it is super fast on high speed balls, and quite dead when you want to open up. I'm sure I could adjust to it and this deadness has several advantages, but I feel a H3N would be even better as it further exaggerates both the deadness and the speed. But not all is bad and mediocore with it, chiquita was quite stable, just a push receive was very spinny and controlled, if you set your mind to a spinny open up to pivot FH finish is really nice. And loop killing on BH is also quite possible but you need to be there. I think it could work out quite well with practice and adjustment. It just didn't click with me for the first time. My other shortcoming was the 5th ball or 3rd ball finishing potential on BH. So if I did a spinny open up and it came back rather hight, if I didn't commit fully to the pivot FH kill and wanted to do the moneyshot on BH it was a bit of a gamble. It lacked the finishing potential or straight off missed. Please note these are my inner feelings and these are super subjective. I played like 45 minutes of warm up yesterday and 2 hours of matches and I destroyed 4 of my teammates uttery several times even like this. But I feel the moneyshot power is lacking on BH.
I am reporting this because if you are having a tight match, or you feel pressured or even scared a bit even if you can normally do a full commiting shot from BH but the pressure and stress can get to you. It can get to me too and if it's so much that you don't even dare to commit to a full powerful swing but shake and chicken out you are a goner...
So I am not goint to stick with H8-80 on BH, I am going to change it to the Double Fish Qiji "spin" rubber which if you want to know more you can search on this forum. The thread name is Double Fish Quji review or something misspelled but I wrote my honest opinion of that rubber. My thinking is that rubber will be more suited on this blade than H8-80. I will keep updating this thread on my findings, I also have Rozena, MX-P, and D64 lined up + the old trusted H3-50 or even H3N 37 deg national. If the Double Fish Qiji doesn't work out I will go to MX-P next and honestly I have some ideas that I do not have the material for. I am insanely interested in Mizuno Q Quality for BH. I really hope TT11 will carry it soon so I can buy it. If they don't I actually don't mind buying the Q4 or Q5 for my BH. The Mizuno Q series are such a polite rubbers with better controll than Rozena that I am kinda rooting for that all other rubbers fail and I can try them. They are not cheap tho, so my team's wallet is rooting for some chinese rubber or Rozena :) . I also really adore Rozena for BH. I think it is not fluke that Zhu Yuling used it extremely sucessfully on her backhand during her "prime". From my bottom of my heart I wish her the best of luck in her fight for recovery, stay strong Sichuan girl.

I apologise for not actually talking about the blade that much but about the rubbers used with it. I believe the racket is a combination of the baseplate (blade), glue, and the rubber (with or w/o sponge). So for me it is very difficult to talk about just the blade itself. It is a combination of several characteristics.
However the Xiom Ice Cream AZX is a very solid blade with a basically Viscaria/Zhang Jike SZLC/Lin-Jun-Yu SZLC speed target, or attributes in mind that might surpass the Butterfly counterparts. In fact I have huge issues with recently manufactured Butterfly blades with ALC, ZLC, SZLC: namely on flat hits they make a weird sound and totally drop the ball, no it's not the rubber, it is coming from the blade. The Xiom AZX doesn't do this so in this regards it is superiour, but so are man Chinese clones.

I will be back with updates.

Do you think Xiom blades are something like value for money compare to BTY and other brands by the way? I do see them that way. Even their premium blades due to being more or less lower in cost than that of BTY, and so on.

 
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Do you think Xiom blades are something like value for money compare to BTY and other brands by the way? I do see them that way. Even their premium blades due to being more or less lower in cost than that of BTY, and so on.

Well not really value for money, since they are quite expensive too. The IC AZX is quite well priced, but for example the Trinity from Joola is way too expensive at around 250EUR. That I would say is more expensive than BTY. Again the AZXi seems too pricey and so are the Calderano blades, they are on BTY levels of expensive.

 
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