Revspin Rubber Ratings

Take revspin ratings with a massive grain of salt. That's all I can say. They are purely based on user ratings and you could see how this can already be a disaster because the majority of the users don't have adequate trainings and thus aren't equipped to rate anything properly.

Anyone can add reviews and change the ratings that way. That's nothing official or scientific there, always take these infos with a grain of salt.

A manufacturer could send someone their to rate to inspire their sales.

Revspin is completely subjective. Good gauge of opinions, especially with the rubbers that have 100+ reviews, but not comparable at all.

For some objective ratings using controlled parameters, search for "Contra.de" rubber table or something like that. Sorry, I don't speak German.

Better to put a rubber and blade through a dynamic test. Often, this is the way TTD does reviews... it produces more usable information.

Der_Echte said:

Better to put a rubber and blade through a dynamic test. Often, this is the way TTD does reviews... it produces more usable information.

Click to expand...

Relatable, yes. Entertaining, yes. Informative, yes, certainly when Dan's doing them with a pro showing off extreme skills to highlight some or other rubber feat (Can Accuzu doing the short off-the-bounce chop/push, Timo Boll showing topspin variation and power).

Comparable, less so. The dynamic tests Dan did (mostly with Tom), have a core repertoire of flicks, counters, openups, counterspins at the table, in mid-position and away from the table. But they also visit interesting areas now and then, but not always, that I found very insightful. An example would be the focus on the short game in (I believe) the T80 review.

And while these reviews are geared towards the hyperbole, I think observing them while ignoring the commentation somewhat is insightful. In the Rasanter review both Dan and Tom had very positive words, even though they were visibly having a hard time to adapt and the unforced error rate (in the edited footage!) to me seemed rather high, well above their usual standard.

I take away many things from these reviews, but one thing I cannot get from them is to get a view of different rubbers in comparison.

I think you should forget looking at the ratings of the rubbers. Better if you just try it and you will feel the difference after some time. And you will be able to compare the rubbers yourself. Without any rating.

The only way to do a good review is the way Pathfinderpro did his reviews. Pathfinderpro did his best to remove the subjective opinion part of a review.