Who has tried Loki N80?

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Sad thing is I still don't have my original question answered. Mocker says that H3N is fastest, N80 is in between, and Big Dipper is slowest.

That is complete nonsense in my opinion. H3N cannot possibly be faster than Big Dipper. So I still don't know where N80 stands.

Well... I might be wrong terms of physics, but in terms of programming or math speed is function of player input. So depending on how you hit you might get different results...

I.e. Frank X might hit faster balls with rubber Y and Goerge A might hit faster balls with rubber B due to differences in technique.

I.e. some rubber might be faster with low input and some might be faster with more effort put in.

 
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says toooooo much choice!!
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As Kuba says technique etc is a factor and peoples opinions are personal ones!!Also you would have to have all three rubbers mounted on the same blade type, at the same time, so you can get a direct comparison. BOSS 😎 EJ required!!! With 20+ identical blades and the time to test everything at once, 40 rubbers.!!! And that’s just scratching the surface when you look at what’s available!!All glued identically, tested without booster then with booster!!! Then you get the possibility of exact amounts of booster used being different etc.Also, if you are improving, being coached etc how you struck the ball 2 yrs ago using rubber ‘a’ is going to be different than how you strike the ball with rubber ‘b’ 2 yrs later!!! Then you are also relying on your memory !!!To know how cold or warm the water is, you have to dip a toe!! So unless you buy and try, then and only then will you know how it plays and feels!!! 😃
 
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Yes, to perfectly scientific, you would need to test with all different techniques and exact same blade setup to know the precise results.

However, as to my prior analogy, you don't need to test whether a Prius is faster than a Ferrari. It's just obvious.

In regards to H3N vs Big Dipper, you don't really need to test the rubbers with the arm swing of Ma Long vs the arm swing of a 4-year old toddler. But just using a reasonable arm swing, the average practice loop of a 1600 USATT player, which rubber is faster? Under a reasonable average swing of a average player, I'm very very certain that Big Dipper is ALOT faster than H3N. I would be willing to bet my car on this.

Would H3N be faster in the hands of Ma Long? Well with the denser sponge, yes maybe it tops out higher. But I'm just asking for a reasonable comparison for a reasonable player. But using those same extremes, H3N would also be faster than Tenergy in the hands of Ma Long. But nobody goes around reviewing Tenergy saying "it is clearly slower than H3N".
 
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Yes, to perfectly scientific, you would need to test with all different techniques and exact same blade setup to know the precise results.

However, as to my prior analogy, you don't need to test whether a Prius is faster than a Ferrari. It's just obvious.

In regards to H3N vs Big Dipper, you don't really need to test the rubbers with the arm swing of Ma Long vs the arm swing of a 4-year old toddler. But just using a reasonable arm swing, the average practice loop of a 1600 USATT player, which rubber is faster? Under a reasonable average swing of a average player, I'm very very certain that Big Dipper is ALOT faster than H3N. I would be willing to bet my car on this.

Would H3N be faster in the hands of Ma Long? Well with the denser sponge, yes maybe it tops out higher. But I'm just asking for a reasonable comparison for a reasonable player. But using those same extremes, H3N would also be faster than Tenergy in the hands of Ma Long. But nobody goes around reviewing Tenergy saying "it is clearly slower than H3N".

So I would have to bet my Lamborghini against your ......................what ??? 😁
But really, speed of an individual unit is so irrelevant to the game of ping pong it is nearly futile to talk about it.
One day , just when you think you have found your perfect rubber / blade combo there will be an old person
coming to the club and will beat you using a 50 year old 3 layer paddle with rock-hard pimples out. Then what ??? 😂😂🤣

 
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Yes, to perfectly scientific, you would need to test with all different techniques and exact same blade setup to know the precise results.

However, as to my prior analogy, you don't need to test whether a Prius is faster than a Ferrari. It's just obvious.

In regards to H3N vs Big Dipper, you don't really need to test the rubbers with the arm swing of Ma Long vs the arm swing of a 4-year old toddler. But just using a reasonable arm swing, the average practice loop of a 1600 USATT player, which rubber is faster? Under a reasonable average swing of a average player, I'm very very certain that Big Dipper is ALOT faster than H3N. I would be willing to bet my car on this.

Would H3N be faster in the hands of Ma Long? Well with the denser sponge, yes maybe it tops out higher. But I'm just asking for a reasonable comparison for a reasonable player. But using those same extremes, H3N would also be faster than Tenergy in the hands of Ma Long. But nobody goes around reviewing Tenergy saying "it is clearly slower than H3N".

Your analogy is more rooted in what I am saying than you might think. Have you actually ever driven any reasonable, 400hp+ sports car? They are so hard to drive in normal traffic because they just want to go bonkers every time you lick the gas pedal.

So in actual use, for a moderate driver, on a moderate conditions prius might be actually faster because that driver will actually be able to have confidence to drive it fast...

Going back to TT world. The rubber is going to be faster whose owner will have more confidence. I've had Dipper and H3N are so close to each other so I would not be even considering the difference. When comparing across my usage, bigger difference had launch I had before the training and how many hours have passed since said launch than the speed difference between those two...

The difference is so close that when actually playing the brain adjusted fast enough so the difference was hard to feel.

Also the thing that should be considered is the actual (not advertised) hardness of rubbers you played. Harder sponge = more energy can be stored = moar speed.

The actual rubber hardness often differs from the advertised one. Tibhar even advertises the spread if i remember correctly... So 40dg shore a H3n might not be 40dg shore a h3n, especially commercial version...

 
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See, you're going back against what you just said earlier. Now you are introducing extra variables, such as confidence. Yes, if you are very confident in your rubber, you can swing harder, and it will be faster for you.

But that's not what I'm talking about. All else equal, using the same swing speed, the average looping speed of a 1600 player, which rubber produces a faster shot? For the average player, and for most players, Big Dipper is much faster and more similar to a tensor rubber than H3N. Unless you are a 2500 player who can easily top out the rubber, Big Dipper is a lot faster than H3N.

Maybe Mocker is a really advanced player, 2400 and above, and maybe he swings hard very naturally and tops out H3N with each shot and it feels faster to him than BD. However, like I said, nobody goes around saying "H3N is so much faster than Tenergy". The speed of the rubber should be judged on the average shot, not assuming its in the hands of Ma Long.
 
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See, you're going back against what you just said earlier. Now you are introducing extra variables, such as confidence. Yes, if you are very confident in your rubber, you can swing harder, and it will be faster for you.

But that's not what I'm talking about. All else equal, using the same swing speed, the average looping speed of a 1600 player, which rubber produces a faster shot? For the average player, and for most players, Big Dipper is much faster and more similar to a tensor rubber than H3N. Unless you are a 2500 player who can easily top out the rubber, Big Dipper is a lot faster than H3N.

Maybe Mocker is a really advanced player, 2400 and above, and maybe he swings hard very naturally and tops out H3N with each shot and it feels faster to him than BD. However, like I said, nobody goes around saying "H3N is so much faster than Tenergy". The speed of the rubber should be judged on the average shot, not assuming its in the hands of Ma Lon,

The reason why this sounds all so wrong to me is the fact that an old cripple like myself, with arthritic pains in the shoulder
can still do some short swing FH shots that create speeds difficult even to most my opposition. That is using commercial H3 or Neo.
And i do not even have to work hard doing this.
Not only blades have a sweet spot, rubbers, while not actually having a spot, have their own characteristic """sweetnes"""
One does not have to hammer the shit out of it to create a good speed - one has to feel what the rubber can give then spend
weeks and months adjusting ones technique to it.

 
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I don't know, there's a reason CNT players use 3 or 4 layers of booster on H3N.

I have used several sheets of H3N before, and they are always dead slow out of the package.
 
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CNT Players ?????
Is this short
for Chinese National Team player ??

yes.

However, I have noticed that sometimes a unboosted H3 can be very hard and fast if the tackiness has worn off and its on a hard blade. Sometimes those don't feel so slow.

But I tried another guy's racket last week with boosted H3N on Viscaria, and it felt really slow. I think he said he used Falco booster, so I think it was a lot weaker as a booster.

 
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The reason why this sounds all so wrong to me is the fact that an old cripple like myself, with arthritic pains in the shoulder
can still do some short swing FH shots that create speeds difficult even to most my opposition. That is using commercial H3 or Neo.
And i do not even have to work hard doing this.
Not only blades have a sweet spot, rubbers, while not actually having a spot, have their own characteristic """sweetnes"""
One does not have to hammer the shit out of it to create a good speed - one has to feel what the rubber can give then spend
weeks and months adjusting ones technique to it.

You must be at least top 100 player if you can make unboosted commercial h3neo to be fast

 
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That's why for me, when somebody tells me that H3 is faster than BD, I feel like I'm in the land of loopy loop. H3 is not faster than BD, and BD is not faster than Tenergy.

So the original question is actually about Loki N80, but I'm completely thrown off by some of the ratings in this thread.
 
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See, you're going back against what you just said earlier. Now you are introducing extra variables, such as confidence. Yes, if you are very confident in your rubber, you can swing harder, and it will be faster for you.

But that's not what I'm talking about. All else equal, using the same swing speed, the average looping speed of a 1600 player, which rubber produces a faster shot? For the average player, and for most players, Big Dipper is much faster and more similar to a tensor rubber than H3N. Unless you are a 2500 player who can easily top out the rubber, Big Dipper is a lot faster than H3N.

Maybe Mocker is a really advanced player, 2400 and above, and maybe he swings hard very naturally and tops out H3N with each shot and it feels faster to him than BD. However, like I said, nobody goes around saying "H3N is so much faster than Tenergy". The speed of the rubber should be judged on the average shot, not assuming its in the hands of Ma Long.

No sorry, I'm not that advanced, but I'm quite average, playing in a mid-division series in Sweden. The biggest question, I think, is how you use the rubber and on what kind of blade you have glued it. I can say that i don't usually do "average" shots. Most players, even using long pips, usually have huge problems returning my loops. My biggest problem is that I'm not that good that I normally place 10 loops on the table in one rally. It usually ends after 3-5 loops, but I'm working on this. :)

What I have experienced is that a harder sponge/top sheet requires a stiffer blade to function in some sort of synergy. A harder setup benefits of working harder, faster and striking the ball quite early, putting your opponent under lack of time.

A softer setup like H3N 39deg or BD 38deg works quite fine with a more normal allround wooden blade as well, and is easier to use in a more "European" way to play with more dwell, and you don't need the greater force to perform a more controlled attacking game. And it's not that important to work as hard and fast as with a harder setup.

When playing like me, striking/brushing quite hard, I feel I make use of the harder sponge on my forehand and it gives me more direct feedback. I benefit more from the harder sponge. Everyone has a different way of playing, and surely needs to test different equipment to find their way to the perfect match, but regarding the N80, BD and H3N I don't need to adjust almost anything when changing between these rubbers on my forehand side. These are quite similar, and it also comes down very much do what blade you use, and how that blade works with the rubber used.

The N80 isn't much better or worse than BD or H3N, but it's a little bit different. It's just different shades of the same color, to be poetic :)

Sorry I can't be more specific...

 
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Well, I don't consider Big Dipper to be similar to H3 in any way. So, we're just not even on the same page.

Tenergy and G1 are closer to each other than BD and H3 are to each other. BD is probably closer to Tenergy than it is to H3.
 
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So, I have used N80, BD and H3 / H3 Neo (in various types)
when I used BD it was when I returned to TT, so around 3 yrs ago, memory is fuzzy, as i didn’t use it much, can’t remember the sponge hardness etc and now I strike the ball (hopefully with better technique!!!) has changed.
Looking back, BD felt softer, was possibly faster than both N80 and H3Neo, by how much I’m not sure!!
N80 would sit in between H3Neo and BD for speed, personally I think N80 had better spin than BD and very slightly less spin than H3Neo (all un-boosted)
As I said previously it can be difficult to remember things from 3 yrs ago with absolute clarity!!!
 
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Can you hear your blade click (my blades sound like cracking glass when a proper power loop was executed)? If not and you are looking for speed you might want to use softer rubber or work on your power transfer technique.

I don't know how much you pay for big dipper and h3n but Loki N80 is 3 times in price here in Poland. So... If the rubbers are used as comparison benchmark cost pennies you might want to use those.


--- OFF topic
Confidence is not extra variable it is bound to everything else.

My point is. The speed you impart on the ball is proportional to what you put in. And that depends on how confident you are (if you are holding back because you are afraid ball will go out you loose power), your stroke properties, on whether you are already in the good position to perform the top spin.

I might sound salty after being repeatedly beaten by kids with Tibhar Lebesson and Curious with EL-P + MX-P or the MX-P * 2 repeatedly. I have played with many many sheets of MX-P which is a benchmark of ESN speed I think. The rubber is very fast, and despite that I can create faster balls... Do my legs, lower back, upper back, chest muscles shoulder muscles, wrist tendons, shin muscles, and bunch of other muscles and tendons on the way burn the same day as training? Yup. So my take is, if the rubber is the same type (hard tacky rubber, that has an actual tackiness which my BD, Jupiter 2, Battle 2, Xiom Vega China, and Hurricane 3) and has the same hardness I can adjust without any issues with first ~300 balls (like 7 minutes of training at most?) and after the adjustment I cannot even feel speed difference :) The only outlier being Xiom Vega China, this rubber had a very noticeably threshold after which the ball suddenly speed up. If you want something actually faster than H3N that might be a solution.
 
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So, I have used N80, BD and H3 / H3 Neo (in various types)
when I used BD it was when I returned to TT, so around 3 yrs ago, memory is fuzzy, as i didn’t use it much, can’t remember the sponge hardness etc and now I strike the ball (hopefully with better technique!!!) has changed.
Looking back, BD felt softer, was possibly faster than both N80 and H3Neo, by how much I’m not sure!!
N80 would sit in between H3Neo and BD for speed, personally I think N80 had better spin than BD and very slightly less spin than H3Neo (all un-boosted)
As I said previously it can be difficult to remember things from 3 yrs ago with absolute clarity!!!

Yes, this certainly sounds reasonable. Maybe if you have a chance, try bd again. I think you will find the speed is night and day from h3.

Its certainly reasonable that n80 is faster than h3 but slower than bd.

 
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Although i am not quite sure why we are comparing non boosted H3 to anything (H3 unboosted is not a rubber for anyone who has an attacking playstyle and is capable of looping and topspinning propperly), but BD just not comparable to H3 unboosted^^
Some amateurs say BD is close to H3 boosted but in my experience BD lacks the spin and the same arc of H3.

But guys srsly, if are not capable of giving average parameters, then at least try it with different kind of shots or dont do it at all. With no technique in the world you are capable of shooting a ball faster with an unboosted H3 than with a BD - period.

Sadly i havent tested the N80. The reason for that was, that is has the same hardness than the GTX Pro and the sponge seems to be pretty much the same so i didnt expect much difference here.

Actually the only rubber i am still curious about is the T3. The sponge has way bigger pores and is softer too. The only thing that bothers me here is the lower spin rating by Loki itself. If the spin level is srsly below the GTX Pro then this is by far not a good rubber.
 
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