Victas V > 20 Double Extra Review

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Hi all,

today I received my sheet of V > 20 double extra from Japan, and will be reviewing it soon. I've most recently been using Fastarc G-1, however I wanted something slightly harder and maybe a bit faster, and I was interested in this rubber's ability to excel in countering.

The sheet I purchased was 2.0, and weighed 69g (nice) uncut. Similar appearance and odor to the other Victas rubbers I've tried, such as V > 15 Extra and V > 01 Stiff.

I hope to play again on Saturday and will give my first impressions then.


 
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So I finally got to hit with the rubber today and I was very pleased with first impressions. It's important to note that the stated hardness (52.5) doesn't come through when hitting the ball. This has been something I've read in many Japanese reviews of the rubber, but in practice, while the sponge is clearly firmer than Fastarc G-1 (my last rubber used, listed at 47.5), you don't really "feel" that when hitting.

As I expected, this rubber truly excels at hitting through other peoples spins, especially heavy opening loops. You almost don't even have to think about what your opponent is doing; the rubber eliminates much of the guess work needed with other rubbers to properly counter.

Although Victas markets this as a rubber that should give people confidence and security in their shots (i.e. mid-level players), the top end speed and spin that higher level players are capable of generating can be seen here. I'm not sure if the spin at the highest end is as high as Fastarc G-1, but it's very close. In addition to that, the added speed made my shots much deadlier in play, and often times my opponents were caught off guard by the quality of my loops.

Where this rubber truly shines in addition to countering as mentioned above, is smashing. The extra firm sponge makes smashing a breeze. The way I play is to usually attack aggressively with my long pips and to put away any mistakes my opponents make, so V > 20 fits that very, very well.

I don't have a lot to say on the short game and opening except that, like most other modern tenors, it's very good and doesn't seem to be affected by spin much at all. The denser, harder sponge helps me control the short game well (which is by far the weakest part of my game).

Not much to write about serves, other than that generating heavy spin is quite easy, and I drew a lot of service errors today from my opponents (and one very high level player I played seemed really perplexed, which also surprised me).

This was only my first day with the rubber, and for only two hours at that, so I'll have to see how the rubber holds up over time, including topsheet degradation, and how the sponge feels over time. Please feel free to ask me any other questions you have.

 
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What is the meaning of Victas' naming convention? 01, 07, 15, 20. What do those numbers mean?

This obviously isn't true for all the rubbers, but V > 15 (and the upcoming V > 22) correspond to the release years (i.e. V > 15 came out in 2015, V > 22 is coming out this fall, and is a successor to V > 15.

 
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Thanks for the review. I would like to know if the top sheet feels like, hard or soft.... Does the rubber have the typical smell of a booster? Is it an ESN made?
THanks

I haven't played with V > 15 extra in a while, but the overall appearance and smell of V > 20 is similar to that. It is made in Germany so I expect it to be an ESN like the rest.

 
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Hi all,

today I received my sheet of V > 20 double extra from Japan, and will be reviewing it soon. I've most recently been using Fastarc G-1, however I wanted something slightly harder and maybe a bit faster, and I was interested in this rubber's ability to excel in countering.

The sheet I purchased was 2.0, and weighed 69g (nice) uncut. Similar appearance and odor to the other Victas rubbers I've tried, such as V > 15 Extra and V > 01 Stiff.

I hope to play again on Saturday and will give my first impressions then.


Thanks Peter for the review. It looks impressive. Victas has made some descent rubbers lately. It says V>20 uses Chinese rubber geometry, does it mean the topsheet has short pimple to improve short game?

Is it completely non tacky?

I played with Victas TDE, loved the blue sponge and plays just like National H3. However the tack only last for 3 weeks.

 
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Thanks Peter for the review. It looks impressive. Victas has made some descent rubbers lately. It says V>20 uses Chinese rubber geometry, does it mean the topsheet has short pimple to improve short game?

Is it completely non tacky?

I played with Victas TDE, loved the blue sponge and plays just like National H3. However the tack only last for 3 weeks.

TDE tackiness lasts forever for me, even better than hurricane. Do you use plastic protection sheets?

 
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Thanks Peter for the review. It looks impressive. Victas has made some descent rubbers lately. It says V>20 uses Chinese rubber geometry, does it mean the topsheet has short pimple to improve short game?

Is it completely non tacky?

I played with Victas TDE, loved the blue sponge and plays just like National H3. However the tack only last for 3 weeks.

Well the sponge is quite hard so that alone would probably lead to a strong short game. Victas describes this as a high tension rubber, however it's far more linear than V > 15 is. If you have proper technique it's easy to generate a lot of power, but it isn't that obvious power you see with a lot of tensors. I'd also note that, despite having reglued this twice now, the rubber has barely shrunk at all (compare that to V > 15 Extra which shrinks like crazy). And yes the rubber is completely non-tacky. Victas Triple built on the old TSP Triple series which were all tacky rubbers with various sponge hardnesses (Power > Speed > Spin).

An addendum to my original review: at the time I had been gluing with tear mender to save money, however during the last tournament I played my rubber came in contact with the table on a push and lifted the rubber off the blade a bit. Needless to say, the rest of the tournament didn't go so well and it negatively colored my perception of the rubber. I decided to bite the bullet and go back to real table tennis glue, in this case Butterfly Free Chack Pro II. This has made a night and day difference in the rubbers performance. What I thought was a great rubber to begin with is now phenomenal, and quite likely the best rubber I have ever used. I can't genuinely find any weakness with this rubber, and I'd be hard pressed to use any other rubber on the market today.

To somehow make a rubber that has this much control, white not sacrificing speed or spin is a remarkable achievement by Victas. Some players may not like the lack of obvious catapult, but if you have a fast(er) blade and fundamentally sound technique, it's quite easy to generate enough speed to finish off points.

Recently Goblins TV, a popular youtube channel in Japan, posted their rubber rankings for most popular rubbers. Their S-ranked rubber list included:

- R48, R53
- Dignics 05, 80, 09c
- Tenergy 05, 80
- Mizuno Q5
- Stiga Platnum XH
- V > 20 Double Extra

Oh yeah, and V > 20 is cheaper than *all* of these other rubbers. A must try rubber, imo.

 
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This rubber is available now on tabletennis11 for a reasonable price, especially for a new release.
 
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I tried V>20 on a somewhat flexy blade - MAX sheets on the slightly oversized DHS TG7 SP (weight: 93.2g - ball bounce frequency: 1205 Hz - structure: Koto outer | Ayous | Koto | Ayous core), which I had in spare from months ago for any special rubber I encounter later.
It started out as my heaviest racket when I freshly assembled it (201.2g) a month ago, but already lost about 2g overall. I used double edge tapes aligned with the very edge of the rubber topsheet on each side to protect more against tear, so when I deduct that from day 0 weight, I'd say the MAX sheets weighed about 52.7g per side on my blade.
I could hit well-spun and fast balls with surprisingly good precision even with this flexy blade - normally I am used to stiffer blades. I think this could be mainly because the rubber topsheet is not particularly soft, but softer than other topsheets usually paired with this hard sponge, and the sponge is also very well-behaving. I also use Ventus Extra on a stiffer blade, and I can say, that V>20 has a very high top speed as well (almost certainly more than VE). So generally I am very pleased with the rubber's performance, but there were a few (really just a few) occasions when I tried to pull a very strong spinny receive, and somehow I couldn't engage the rubber, there was barely a contact, and the ball just dropped - this might be also because of the softer-than-expected topsheet. I don't have much feedback on topsheet longevity, but it looks a bit concerning regarding possible damages - otherwise, the grip works very well in most situations.
 
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How are the rubbers on the forehand and backhand? I'm considering upgrading this from Fastarc G-1 and/or Xiom Vega Euro with this and/or V>15 Extra.
I think it's really well suited to either. Don't be put off by the hardness. It does not feel anything close to 52.5 like you might suspect. I switched from Fastarc G-1 myself and can't imagine going back (unless I could get a hold of Fastarc G-1 50, but that's only sold in Korea).
 
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@Peter93
Is your rubber still lasting? I have received mine in June and played with it for about 40 hours and after a intensive training week with higher temperature and moisture, mine is dead. The grip of the rubber is almost completely gone and the sponge has dead areas (in the main hitting zone). I have never had this with any of the ESN rubbers I owned (XIOM Omega Asia, Tibhar MX-D, Joola Rhyzen ZGR etc) and I have contacted Victas about it. Could be that I have received a bad sample and therefore would be interested on other peoples experience.
I really liked the Victas V>20 (my first Victas rubber) because of the extra spin I could generate with my technique. So without changing anything from my previous rubber (Rhyzen ZGR) I got visibly more spin into my loops (with corresponding blocks going behind the tables from my opponents). After playing with this rubber, my teammates asked, what I have changed, because in many cases they underestimated the spin.
 
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Is your rubber still lasting? I have received mine in June and played with it for about 40 hours and after a intensive training week with higher temperature and moisture, mine is dead. The grip of the rubber is almost completely gone and the sponge has dead areas (in the main hitting zone). I have never had this with any of the ESN rubbers I owned (XIOM Omega Asia, Tibhar MX-D, Joola Rhyzen ZGR etc) and I have contacted Victas about it. Could be that I have received a bad sample and therefore would be interested on other peoples experience.
I really liked the Victas V>20 (my first Victas rubber) because of the extra spin I could generate with my technique. So without changing anything from my previous rubber (Rhyzen ZGR) I got visibly more spin into my loops (with corresponding blocks going behind the tables from my opponents). After playing with this rubber, my teammates asked, what I have changed, because in many cases they underestimated the spin.

Unfortunately, this was the same case for me. I played a tournament today as well as a lot of league on Friday and Saturday and unfortunately there's something just not right. There's simply no consistently at all. Soem shots are great, other shots are terrible. No margin for error otherwise you're hitting the ball 5 feet past the table. Really disappointed it's gotten like this, and not sure where to go after this.

 
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Really disappointed it's gotten like this, and not sure where to go after this.

@Peter93
Thanks for the quick feedback. I can only recommend the Joola Rhyzen ZGR. Everyone is talking about the Dynaryz, but this series of rubber is too much for my skills. The Rhyzen ZGR is working very well for me. Better than Tibhar MX-D or XIOM O7A, which I played earlier.

This week I will receive a DHS Hurricane 9 in blue (I was curious about the color and if it really plays different from H3 Neo), but fear that the DHS is not as linear as the ZGR. The previous trys with DHS (H3, H3 Neo, Skyline etc) rubbers always had this tipping point, where playing passiv was too slow and playing active gave you unpredictable results. I never got used to this. But the new DHS H9 concept seem to be closer to the ESN Hybrids, so I have hope...

I'll let you know, once Victas responded to my questions, but it looks like a design flaw, which would be a pitty, because the initial product performance is really excellent.

 
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