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TableTennisDaily's @Dan and @Tom had the fantastic opportunity to review Stiga's latest ITTF Approved Plastic/Poly ball.

There has been a lot of discussion around the world and on the TableTennisDaily website recently in regards to how this new ball will effect table tennis players and the sport. This review tries to cover that looking at a variety of characteristics of the new ball in comparison to the celluloid ball, how it performs and more. The review looks at various techniques and a range of shots used in today's modern game of table tennis

Thanks to STIGA, Daniel Ives, Tom Maynard, and Kingfisher Table Tennis Club in the making of this review.


Written Review:

- The Stiga poly ball has a seam and weighs 2.8g
- The ball seemed very durable and did not break throughout
- Not much sound difference between the poly and celluloid ball
- Timing was altered, this is because the poly ball had a slight higher bounce, whereas the celluloid ball came through more
- We had to play our strokes more upwards to get similar arc
- An overall reduction in spin and speed however the spin was impressively more than expected as seen in the footage
- We believe rallies will be longer as it felt you had to really commit to produce a winning shot. We feel future tactics will be based around consistency and placement to win the point.
- Powerful players may have an advantage with this ball, and we feel physical fitness and strength will play an important role
- Service and receive area of the game could become a lot easier due to the less amount of spin produced on the ball

We hope you enjoyed this review, let us know what you think by posting below guys. have you tried the new poly ball? What challenges do you think players will face if any and how do you think it will change our sport.

Check out more TableTennisDaily Equipment Reviews here.
 
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Nice review! Hopefully the Stiga ball and the other new poly balls of other brands are much like each other.
 
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Thanks for the great review. I believe those differences between poly and zelluloid are easy to adept, but will create a greater game in terms of ralleys.
Im exited to play that ball by myself.
I actually like that you, as you said, need a slight better fitness to adept to the slower and non-spinnier ball!
Can´t wait to see the Airoc review.
 
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Thank you for this great review !
I wonder how the new ball will affect the penholders. I hope they won't be too affected by it.
 
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I have a question, because one thing is not strange in from my point of view. At the beginning of the test Dan showed by droping both balls down that the new ball has less bounce then the old one. Next during the test Dan said it was more difficult to play a good topspin with a new ball. When I watched the video it seems that because of lower bounce and less speed the ball drops down quicker then you expect and you need to go lower. While in the end you said that new ball has a higher bounce.
Can you explain it further?
Thanks
 
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Talking about tt materials is just a useless speech unless contains a decent set of numbers. yes.

--------
Through being a graduated engineer. I only trust the numbers, I love the numbers.

Human's body natural senses are fairly deceptive. No two man will feel alike, you know.

One man's softish feeling of the ball is another man's hard feeling. So is the ball speed, spin, bounce, etc.

Hence, my first and foremost necessity when reading all the reviews on table tennis materials is the exact numbers from laboratory material tests.
Numbers and numbers only will tell you whole of truth.

So far, I have only got a bulk of waterish, blank words about the plastic balls. Multitude of meaningless and obscure phrases, no numbers.


[*]BALLS MEASUREMENTS I'm LOOKING FOR.

Diameter to 0,01 mm
Mass to 0.01 g
Geometrical Hardness (standard testing machine) to 0.01 mm.

Please, take care to provide for those numbers in your reporting of the plastic balls.

Thanks.
Igor NOVICK

Building Constructions & Materials proficient.
 
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Dan

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Dan

says editing a big TTD Team episode... stay tuned 👀

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Great review!!

what about the durability of the ball?

thx!

Thanks Jimmy, we found no problems with the durability. None of the balls broke during testing, I think we need to play with them longer to really find out. But all seemed perfectly fine. They felt harder than celluloid balls.
 
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Dan

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I have a question, because one thing is not strange in from my point of view. At the beginning of the test Dan showed by droping both balls down that the new ball has less bounce then the old one. Next during the test Dan said it was more difficult to play a good topspin with a new ball. When I watched the video it seems that because of lower bounce and less speed the ball drops down quicker then you expect and you need to go lower. While in the end you said that new ball has a higher bounce.
Can you explain it further?
Thanks

Good point, I found it quite difficult explaining this. Basically, the celluloid ball because it was faster it seem to shoot through the table more, and the spin kicked of the surface more forward. However when the poly ball bounced, because it was slower it seemed to land and not come through quickly giving an effect that it bounced higher.
 
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