Saturday, January 12, 2013

Badminton Racket First Impressions: Yonex ArcSaber 8DX

Fresh from the Yonex sale is my ArcSaber 8DX! I was talking about it awhile back, and it even made my wishlist before I could get it finally for cheap off the Yonex warehouse sale last year.

Frankly, I don't the badminton giants ever recovered from the great clearance. My stringer tells me that there's practically been no calls asking for Yonex rackets...

Though I'm very interested in the Voltric 80 PG that's rumored to be hitting us later this year.

Anyway, down to business and the ArcSaber 8DX.



At first touch, the racket is probably the stiffest one in the Yonex arsenal, even more so than the likes of the Z-Force. Being even-balanced kind of helped handling for the racket, and I was able to place shuttles relatively well around the court.

The killer came on the backhand. Stiff rackets seldom give me a good backhand, since I liked to use the whip from medium flex rackets to throw a little more distance. This stems from my improper technique of not getting behind the shuttle enough before I hit the backhand, coupled with low hitting point and incomplete supination.

So yeah, the 8DX didn't actually make me want to perform those killer backhand dropshots that I like so much.

The stiffness did come in handy when I wanted to do some attacking, but at the expense of agility that's the main sell of the ArcSaber series.

So far so good. The Yonex ArcSaber 8DX seems to be a hybrid of a head-heavy system and a more maneuverable even-balance one. Not that it's a bad thing, but I think we'll all need to get used to it.

More to come. I'm trying the racket out for doubles tomorrow.

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