Control
Table tennis rackets have 3 main practical characteristics: speed, spin and control. The general class of the product, the style of play (see above), available techniques, requirements for player skills, etc. depend on their values and ratio. One of the most popular designation options is on a hundred-point scale; This scale is also used in our catalogue.
Control describes the overall handling of a racket. Roughly speaking, this is a parameter of how easily it can be used to give the tennis ball exactly the speed, direction of flight and rotation that the athlete wants to provide. High values on the control scale will be comfortable regardless of the level of the player and the style of play; however, increasing the speed/rotation hurts control, as a “faster” or “spinning” racket is usually more demanding on the accuracy of movements. Therefore, many models for professionals and experienced amateurs, usually, are distinguished by a low degree of controllability, and “beginner” rackets, on the contrary, have high control parameters and low speed/spin.
Base material
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Wood. A traditional material that has long been used in table tennis rackets, but has not lost its popularity to this day. This is due to the combination of low cost with practicality and ease of production. In addition, many different types of wood and many specific processing technologies are used in sports equipment, due to which this material can have different properties. As a result, the tree is very popular, it is widely used in all classes of rackets — from beginner to professional base blanks (see "Product type").
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Polymer. This option is also known as "plastic". Actually, both of these names cover not one material, but a whole class, including substances with different characteristics and with different costs. As a result, the overall quality of a model with a polymer base can vary, usually depending on the price category. At the same time, for a number of reasons, plastic is not allowed by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) as the main material for the base of rackets used in competitions; therefore, this option is not found in professional models, and it has not received distribution in non-professional models.
— Carbon. This material, also known as carbon fibre, combines carbon fibre filaments and a polymer filler. Thanks to this, carbon is characterized by extremely high specs of strength and rigidity at a very low weight. On the other hand, it is sensiti
...ve to strong impacts and drops, the cost of carbon fibre products is quite high, and, like plastic, it is not allowed by the ITTF for officially certified rackets. As a result of all this, bases made entirely of carbon are extremely rare — in most cases this material is used in the form of inserts (see below).
— Wood + carbon insert. Bases made of wood and completed with one or more layers of carbon. The features of both of these materials are described above. Also note here that the use of carbon in a wooden base reduces weight and has a positive effect on rigidity, while the tree protects the insert from impacts, and such a construction costs much less than an all-carbon one. On the other hand, the price of such bases still turns out to be quite high, and the mentioned advantages are really noticeable only to professional athletes and experienced amateurs. Therefore, this combination is found mainly in class 5* models.
— Polymer + carbon. Bases combining a polymer base with carbon inserts. See above for more on each of these materials, and the main advantages of this combination are that rackets are lighter and stiffer than full polymer rackets, while being less expensive and less susceptible to falls than full carbon rackets. At the same time, this combination is not as common as the other combination described above — wood + carbon; this is due to the low popularity of polymers as a base material.
– Wood + basalt insert. Bases made of wood combined with one or more layers of basalt fibre. This material has been compared to carbon (see related paragraph) in the sense that basalt is also considered a premium material and is used in rackets of the appropriate level. As for the practical properties, it is believed that such inserts improve the feeling of the ball and feedback, allowing you to achieve good controllability even on "high-speed" rackets.
