Review: 7 fast blades-Photino,Maze,Jarmd,K5/6,T4/8

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   Recently there had been lot of interest on some of these fast but nice blades. 
Galaxy: K5,T4,T8, K6
Avalox: J-Aramid,
Butterfly: Photino, Maze, Mizutani Jun, Amultart

Some edits in red
Some more edits in green

I play a mixed game, somewhat close to table,with current rating 1714. 
FH : Tenergy
BH : Palio Macro era (played with zeta on some of these blades) / tenergy 64

I got to test these 7 blades for a while now, and ready to answer questions J

Here �s a comparative review. I have considered Butterfly Maze as a standard for speed, since lot of people, including myself played with it.

Physicial appearance and handle

I tried FL of all these blades. Appearance-wise none of these blades are poor. Photino, Amultart and Avalox J-aramid has hinoki outer ply, which looks and feels nice, but prone to dents or even nail marks.

T-4 and T-8 claims to have Juniper top plys. The top ply looks very very much like hinoki, including a engraving with a number that starts with HKY(in T-4). 

K-5 and K-6 claims to have ayuos top ply, and feels more like it. The top ply is harder and has hairline grooves on it. And is completely resistant to spintering. So no sealing is required. But I see a problem if you reglue. It may soak up some glue and get heavier over time. I personally prefer this harder top ply , as it reacts slightly better with my hard tenergy05 sponge.

Mizutani Jun has limba top ply, pretty soft... more suited for away from table / mid distance loops. Mizutani and Amultart have similar construction with zylon carbon layers. the major 2 differences are- thickness (mizu i think 5.6 and amultart more than 7mm), and outerply of amultart is hinoki.

K5, K6 and J-Aramid has Kevlar / aramid layers. (to my knowledge Kevlar is just a brand subset of aramid), while T8 has Arylate caron layers, Photino has Zylon fibre (no carbon), and t-4 is unique that it has 4 thin carbon fleece/layer. 

Th handle style of T 4 and t-8 are a little on thicker side, while K-5 probably marginally thinner handle among all of these, J-aramid and photino are average and closer to k5 than T- series.

MJ and Amultart has slightly thicker FL handle, i would love it if the handles were few mm longer.

Look wise: Amultart> Photino, Mizutani, Maze > T4, T8,K5> J-Aramid >>>k6 (hate the handle color)

Weight

This will of course vary from piece to piece, but as per the ones I got:

Photino is lightest. (I don�t know whether butterfly�s claim on zylons properties are correct, but I know for sure these blades are pretty light). MJ is also very light. Amultart is light among the blades of similar thickness... although it is heavier than photino or MJ.

Others didn�t strike me as significantly light or heavy. Ts are probably slightly heavier than Ks due to bigger head size. J-aramid is okay light in spite of its head size. 

Speed

This is probably easiest to compare, and I find it�s markedly different from how the manufacturers rate it. My rating below is based on considering Michael Maze as 10.

T8 � 13
T4 � 12.5

Amultart - 12.25 ;)
J-aramid � 11.5
Mizutani - 11.5
K-5-11.0
Photnio � 11.0

Michael Maze � 10
K-6 � 9.5/10

Dwell Time
Mizutani Jun>K6>K5,Photino>j-aramid, Amultart>Maze>>T-4>T-8

T-4 and T-8 has pretty low hold time, the ball rebounds crisply without much chance to adjust your stroke. Less forgiving... for the player and the opponent, both. i personally like that. 

Mizutani Jun is very high dwell blade. My observations are:
1. its not good for players close to table
2. not good for players with fast compact hand movement... timing will be problem since the ball doesn't leave your blade when you want it to. 
3. for away from table loops the dwell time helps executing big loops more consistantly
4. the high dwell makes it high throw. and that becomes almost unplayable with high throw tenergy 05. no wonder Mizutani himself plays tenergy 64

I sincerely doubt if the dwell time is for zylon as butterfly claims or the lower thickness of the blade and soft top ply. because Amultart is quite different even with same zylon layers.

K5 and Photino allows nice dwell time, particularly K5. I love this blade for this. J-aramid also allows nice dwell-time NOT better than Mizutani Jun IMO, but not better than Photino. (apologize for wrong info earlier). 

K6 is slower and has even higher dwell time, but low speed.

Amultart is my current blade with T-4 and K-5 as back-up. For my game involving close to table - mid distance mix of compact loop and smash, punch blocks and third ball / fifth ball attacks i found Amultart very good. (but i haven't played with it long enough). T-4 is very very similar to amultart, slightly heavier and slightly more powerful.

Sound J
T-8 � Tkluck
T-4 � Tcklung
J-aramid � Thatch
K-5 � Truk
K-6 - Trruk
Amultart - Thatch

Mizutani Jun -........ wait the ball is still hanging in there ;)

Ha ha.. kidding. But yes among all of these only T-4 has some ping, not significant, but noticeable. 

Hard hits and loop drives:
They work better in order of speed. T-8 is best, and K6 doesn�t cut it.

Control
Almost exactly in sequence of their dwell time.. except for the fact that with photino and mizutani lot of my loops were not clearing the net due to timing error.

however for fast and hard strokes, stiff blades like T-8 helps in more pinpoint placement on the table.

Forehand Loops
I loved avx J-aramid and K5, they seem to have more perfect speed and control balance for loops. T-8 and T-4 with such low dwell are okay for great winning loops, but difficult to balance in FH and BH equally for a 2 wing looper, like me. 

Photino is a little funny. It too has the perfect combination for speed and dwell, but I coulldn�t loop that great with it.  I think it could be the frequency of vibration, or the light blade or something, or may be just the feeling, that makes you feel felt as if the center of gravity is no right where it is supposed to be while looping. Again when I tried to balance the blade on my finger, it was okay just like other blades. K-5 is slightly head heavy with tenergies, and although I don�t usually like head heavy blades, my experience here was different. 

Vibration and ball feel:

Photino and T-4 has some vibration. Others are damped by either arylate or aramid. Arylate in T-8 seems to make the blade a stiff, while aramid blades like J-aramid, K-5, K-6 still has decent flex, but not much vibration. 

Better ball feel is a difficult call and people will differ. for me probably:
 Photino> K5,K6, Maze>J-aramid> T-4,T8

Forgivingness

K6>K5, photino>J-aramid>>>>T-4>T-8

Blocks

Accuracy on blocks is same as �forgivingness�. But higher speed blades has better rebound. If you consider control and ability to punch block photino is best. 

Photino>K6, maze> K5>J-aramid>T-8>T-4

IMO, stiff but slow blades help in blocking and it�s a balance between the 2. pl note T-8 blocks better than T-4.

Throw:

Being fast composite blades none of them are really high throw like wooden blades. in fact i found Hurricane King to be much higher throw than all of these. 

But still to compare,K6, maze and K-5 has comparitively higher throw, followed by photino, and then J-aramid, T-4, and then T-8 has really low throw. 

Pushes
Expectedly, K-6 and maze being slower and high dwell, are best in this department. Others nothing special. 

Reaction with Tenergy

This could be my hallucination. But I feel the harder ayous top ply of K5 and K6 gets better out of tenergy sponge compared to maze or j-aramid or photino. 
But yes when you go to the level of t-4 and t-8 with the very thin top wood layer, the carbon /arylate shows up in your shots, and that is altogether a different level of tenergy speed and spin. 

My BH

Used to be my major problem area, now much better. Improved steadily with slower blades, but with K6 my FH suffers soo much, so i selected K5 as the best balance.

Price
I found price is no way related to characteristics of the blades.
Photino>>Maze>J-Aramid>>K5,K6>T4>T8

Or more precisely: butterfly>avalox>galaxy J

What�s missing? Will add it later by editing this review.