Review: Tuttle Beijing IV

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   If you look on the ITTF website, the top sheet has the same logo/stamp/id number as the other versions of Tuttle Beijing - and therefore is the same exact top sheet.  The IV version of this product is simply a different sponge.  Here is a post regarding the other versions:

http://mytabletennis.net/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=27305&title=new-product-tuttle-beijing-3-with-purple-sponge

Initial impressions:

- The rubber is vacuum sealed, and opening up the rubber made my apartment smell like a rubber cement factory blew up inside of it.
- Although the topsheet does not feel tacky, it can pick up a ball and hold it for a few seconds quite easily.
- This rubber is extremely soft.  The softest prior to this that I have hit with is the Xiom Vega Elite - and this thing is like a pillow by comparison.- The rubber sheet is also small - it barely fits onto my Matsush*ta Pro Special

My Review:

As I previously posted, this rubber is ungodly soft.  There's both advantages and disadvantages to this and it has me questioning whether or not I want to keep using this rubber.  I play a modern defense style, trying to mimic Sun Jian Fei as closely as possible.

The Good:

Chopping:  Strangely enough, this rubber truly excels at chopping.  In both short pushes and long chops, I was able to keep the ball on the table with extremely forceful swings.  I plan on trying this rubber out on a slow paddle, such as my innershield, and attempting a classical defense due to the immense control of this rubber.

Blocking:  This is a tacky rubber similar to a typical Chinese top sheet, and blocking topspin drives is easy as a result.

Counter-Loops:  If Tenergy 05 at 1.9 thickness is an 8.5/10, then I would put this rubber at a 7/10 in speed.  The control helps counter loops stay on the table, but it still has that boosted feeling I enjoy in tenergy.

Pushes and Serves:  I have no trouble giving spinny or dead serves/pushes with this rubber and keeping them short.  In the short game, it feels a lot like Hurricane 3 Neo - but with a significantly more 'pillow-ish' feeling.

The Bad:

Looping Chop:  There's something about this sponge that makes looping a chop feel awful.  I feel like the sponge is just way too soft for this purpose.  More on this in my conclusion.

The Ugly:

This rubber is LOUD.  If there's one thing I did not like about hitting hard flat shots is how loud this rubber becomes.  It literally sounds as if I'm breaking the ball if I hit at 40% strength or more.  I had someone lob a few shots which I drilled as hard as I could, and it had a few people stop playing and inform me that I was hitting with a broken ball - even though it was not actually broken.

Conclusion:

This would be an excellent rubber for an intermediate player.  I know many players who simply will never attack a chop and will always push it back.  I call these players 'mirrors' - if you top spin, they topspin; if you chop, they chop.  This seems to be the perfect rubber for that type of game.  A classical defender might enjoy this rubber as well due to the excellent control in the chopping game, but I cannot see an all out attacker wanting to use this rubber due to the overwhelming softness in the sponge.

If you have any questions, please pm me or post them here and I'll do what I can to answer them.  There are other testers as well - and I'm willing to bet many of them are attackers who may have a different impression, so please only take this review as one person's opinion among many.

Edited by roar - 03/02/2012 at 5:08pm