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Patrick's Nexy Zealot Review

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ThePongProfessor View Drop Down
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    Posted: 11/21/2015 at 3:02pm
Nexy Zealot ST –


Inspection of blade: The ST blade that I received, weighed in at 78 gram. It came in top-notch packaging. It is a thin 5-ply all-wood blade rated as Off- (~5.7 mm, don’t have calipers, sorry). Only few details have been revealed about its ply construction. My guess: the core is tempered/burned kiri (~90% of total thickness), followed by a layer of ayous or spruce (~7% of total thickness). According to Nexy, the ultra-thin outer layer is Ovangkole, a hardwood-sort that rarely is used for table tennis blades due to its high price (for more info, see http://rctonewoods.com/RCT_Store/ovangkol-c-1_50/). The outer ply is stunningly beautiful, and I am not usually impressed by cosmetics. The handle, which is purple and grey with a silver triangular tag, is appropriately dimensioned and very comfortable (this reviewer has average-sized hands with relatively long fingers). The handle is of the SQST-type - in fact, it is one of the most cubic handles that I have seen. The wings come slightly sanded. There is a black Nexy tag at the bottom of the handle. The only detail that I didn’t care for is a red protruding ‘diamond’ towards the bottom of the handle, which forces you to play with the tag-side in the FH, unless you are ok with the diamond gnawing into your hand. Overall, the craftsmanship and quality of the blade appear to be excellent. While hitting with the blade before attaching the rubbers, I noticed that it produces a very high-pitched sound, probably due to that Ovangkole ply. At the same time, I felt like I had very good control in laying the ball dead. See the below videos for a comparison with a Joola Viva, i.e., a Stiga Clipper clone (don’t make fun of my accent and mispronunciations; and yes, I am a Matrix fan; my first-born’s middle name is Neo :). BTW: there are a lot of high-quality pictures of the Nexy Zealot both here on the forum and on the world wide web in general, which I cannot compete with, so I abstained from that.



Playing impressions: Immediately upon hitting the first couple of FH’s, and having recently played with Adidas’ Challenger Force (i.e., a Korbel clone with limba-limba-ayous-limba-limba construction) and Andro’s Temper Tech Off (walnut-ayous(?)-burned kiri-ayous(?)-walnut construction), I felt like getting the best from both world’s - i.e., the soft touch and excellent looping feel of the ACF, and the crisp feel and hitting power of the ATT, which is a blend of characteristics that I have been searching for. FH/BH drives felt crisp and very controllable, especially my short-pip BH felt crispier than with the ACF. FH loops felt great, with good dwell, arc and length, instilling a feeling of confidence – my training partner stated that my loops were significantly spinnier and more consistent compared to the equivalent ACF setup, with the ball kicking up from the table more. Looping against backspin, I felt like I had to open up the angle a tiny bit more, indicating a slightly lower throw angle relative to the equivalent ACF setup. Blocking, punch shots (with the SPs), and hard loop-drives and smashes felt nice and crisp, and almost reminded me of the good ol’ speed glue days. I also felt that the setup gave me very good control on short serves and touch play. Receiving my TT education in the 80’s, I like to chop long with my BH on serve returns with a lot of spin (twiddling to the MX-P): the setup gave me a lot of confidence to execute these shots with a lot of spin and a nice flat arc.  

For me, the Zealot is an immediate keeper (as in: “will use it from now on”). It has a wide range of gears, from slow All+-like in touch play to Off in loop-drives. Line factor? Depth factor? Point factor? Can’t speak to that, but it does have a lot of X-factor to it! Well done Nexy. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to test this blade, and feel free to contact me if you have any questions: I’ll do my best to answer them.

Reviewer background and testing conditions: I am a left-handed allround-offensive player with a 2100 USATT rating, playing with short pips in the backhand. I used my regular rubbers in the test, i.e., a 2.1 Tibhar Evo MX-P (black, FH, ~40 h, not boosted) and a 2.0 Adidas Blaze Spin (red, BH, ~75 h, not boosted), which is a spinny short-pip with built-in speed glue feel and horizontal pip-alignment. The MX-P was affixed using the Revolution 3 normal viscosity glue, while I used the paddle palace glue for the ABZ. The blade was sealed with two thin layers of Joola’s blade sealing varnish. YinHe 40+ *** balls were used. After 15 min of warmup, and ~15 min of light drills, I played ~35 sets against my usual training partners.



Edited by patrickhrdlicka - 05/15/2016 at 2:07pm
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ThePongProfessor

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victorm View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote victorm Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11/22/2015 at 1:33pm
Very detailed!
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Baal Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11/22/2015 at 1:43pm
I also dislike the little bumps that sometimes appear on metal inserts in handles.  For some reason it bugs me, even it if is a really small texture.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Crowsfeather Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11/22/2015 at 11:45pm
haha zealot with SP is crispy like Frito Lays.
I'm no longer an EJ and I'm proud .
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Nexy Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11/23/2015 at 11:05am
Thank you for the nice review.

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