achoomai's new zlc-blade - PingPongHouse ZLC

The AOS Tigers ZLC blade I received from achoomai weighed in at ~88 g, and had the fishscale pattern on the wood as has been mentioned before.

The handle issue has been covered in previous reviews but to my mind, the handle was very comfortable. The lens on one side protruded just slightly above being flush but it didn’t bother me at all. I suppose the handle could be extended a few mm and this might solve some folks’ issues with it--I imagine it might tilt towards head heavy with two max inverted rubbers on it at present, though head heaviness has its advocates as well--but I didn’t find this a problem at all. A 1.9 mm rubber for the BH, for example, would solve this surely. Overall, I much prefer this FL handle to the FL handle of the Innerforce ALC Tamca I use now and for which I need grip tape.

I tested the blade using a Donic Bluefire M1 Turbo on the FH and Tibhar Grass Dtecs OX on the BH.

General performance FH: The AOS performs wonderfully in the short game. It has several gears and is very controlled over the table when serving, dropping the ball short or flipping. In fact, I loved it for flipping, a shot I rarely win points with using my slower, dwellier Innerforce. With this blade, the stiffness of the blade and the crisp outer ply (whatever it is...koto, I’d imagine) turned many of my flips into flip kills, really surprising me.

As a few of the previous reviewers have mentioned, the AOS ZLC Tigers is a low throw blade and I used the M1 Turbo--a low throw rubber--but looping with the FH was great. My loops were low and fast. Loop driving, rather than pure, spinny looping, is the way to go with this blade. It took some adjustment to get the loops to land from up close, but once I’d adjusted, I really enjoyed knowing the ball would go exactly where I wanted it to and with serious zip and spin.

The blade is too fast and somewhat too crisp for me to reliably brush loop with it but if you open against backspin with pace, the AOS is a monster. Really snappy and quick, the ZLC kicking in when you apply the pace.  Smashing and flat hitting, needless to say, were a dream.

General performance BH: This is trickier to assess as I use OX pips on my BH and though I have always used fairly pacy blades--balsa carbon, walnut outers, currently the ALC Tamca Innerforce--this blade was slightly too fast for me to use safely with OX pips, particularly the DTecs, which is very fast in and of itself. (If I’d had any, I’d have tried it with a slower LP and this would probably take care of things.)

It does have a lovely, linear low throw angle for pips blocking, however, so whenever I did catch a block properly, the ball went fizzing back loaded with backspin resulting in a number of winners. No doubt, with more practice I could get used to the speed of it. Manika Batra, for example, uses the Timo Boll ZLC with DTecs OX on the BH…  So in several lifetimes, when I’m fit to tie her shoelaces I might take this up again… No, seriously, this blade might better suit a short pips, offensive blocker better better than a LP blocker such as myself.

Overall impression: For a RRP of $50, this is a brilliant starter ZLC blade. Comfortable in the hand, crisp, fast and reliably consistent. Too fast perhaps for OX pips but a great find for aggressive close to mid-distance blockers, hitters and loop-drivers.