Probably the best 40+ ball ? Nittaku Premium (MIJ)

Interesting, but still very surprising to me.

I thought the consensus was there was a big weakness to edges with the seamless ball, and that it was otherwise durable, so this may be the first time I see the opinion that they are unconditionally more durable than celluloid. I don't question your experience, but mine with this weakness was so clear that I never imagined it could differ.

Do you let this rubbers hang a little over the edge of your blade, or cover it with thick edge tape? This is the solution we found to limit the breakage. With proper protection to dampen edges, we are now doing much better.

The typical ball-breaker for me is the full power counterloop at the table (mistiming on loop on loop practice I also find very dangerous). It's not hitting the wall, the floor, or anything (we play in good conditions and wooden floor). It really is swinging hard and hitting the edge full-on.

Baal wrote: AMonteiro wrote: On the last couple weeks, I was sparring for a Pro Player and we have to use P Balls because he competes with it in Europe.. We had: DHS, Double Fish, Cornilleau and all were ok for me.. more or less the same, decente for playing but low durability. One day one friend of us who played at US Open showed up with a Nittaku Premium. I don't know if I was used to the other balls but I hated Nittaku.. too hard and heavy. Can't say about Nittaku durability. In general, I was expecting a harder time to adapt to Poly balls based on all the fuzz on TT forums but I found quite ok to play with it. I think there's no need to changes on my setup, etc.. PS: This player prefers seamless balls but is forced to train with seamed because he plays at ITTF events all the time.. This comment shows that feelings about balls are subjective and not to be trusted uncritically, (especially when experience is limited to a session with one ball from a player accustomed to another type of ball).  Feel may not be real.  This is because the Nittaku Premium is without question and by a substantial margin the lightest 40+ ball on the market, especially compared to any other seamed plastic balls.  This comes from actually weighing the balls.  Nittaku premium balls are always under 2.70 grams, usually around 2.67, about the same as Nittaku celluloid.  Chinese seamed balls often are greater than 2.80 grams, although may have come down slightly in recent months.  XSF balls are around 2.75.

I didn't take all the brands of balls from old celluloid to new plastic balls,

is there anything inside the ball or is it just air?  perhaps that could explain a different color from backlighting?

AMonteiro wrote: Thanks for your very precise info. I tried to be specific when I wrote that maybe I was used to the other balls. Probably the harder feel of Nittaku made me an impression of it being also heavier... shame on me

No problem and you are not the first person to say they feel heavier.  It raises a quite interesting issue that was first mentioned by Debater at OOAK.  When playing it can be hard to separate weight and hardness of a ball -- for example, a partially inflated football can feel heavier when you kick it.  For sure, the Nittaku 40+ ball feels different to you, and it is, and if you are accustomed to something else, it is not easy the first time.  It's even harder to tell if a a ball you are using (or a rubber or blade) has more or less spin from the feel of it.  Somebody else once posted articles from sports science journals showing that subjective feel of many ball sports comes from the sound made when the ball is struck.  Your opponent may miss the ball not because you generated more spin but because he misjudged the trajectory, but it seems like he misjudged spin.  I think these kinds of things cause all sorts of disagreements about equipment and balls, people know something looks and feels different but they then attribute it to the wrong cause. 

Baal wrote: This comment shows that feelings about balls are subjective and not to be trusted uncritically, (especially when experience is limited to a session with one ball from a player accustomed to another type of ball).  Feel may not be real.  This is because the Nittaku Premium is without question and by a substantial margin the lightest 40+ ball on the market, especially compared to any other seamed plastic balls.  This comes from actually weighing the balls.  Nittaku premium balls are always under 2.70 grams, usually around 2.67, about the same as Nittaku celluloid.  Chinese seamed balls often are greater than 2.80 grams, although may have come down slightly in recent months.  XSF balls are around 2.75.

zeio wrote: Aha, opaque vs translucent. Oh, that ultrasonic welding process they use to join the two halves together minimizes the seam to a minimum.

Played in a tourney last night. Did DHS balls, NP40+, XSF balls, I let my opposition pick what they wanted.

The DHS ball felt like a rock and one of them wasn't new and was very slick looking - I had trouble looping that specific ball.

DreiZ wrote: Has anyone tried this ball yet? Any comments on its play? Nittaku 2-star Superior Poly https://www.megaspin.net/store/default.asp?pid=n-superior-40p-3

Not bad, not a whole lot different from 3-star Nittaku Premium but some were not round or got out of round easily when playing.  I would rather play with these than 3-star Chinese balls with seams, like DHS or Nittaku SHA.  They aren't that cheap, though.

Sometimes I feel like at this point I have played with enough 40+ balls that I can cope with most of them now to the point that it just doesn't bug me even with kind of crappy ones.