Is Joola planning to continue/discontinue selling the Flash 40+ seamless balls?

Now I'll have to try the Prime?

Anyway, I had the impression that the Flash was seamless but ABS balls are seamed.

Flash and Xushaofa are great balls, as well as DHS D40

My league is moving away from seamless clones like Flash, Xushaofa and Stag to ABS balls from this autumn. The durability of seamless balls is so poor. 

Here are links to Joola's German and US sites showing the "New" Prime ABS ball being already sold.  BTW, both sites are also selling the Flash ball.

http://en.shop.joola.de/zubehor/balle/joola-prime-6er-18882-18883.html" rel="nofollow - https://en.shop.joola.de/zubehor/balle/joola-prime-6er-18882-18883.html

http://www.joolausa.com/Prime-3-Star-ABS-Balls" rel="nofollow - http://www.joolausa.com/Prime-3-Star-ABS-Balls

Overall, Joola Prime balls look and play similarly to the DHS ABS balls (my gut tells me they are made by DHS), except that the seam is less visible on Joola Prime.  

Also, all six balls were round, bounced consistently, and didn't wobble at all (wobble was my main gripe with the Flash balls) ... which coupled with the fact that they don't break easily (none broke despite being hit with an age of the blade on few occasions) and the price ($8.95 for 6 balls), makes it a very good ball, IMO.  

On a side note, we did some testing of the Tibhar SYNTT NG 40+, Donic P40+, Stiga Perform 40+ and all of them seem to be completely different to the DHS D0+. We liked the Tibhar best, then the Donic and although it has some good qualities, the Stiga came third.

Are you kidding me? When you say "completely different", what do you mean?

Surface texture?

Hardness?

Speed?

Height of bounce?

Trajectory on smash?

Trajectory on spin loop?

Trajectory on drive loop?

Trajectory on chop?

At this point, I thought that the ABS formulation would at least be a stable design (the way the the XuShaoFa and the rebranded seamless balls feel the same)...

Pity me for thinking that balls could be uniform across brands.

I am tempted to buy a stash of Nittaku Premium 3* 40 Celluloid balls, and then give my opponents the option to play with it instead of any of the club or tournament balls.

Only someone who prefers a Big Mac to a Steak would choose incorrectly.

I do not care about texture, my main concern is how a ball plays. The rest of what you said cover the differences.

The following is for offense but take it with a pinch of salt because we play exclusively on Joola 2000S tables and you may experience differences on other brands.

In more detail: the Tibhar resembles the D40+ most in terms of trajectory but it is full white instead of yellowish white. Also, it feels harder the the DHS and speedwise it might be a bit faster. Perhaps it bounces a little higher  and a little longer. For comparison, the Joola Flash bounces outrageously high compared to these two.

The Donic P40+ has fallen out of our grace, the trajecory is noticeably different to the above, the main difference is that you cannot spin it up the way you can the Tibhar or the DHS. It is good for smashers but not for the technical aspects of the game. Middle of the road quality from Donic, just like in the case of the Bluefires / Bluestorms. It bounces higher than the Tibhar or DHS but still a lot lower than Flash but there is barely any topspin on it however hard you try.

Subjectively speaking, because of a number of factors, the Flash feels faster than the D40+, Tibhar SYNTT NG 40+ or the Donic P40+.

The Stiga feels really hard and rigid compared to the above balls, almost like a Nittaku Premium, though different from it and it resembles the D40+ the least. It feels almost as fast as a Flash but it is affected by spin in a different way, so one has to adjust their game a bit. It feels spinnier than the Nittaku Premium which I consider a piece of stone. The big problem with the Stiga is that - in spite of its rigidity - it dents a little after the second strong shot and when you try to block it, it will become different to block as its material regains its form on the blade, giving it an extra kick the force of which is difficult to predict.

On long pimple defence off the table:

I tested all of the above with the same partner who is competent in playing against long pimples. The exercise was for him to pivot and topspin into my backhand where I chopped with long pimples (DTECS Grass 1.2).

He had the most difficulties against the D40+ as it bounced the least high and it stopped sooner than he predicted.  In terms of playing experience, the Tibhar was the most enjoyable for both of us. He could spin it reasonably, I was able to chop with reasonable consistence and we did not encounter some anomalies as we did with the DHS D40+ we got from TTNPP. For a moment, the Stiga seemed the best because I could really load up the first two chops and he hit a lot of balls in the net. However, when we started another drill, which was to push one and topspin one into the longpips, the Stiga's extreme rigidity kicked in and I was unable to land the chop on the topspin after his push. I did a lot better in this kind of exercise with either the Tibhar or the DHS.

For comparison, I could not do anything to mess up his game with a Nittaku Premium, he was able to blast the ball between my eyes any time he wanted. With the Flash, I could chop reasonably, but it is not possible to chop so hard that stops the opponent to pound a chopper into submission.

I came to the conclusion that the Flash and the likes are the worst from the point of view of defenders along with the Nittaku Premium. The best was the Tibhar in terms of playing experience and the most effective was the D40+ because of its behaviour (lowest bounce).

On their material: we have enountered two kinds of D40+, one of them is yellowish and the other is white. As for the Tibhar, they are all full white and their texture compared to the D40.

I am in the same boat. I too bought a box of d40+ a while ago... and loved them. I was going to buy more but recent complains concern me... 

Any other options besides d40+ and j top??

We do not have much experience with plastic training balls yet because we have been using the DHS D40+ for training too but given their quality we have decided that we are going to buy from another brand that does not get rid of second rate balls the way DHS does.

If the quality of the D40+ from TTNPP was acceptable, I would buy those as training balls. I have heard that some Joola sponsored clubs and even national associations use the new Joola Prime 40+ for training.

abs is bad for any spin-based playstyle, you are only 2 years late to notice, though faster than many others.

club memberships are already decreasing at an alarming rate, and introducing balls that turn TT into TTX surely doesn't contribute to making people take the sport seriously.

Just compare 2012 matches to 2018. Screamoto so spectator friendly now with super fast BH close table counters. Much better than these boring mid distance counter loops before.

Remember when the women's game was considered to be boring?

unfortunately, if you are bound only to club you can play even with celluoloid, but if you play tournyes you have no choice as in my instance I will be playing NA team where joola prime abs is mandatory.

Richard McAfee, President of Sky High Table Tennis Club - Aurora, Colorado

Actually I find that if you play with hard inverted rubber, some of the balls aren't hard enough to get the sponge working properly on a regular basis. Double Fish and DHS balls are the worst for me. They suck! 

i play mostly with xuosha or joola , i like them but not joola abs

ttnpp's low prices are often because they have fake/2nds and garbage for sale.

I can play with Xushaofa, but hate the gameplay (light, hitter favored speedball). But like at least one of the batches of Ding Ning DHS D40+ balls better, because they favor service sping and spin on loops. I thought I liked Nittaku Premiums, but lately batches have felt solid, but not spinny at all.

The bottom line is that there are many flavors of balls; none of them as consistent or reliable as 2* celluloid balls.

The ITTF needs to set more exacting manufacturing standards (ONE TYPE OF BALL) not 3 different plastics and 2 different constructions (seamless).

Can you give an example of a '40 plastic' ball? I believe all plastic (non-celluloid) balls were 40+.

Sorry, edited. But you get the gist of my rant :P

Yep - stupid things are different enough so now there is a decent amount of arguments in our league on 'which ball to play with'. We don't have official one, so you end up playing with 3 different balls on the evening, because you have a dude with the shiniest worn out NP 40+ he swears is still the best ball in the universe, XSF fan, Joola Flash loyalist etc. 

You can always pick one at random, but then 'loser' gets to complain all night on how he lost because of that. And we're talking more or less meaningless matches here - don't know how pros deal with that. 

Damn right! +1

The pros usually know which ball will be used in the tournament and practice intensively in preparation for it. Plus they are PROS so they get used to such changes more quickly than us mere mortals :P

So at what point will you decide that "not round" demands a refund?

When tennis players get a defective batch of balls they 

https://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/defective-tennis-balls.366656/" rel="nofollow - SEND THEM BACK AND DEMAND A REFUND.