I Want Your Opinion on this Review

What’s up, guys? I want to pick your brain a little bit this week.

One of the more frustrating complaints I hear in the industry from you as the viewer is that you wish more paddles got coverage.

This has been a dilemma for a long time, and at the rate that paddles are released right now, it is impossible to review everything. Heck, it’s probably impossible to cover even half of the releases that come out in a year.

On average I play test a paddle for 1-2 weeks. So you can do the math. That’s 52 paddle reviews a year at absolute most (which I have never successfully done) or 26 at second best if I can stick to every other week perfectly.

Within the last 1.5 months, there was a day where I received around 28 paddles in a 48 hour time period. So yeah, you can imagine that we can’t hit all of those extensively.

Why this came up

We used to do a first impressions format on the channel, but I kind of stopped doing them. Mostly because I felt like I wasn’t able to cover the paddle as extensively as I wanted, so I thought people viewed them as a waste of time.

But recently I was thinking about how it is probably frustrating to see some popular paddles go uncovered that were almost definitely worth talking about. Some recent examples would probably be: The new Joola Pro IV shapes, Proton Flamingo, Selkirk Labs 008, Mark Unamarked and a handful of others.

Side note, some of this was sparked in my mind because I’ve been trying to buy a new carry on travel bag. I was having a hard time finding coverage of a few specific bags I wanted to know about. There was one guy who pumps out content like a machine, and even if it wasn’t the most in-depth, I still really appreciated that I got some of my questions answered before making a decision. Then for the more popular bags, there were usually in-depth reviews followed up later.

It made me realize that it’s the same thing in Pickleball, but some paddles just get skipped because there isn’t enough time for full reviews of everything.

So, I’m going to try and bring back the first impressions format this summer. Especially once the backyard court is complete, we should be able to cover way more paddles.

I want to be clear though, this is not replacing reviews. The idea is that this will help us cover paddles that otherwise would not have been covered at all, or help get content out quicker so you can make an informed decision closer to launch day.

How I want your help

I’m finishing up an edit of our Holbrook Arma T First Impressions before I leave for China on Monday, and I would love it if you could watch the video and give me your feedback.

My goal is to make these as valuable as possible for you, but still be reasonable on our ability to produce the content.

If you could look at the feedback through this lens, it would be best:

• This is not replacing a full review

• These are not focusing on in-depth topics such as:

  • Weighted tape

  • Teardowns

  • Heavy details about the design (This Arma review is different in regards to this, because the design is quite important)

• Some paddles (but not all) will eventually receive a follow up full review.

It’s designed to give you a high level overview of the most important aspects.

So, if you could give the video a watch and let me know:

• Did we miss something you wanted to hear more about?

• Is there something you would remove?

• What would make the video more useful for you?

• What would be the top 3 most important things you want to hear in these videos if you had to narrow it down?

You can watch the video here.

This video is not finished and it is an unlisted YouTube link, so I would prefer if you didn’t share it publicly because I’m probably going to tweak a few small things before publishing on my primary channel.

Feel free to shoot a reply to this email.

Appreciate all of you. Have a great weekend.