New Upcoming Engage Pursuit Pro1

Full review or first look?

Here’s something I would love to pick your brain on. I am unfortunately a perfectionist when it comes to reviewing paddles. In most cases, I try to spend about two weeks with a paddle before I publish a review.

The problem with this is that if I don’t get a model ahead of time, I fall very behind getting the video out (Similar to what happened with the Vanguard Control). Or, if too many paddles release at once, I can’t get to all of them at the same time.

So, I want to know what all of you prefer. April/May have a crazy amount of paddle releases coming out and I’ll have to be very selective about what gets a full review.

Would you rather see a first look with 70-80% of the information that a full review has and have it go up on launch day, or would you rather wait a few weeks after launch to see a full in-depth review that I usually do?

Vanguard Control Review

• Watch video here

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I’m about as late with my review as Selkirk was to the launch of a gen 1 raw carbon fiber paddle. 😂 Sorry for the delay everyone, I’ve been having some perfectionism issues when producing my content and it results in me play testing a paddle longer than I probably need to.

Regardless, the Vanguard Control is really late…is it bad? No, but it’s expensive and late. The feel is different compared to most gen 1 raw carbon fiber paddles and you may love or hate that. It is more firm and has more pop.

If you want more info, you can watch the full review. However, for most people, this paddle isn’t going to be a good buy. Only person I would push toward it is the lightweight Invikta if you need a low swing weight elongated paddle (swing weight is 104 on the lgihtweight)

The Upcoming Engage Pursuit Pro1

One of the paddles I hinted about recently was the upcoming Engage Pursuit Pro1. The last Engage Pursuit Pro was hugely popular and one of the top performing paddles on the market.

From what I have heard, this is NOT a replacement of Pursuit Pro, but rather it is in addition to the current line.

It sounds like it is designed to be an even more powerful Pursuit Pro, which is wild to think about considering the Pursuit Pro was already one of the top performing paddles.

It looks like they’ve also designed a new shape which has a more rounded head. My guess is that it is not a hybrid paddle, but rather an elongated 16.5” paddle with a rounded head.

One thing I’m very excited about is the uniform handle update from Engage. Their 6.0 models have always had 4.5” grips while the non 6.0 models were around 4.25”. They’ve finally decided to have uniform grip sizes which will be a big plus for those that liked the 6.0 models but hated the chunky handle.

Definitely eager to hit this paddle and see how it performs. Hopefully Engage can follow up the success of the last Pursuit Pro and not have another Ultra flop.

Thrive AZUL

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Another paddle we’ve been talking about on and off is the Thrive AZUL. This is a carbon fiber kevlar blended hybrid paddle with quite a bit of juice. In fact, this is what I think the Ruby should have been. It packs quite a bit of punch both pop and power wise.

it isn’t on the level as the Gearbox, but certainly a step above something like a Ruby.

Another awesome thing that makes the AZUL/Thrive unique is that you can select the swing weight you want. The range on the AZUL is 115 to 119. So, if you end up loving this paddle, you can always make sure you get an identical paddle when you reorder and set the lead in the exact same spot as your last setup. I would love to see this become more normal in the industry.

One thing I do want to say is that I’m curious how the AZUL compares to the Mark Kinetic that has been being talked about lately. From the descriptions I am hearing, the Kinetic and AZUL may be identical or highly similar. Hard to say without hitting them, but the way people describe the Kinetic is how I describe the AZUL.

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If you missed it, This week we talk about the Pickleball paddle market cycles with technology, alternative options to expensive paddles, and in the Kitchen we try and build our perfect Pickleball player for fun.