I recently purchased Zeus LP in OX red and 0.5mm red and have now tested both on my BBC Ghost blade: An over-sized, stiff 9-ply Mahogany/carbon blade that was designed for SP.
Zeus 0.5mm was initially disappointing, producing wildly varying shots for no apparent reason, so I opted to quickly move on to the OX version which is something special indeed!
Zeus OX is the fastest, most offensive OX LP I've ever played with, and I think I've tried 95% of what's available on the market. Zeus OX in red is translucent and fairly stiff-feeling, with rough-tipped horizontally-oriented pips. Interestingly, the red top sheet on the 0.5mm version has a dusty, less translucent appearance, leading me to believe that this sheet was either over-cured or reacted badly to the glue that adheres it to its sponge.
In play, Zeus OX's speed is the first thing that caught my attention. I know that the blade influences an OX rubber's speed more than the composition of the rubber itself, but there are still differences from LP to LP when used on the same blade, and in that regard Zeus is
really fast, and thus a great offensive LP. It excels at slidey BH serves and low, fast punch-drive strokes while still being easy to control. It also does well at the fast, low corner-to-corner topspin serve that can catch an unaware opponent sleeping.
When blocking loop drives, balls stay low without a lot of effort. Directing the ball around the table is child's play with Zeus, and thanks to its speed my opponents today were either failing to get to the ball or producing weak saves/returns that were easily capitalized on. My favorite LP stroke, the BH topspin flick, worked every bit as well as with Zeus as it does with 755 OX or Talon OX. And despite its speed and ability to generate spin, Zeus is quite adept at serve return, proving to be rather spin-insensitive on soft shots, though it did falter when returning dead balls when played (too) passively.
The only place I saw weakness was in chopping where Zeus was very touchy indeed, providing a tiny window for successfully landing the ball. Chops I thought were fine ended up unexpectedly netting or floating long (note that my OFF+ blade is hardly a traditional chopping blade). Do I like Zeus well enough to put aside my trusty Talon OX? Absolutely! As of now, this rubber is not readily available; even at places like eacheng.net. I found mine on aliexpress.com for $3.80 per sheet. I made the mistake of specifying the cheaper China Post Registered Air Mail delivery method and waited 10 weeks for delivery to California! When I reorder I'll be trying an alternate shipping method, perhaps EMS.
There is a
14 page thread on noppentest.de about Zeus which tells me this pip is generating some interest!
The (badly translated) marketing verbiage on Zeus' packaging hints at the designers' efforts to build a speedy, offensive LP. I'm posting a scan of both the Chinese and English versions in hope that a bilingual OOAKer can provide a better translation:
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