OOAK Table Tennis Forum

What are the best tensor-like Chinese rubbers for a good price?

I have been using Bomb Mopha J-Tension rubbers for a while now, and I do like them. They are quite fast, yet have lots of control for touch play. The only small drawback is their low throw.

The softer, tuned Galaxy Moon is good value.

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Timo Boll ALC ST
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Chinese Blue Fire... (Even has big pores..)

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Reactor- ... 29306.html



Iskandar

Have you tried the Ckylin yet? I also bought a couple of sheets, but haven't yet found an excuse to attach them to anything…

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"Once you get past a certain threshold, everyone's problems are the same: fortifying your island and hiding the heat signature from your fusion reactor." –Doctor Impossible

Yeah, I did. There's actually two kinds of Ckylin. The more expensive has the big pore sponge. Well, the sponge IS soft, like a Tensor, BUT - it does seem really, really slow. Maybe that's why they say to use a fast carbon blade. Next thing to try is to heavily boost it.

I, of course, have no idea what the actual Blue Fire is like.

Iskandar

Although I've some accross some very good Chinese-made rubbers, none of them come really close to real Tensors. I guess the Chinese haven't worked out how to copy the technology yet.

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Well, there are the Palio Tensors: Macro Era and Thor's.

I find the Air rubbers like the Illumina and AssassinS and DefenderS to be Tensor-like in feel. More of a classic rubber though, but still fast enough.

729's Battle II felt tensorish to me, particularly on a carbon OFF blade.

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The big-pored Ckylin is the one I bought. Maybe the topsheet isn't tensioned. All show and no go?

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"Once you get past a certain threshold, everyone's problems are the same: fortifying your island and hiding the heat signature from your fusion reactor." –Doctor Impossible

Palio Macro Era and Thor's are made by ESN so they're not really Chinese. They are a little cheaper than other peoples' Tensors but no where near the price of most Chinese rubber.

To be honest - other than the soft sponge - what IS a Tensor supposed to feel like? When I bought that sheet of Rasant, I compared it directly to what I was using at the time - mainly that cheap Palio Emperor Dragon, Big Dipper, I think I even had a sheet of Apollo III (which had lost a lot of its tack by then), all on N11 blades, AND I had stuff like Yinhe 9000 and 729 Sky Wing/King on the back. I was (after reading all the hype, and shelling out what seemed to be an astronomical amount of money) expecting some sort of miraculous super-fast super-control rubber that would make me play better, but... was it faster? Nope. More spin? Nope. Different feel? I really had to concentrate to tell. Better short game? Blocking? Looping? NOPE!! Quite disappointing!

So what technology do the Chinese need to come up with a Tensor? A cynic like myself would say - discover the right booster (er, Factory Tuner).

Iskandar

Really interesting information as my experience has been quite the opposite:

For a year I have been using cheap chinese rubbers (729 Higher, Cream transcend, Focus 3 snipe, Lkt pro xp, Palio CJ8000...) and following my coach's recommendation I finally got a more modern rubber - Rakza 7 soft and was completely blown away by the performance as my spin on serves more than doubled and was easier to create, blocking is easier and more forgiving due to softer sponge and my topspins had higher arc with a nice dip and more spin, only drawback was bounciness on pushes that needed some time to adjust to.

So, why is mine experience so much different?

Is Emperor Dragon so superior to the chinese rubbers I tried? Is it all about the booster that I never used? Is perhaps Rakza7 much spinnier and more controllable than rasant?

Emperor Dragon IS Chinese rubber. Palio makes it. The reason I found it remarkable was it is available quite cheap in a "generic" packaging - the cheapest being $4 a sheet from ttnpp (with maybe another $1.50 a sheet for shipping if you buy several sheets). There is an outfit trying to pass it off as a "National version" for over $20 a sheet, too... It is quite good, I like it a lot.

To be honest most Chinese rubber's about the same, some is faster, some is slower, some is tackier, some less, some cheap, some expensive - but in the end it plays about the same.

It's entirely possible I chose the wrong Tensor to try (though you'd hardly think so from reading Andro's materials... )

My comment about the booster comes from the opinion that the secret of these Tensors (and stuff like Tenergy) is that they're "treated" or "boosted" at the factory, using chemicals which are similar to boosters (Seamoon, DingJi, Dianchi et al. which people mainly use on Chinese rubbers like Hurricane). Note that, like boosters, the effect wears off after several weeks - your Tensor (or Tenergy) will "go dead" (and shrink!) and you must then buy another sheet. Some people will use boosters to restore their expensive rubbers to their original state rather than throw the rubber away after a couple months. Note that this is "illegal", there are people here who rail against the use of boosters, others claim that all top players who use Hurricane use it. But it's not illegal if this booster is applied at the factory, apparently.

Iskandar

This has been my experience as well.
And by reading the forum over the years, seems like the general mainline findings.

On the other hand, I've found several people who uses cheap chinese rubbers than can put more spin and/or more speed on smash than I could with Tensor rubbers. Just as I had seen some people who use defence blades and can smash harder/faster than I could with OFF+ blade. But these are very very few in numbers.

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Maybe it's time to break out that sheet of Rasant Turbo I bought at the WTTC... Maybe I might, too, experience this miracle of double spin serves and "high arc" loops... It's eluded me, so far.

Iskandar

Well, I am going the other way - just ordered 2 sheets of generic Dragons to finally test them out, if they can compete with my 50$ Rakza I will feel very silly

On topic, here are some more Chinese tensor-like contenders:

Giant Dragon Storm:

I have not tried it myself but the only Chinese and Korean rubber importer in Croatia thinks highly of this rubber and uses it personally and compares it to Xiom Omega Europe in feel.


Sanwei Target National:

Another rubber I would like to try, had some great reviews and I have seen it rated as an upgrade of Big Dipper so it probably qualifies as some tensor, modern feel like hybrid


And something new I have ran into just today, more blue magic, this time from Kokutaku


It is a silly compulsion but I will have to order and try every one of these rubbers and will report back if I managed to discover something special

Is the Sanwei the National Target? They were selling sheets at the WTTC, didn't get one then. The sheets are cut funny - you know how DHS cuts corners off? These have two corners removed, but the cutoffs are elongated and curved rather than triangles. Trying to measure the area is going to be a pain.

You and I seem to share the same affliction... I've never really been interested in finding the perfect sheet for my game, it's more like - OK, this is what the advertising says, what exactly DOES this thing do? How different is it from the last one? I've got a pile of unused sheets about two feet tall (um... 305mm per foot, 4mm per sheet plus maybe 0.25mm for packaging...).. I've slowed down somewhat, having satisfied myself most of it is more alike than not (quite disappointing in the end). Though now I've got an urge to buy all three types of Yinhe 9000 just to see what the difference is (I expect none).

Iskandar