Aerogel Elite

Published: 13 Jan 2008 - 08:45 by nickhitter

Updated: 14 Jan 2008 - 09:10

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I have had this racket a couple of weeks now and having played about 8 times with it feel confident doing a review.

For those of you who read here regularly will know that I have recently been playing with an ICE elite until it broke a few weeks back, and as I was completely happy with that racket and it's feel I decided to go with the new aerogel version in the hope of maybe better durability. I bought the racket from snowy green sports in the uk for a good price, and found their website to be very easy to use. I have to say though that even though I paid for TNT signed courier delivery, they sent it Royal mail standard post and as such the stupid postie left the racket under my girlfirends car, which she then drove off in the morning leaving my brand new racket on my driveway all day for anyone to walk off with! (Traders make note - If you want to charge for packing the item then do so but please don't pretend you are gonna send it signed for courier when you are just gonna post it it order to make an extra 4 quid! we are not idiots!)

Anyway, thankfully my racket survived all day on my driveway and for once I decided to try the racket 'raw'. That is, without changing the strings. I have to say that it has been a while since I played a racket with stock stringing but I refuse to believe they are all as bad as this. It has become a bit of a cliche in squash racket reviews to say "stock strings are awful" but these (m-fil Pro TS) have to be the worst I have ever tried. The racket felt like it was factory strung at a fair tension ( maybe 26lbs at a guess) but to say that dunlop market these as a 'pro multifilament' inplies that they are better than the standard monofilament rubbish normally factory strung in rackets and it is simply not true. I have never used a worse string! I would actually go as far as to say that dunlop have surpassed marketing BS and gone straight to false advertising in calling them m-fil 'pro' strings! even dunlops old 'dura ace' and head's awful 'perfect power 17' have more feel and power!

So without going further I strung the racket in tecnifibre x-one biphase at 28lbs and the racket was transformed as predicted. This is actually the first time I have used the x-one biphase too and was impressed with it. Feels like 305, but not quite as soft. So in future I will maybe drop a few lbs from the tension for this string. Too early to tell how durable it is, but no sign of fraying yet!

Back to the racket. Compared to the Ice elite it is much stiffer, so I do believe that Dunlop have improved the makeup of the frames whether it's aerogel or whatever, but the racket has much more power because of this (if you hit the ball clean - stiff rackets aren't as forgiving for beginners) more feel of the ball and of course, inevitably, a little more vibration. Not to the point of being a problem just more so than the ice elite, hot melt pro or any of the slightly more flexible rackets I've used. If you are really fussy about such things then the included cute 'squash ball' dampener sorts it out, but I don't bother with it personally.

They have added an extra cross to the stringing pattern too (now 14x19) which has made the pattern slightly denser on the 500cm2 size head, yet not quite as dense as the aerogel ultimate. This has taken the edge of the incredible spin you could apply with the ice elite with it's very open string pattern and was a feature that really suited my game so I miss that a little, but I know most people actually prefer denser patterns for the increased control they give so it's probably better for most people. The balance of the racket is rated as 'head light' but is actually slightly more head heavy than my 'even balance' ice elite is/was, at 35.6cm (from the butt of the handle to the balance point with one overgrip on top of the original grip). Apparently the ultimate is even more head heavy so I really don't know where dunlop have gotten 'head light' from. If anyone is avoiding these rackets because they don't like a head light feel, then you can ignore it and give them a go!

Unfortuantely I still feel that durability will be an issue as they have used the same flimsy bumper guard that was on the ice series and I see nothing that makes me believe dunlop have gone back to their old standards in this respect. I suppose you have to make a decision if the racket is good enough that you are prepared to keep buying replacements, and then having to re-string every time too!

I'm not sure if the racket is any better for my game than my ice elite was. It shares a very similar and lovely feel when swinging through the ball, weighs about the same ( the aerogel is 3 grams lighter on my scale at 158grams strung weight) similar balance and although slightly more head heavy, this is countered but the slight reduction in overall weight. If you have a good swing and like a stiff feeling 'pro' racket with an above average amount of power then this would be a good choice once the strings are replaced. Again as with the ice version, not expecially forgiving for beginners

Sparty