My approach to the "everyday racket" choice (Part 2/2)

As if by happy accident, I finished testing all my rackets just as the hole-in-the-building table tennis place where I always test them is more or less shut down due to the seasonal winds. In the previous post I made a distinction between different tiers of rackets such as the "social racket" and the tournament racket. In this post, I will cover the idea of the strong social racket or the "main racket" (non-match day) and the criteria I used in choosing it. 

1) Power

It should be capable of immense power, at least on the forehand, to deal with all kinds of lobbers and loopers in the social game. This excludes the soft feeling Butterfly Outerforce CAF and made me opt for the Stiga Sense 7.6 blade. I will tie this with Victas Koki Niwa ZC which I've only shortlisted but not seriously considered eligible due to its OFF+ / not-very-social nature when paired with good rubbers.

2) Sense of control

Control is a difficult thing to quantify but it has much to do with the feeling of the wood and the consistency of the rubber in making all manner of shots. In the social game, control often equates to continuous fun and true table dominance and the winner in this category still is Stiga Sense 7.6 -- straight handle furthermore. This is after choosing a spinny backhand rubber to compensate for the blade's poor backhand reaction and propulsion while adding the spin game as another winning option. 

3) Style alignment 

The everyday main racket should obviously fit one's style. The Butterfly Outer Caf is clearly the winner in this category because of its backhand dominance bias, which suits me. It also wins outright for spin generation. As for blocking and smashing, it's tied with Stiga Sense. So we go to the last criteria to see if Butterfly can supersede Stiga. 

4) X-factor

This could be something as trivial as the sound it makes or how easily you can perform trick shots with the racket. Butterfly Outer Caf feels like a very standard racket, surprisingly well made. Stiga Sense feels like it works best as an actively attacking devil. And I'm an offensive player. So Stiga Sense 7.6 (with standard Tibhar and Andro rubbers) wins 3-1 to be my SSR / main racket.