Nexy Amazon Reviews

Thanks for the review. That really sounds like a blade that suits my style. Too bad mine has been blocked at the customs for three days. Hope they'll let it through on Monday.

BH-Man, how would you compare Amazon and Lissom?

so which of the Nexy blades could compare to Korbel?

Korbel is rated by BTY as OFF and I would rate SPEAR as OFF Minus or very low OFF range. I have never hit with a Korbel, so I wouldn't be able to make a direct comparison. This would be a good question for NEXY to answer.

Had another session with AMAZON today and observe generally the same things. Speed is obviously lower than TBS and after using TBS for a few years, you get used to that speed class and feel. AMAZON is in its own category for speed and intent of use. AMAZON would easily serve as a blade the pundits recommend for use. It is easy to control, not overly fast, vibrates, gives feedback, feels very wooden, is light, and can accomodate popular rubbers.

I had my first two training sessions with Amazon and I was positively impressed. Here is a first review. I'll update it as soon as I have more playing opportunities.

Appearance:
I like blades that have natural colours, so Amazon is my type of blade. I also happen to prefer white ash outer plies: two of my favourite blades ever are Nexy Lissom and Nittaku Violin. In conclusion, I know I'm biased, but Amazon looks great. Craftmanship is very good, as always with Nexy blades. All layers are uniformly thick and the lens is inserted smoothly in the handle. This is something you'd expect, at this price point, but I've found out it's not always the case with other manufacturers.

Handle:
The ST handle is of the traditional squarish type, handle dimesions are about 22x28mm (similar to Lissom, which is however a bit flatter: 21.5x28.5mm). I happen to prefer squarish straight handles to rounded ones, so again Amazon is my type of blade.
When I reviewed Calix, I wrote about Calix having sharper edges on the ST handle than Lissom (and Amazon), and that the flat top and bottom surfaces of the handle made me feel like I was holding a precision instrument. This is also due to Calix having a very smooth handle, that feels more like metal or a hi-tech synthetic material than wood. The handle of Amazon is rougher, and it definitely feels more natural in my hand. I don't know what kind of wood it is made of, but it has a light colour. I suppose that I should better varnish it, or it will easily get stained.

Anatomy:
Nexy Amazon ST, 79g on my scale, 80g on Nexy's.
Construction: 7 ply: 5 wood + 2 carbon. white ash - burned ayous - carbon - Nexy's secret core wood (TM) - carbon - burned ayous - white ash
On my Amazon, resonance frequency at the ball bounce test is 1340 Hz, which is higher than my Lissoms (1180Hz, 1265Hz) and about in the same range as Nexy Calix, Nexy Color, OSP Virtuoso, and Nittaku Acoustic and Tenor, which is pretty interesting for me (if you wonder how I measured the frequency, it's actually very easy).

Test setup:
ditto Nexy Amazon
FH: XIOM Vega pro 2.0
BH: Nittaku Hi Super Drive 1.8

Speed:
The blade's speed is a tad faster than Lissom with the same setup, I'd rate it as ALL+/OFF-, while Lissom is definitively ALL+. Calix is a bit faster, in the upper range of OFF-/lower range of OFF.

Feel:
The blade feels stiffer than Lissom and Calix, and does not vibrate that much. Remember that Lissom and Calix vibrate very strongly, although differently, so this is not to say that Amazon does not vibrate: it just does less. Probably also because it's thicker. The carbon layers are "buried" below thick ayous layers, which act rather effectively as dampers, so the feel is rather soft, even with the outer plies being ash, which is hard. However, the ash layers are thin, so the ayous feel plays a big role here. Some carbon "ping" sound is still present, if you hit hard enough, but the vibrations transmitted to the hand are less persistent than Lissom's and not so sharp as Calix's.

Behaviour:
Depending on how you hit the ball, the blade acts sharp, i.e. with little dwell time (well, still plenty of dwell compared to OFF/OFF+ blades, but less than Lissom). This happens especially with brush shots (sharp pushes, brush loops), I suppose due to the harder white ash plies. If you just brush, it's the outer layer that is primarily engaged. Once you start hitting the ball more fully (hit rather than brush, I think this is what Nexy calls a "bang impact"), the blade shows different properties, i.e. power absorption (ayous layer) and high elasticity (carbon layer). The two factors result in a rather contrasting behaviour: depending on how hard you hit, the carbon layers will more or less cancel out the effect of the ayous layers, and eventually the speed of a return will be different when the relative speed of ball and racket is slow or fast. There is some sort of non-linearity here, which is however different from the non-linearity of Calix, because Calix's non-linearity results from bending of the blade, while non-linearity of Amazon is the result of local compression.

Preliminary conclusion:
I liked the feel of Amazon. It's easy to push and play top spin. Throw is neutral, very close to Lissom. Soft blocks are easy, harder blocks are a bit less predictable. I suppose it's more suitable for close to the table play. I didn't try smashing, chopping, or looping away from the table.
All in all, I felt that for my playing style Amazon is more predictable than Calix. It has to be noted, however, that its top speed is also lower. In the next training, I'll try to compare Amazon and Lissom, my main blade.

About myself:
Basement tt player as a kid, up to university. After a long break, I have now been playing in a club for about 3 years. I'm a blades EJ, but my main blade in tournament play is Nexy Lissom: I've been playing with it for over 1 year now, with Xiom Vega Pro on FH and Nittaku Hi Super Drive on BH. I play a controlled offensive game with greater value on spin and ball placement than on mere speed. If I can't finish my opponent on 3rd ball, I settle for longer rallies. As you may have guessed from my rubbers, my FH is more aggressive than my BH. I play in a local league, so I don't know my rating. Sooner or later I'll post a video of myself, so that maybe someone can try to rate me on the US scale.

EDIT: ====================== part 2 of my review ==========================

I had a few more training sessions with Amazon this week-end, and they basically confirmed my initial impressions. I couldn't compare it to Lissom directly (fogot it in the office), but the two blades are similar in many respects. Maybe because their construction is somewhat similar:
Lissom: White Ash - Ayous - Secret core wood x 3 - Ayous - White Ash
Amazon: White Ash - Burned Ayous - Carbon - Secret core wood - Carbon - Burned Ayous - White Ash
In any case, the throw is pretty much the same and hardly required any adjustment.
Amazon's throw is maybe a bit higher. Lissom vibrates more and has a lower top speed.

Serve:
it's easy to serve short and spinny. Actually, even coming from Lissom, some adaptation in necessary: sometimes the ball came even shorter than expected, and landed into the net :-(

Push:
it's easy to keep the ball spinny and low, as easy as with Lissom.

Chop:
rather effective. Amazon may be suitable for defenders. I have no clue as to how it would play with pips, though.

Loop:
sufficient dwell time to generate spinny loops, but you really have to "make bang impact" and engage the carbon it you want them to be fast.

Block:
Amazon is a dream for playing soft blocks and drop shots, as the thick ayous layers effectively dampens incoming speed.
On hard blocks the carbon layer comes into play, so they're not as bad as I initally thought. However if you like to block hard and sharp, you may want to look elsewhere, as Amazon lacks the precision and directness of stiff blades: even with harder rubbers on the blade, it feels as if you were blocking with soft rubbers.

Smash:
This is an OFF- blade, not a blade for hitting through concrete walls. See comments about hard blocking above. I move fast (too fast actually, as this is often the cause of my mistakes) and with big movements, so OFF- blades are plenty fast for me.

Flip:
in the short game, Amazon shines. Due to the low weight and nice balance, it's easy to flip with.

Conclusion 2:
If you're looking for a blade that excels in the short game, Amazon may be the blade for you. The Ayous layers absorb quite some energy of the incoming ball. If you hit harder, the carbon layers will come into play and give you a ball which is faster that one would have expected. The price for that is some non-linearity at intermedates speeds that takes a little to get used to.
Amazon deserves some more testing and is replacing Calix as my 2nd blade. If you're interested in Calix, watch out as I will have one for sale, soon.

Price:
finally there's always the question of price. Is Amazon worth $120? I don't know. We're living in a free market and there blades out there at all price levels. If Nexy is pricing Amazon at $120, that means he's confident that he'll sell some. Craftsmanship and quality of materials are very high, as said, but this is also the case for blades from other brands that cost considerably less. In any case, if you want a white ash outer blade, the choice is not big anyway: Nexy Lissom is priced $20 lower but has no carbon; Nittaku Violin has top notch quality and costs considerably more; I've never seen Yinhe / Galaxy E-4, but it's price is very high for being a Yinhe blade: megaspin sells it at $98, which is 3x the cost of E-1 and E-3. So this may also mean that white ash blades are expensive to produce.

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Edit (May 2013)
Had some more playing time with Amazon, today, and could also briefly compare it to Spartacus.
Contrary to my previous impressions, I was rather impressed by the blocking ability of Amazon: I could return hard topspins with both soft and hard blocks with laser precision. Looping ability did not impress me today, though, but my movements are probably too wide (see below).
Speed and feel of the two blades are somewhat similar, although the bounce of Spartacus is higher than Amazon. They both have what I've started to call the slow-carbon-blade feel, which bothers me since I first tried Yinhe K-3, especially when playing far from the table, and I have realised I can't get used to.
IMO, Amazon and Spartacus are most suited for controlled and aggressive off-the-bounce play, close to the table, with short, quick movements.


Edited by arg0 - 05/13/2013 at 6:53pm

arg0, just noticed you got a 79 gram version. Wow, that is LIGHT, Nexy knows my tendencies for liking heavy and issued me a 83 gram AMAZON. Still, even 83 grams is excessive light for me. Some like low 80s weight, so more power to them. I add egde tape and grip to to fatten it up a bit, but it is still one light blade.

Obvious to tell from my posting history that I am certainly NOT a fan of light blades. What is light to me (anything lighter than 88 grams) is heavy to many. A number of people consider 80 grams to be a middle of the road weight. I do not consider a blade heavy until it is around 98 grams, even then, if the balance is good, it doesn't feel very heavy. I am odd in that respect.

I like grip tape. Just me.

I don't want to sound down on AMAZON. I tis jsut a different class of blade for an allround OFF control player, or possibly a modern defender. Even if the Softer feeling slower Nexy blades I have tried out over the months are not like the TBS, my game always improves as the blade forces you to focus on fundemental shot making and tactics.

One of our selected members for AMAZON testing has for sudden reasons became NOT able to receive and test AMAZON.

Good pics VD, if you can play the TT game and review as well as your pics, then you are one good motor scooter indeed.

Here is my brief review of the Amazon:

I will leave a note to help people understand better.

128YinYang wrote: I agree with Nexy's post above. This was very similar to my impression of the blade, because I found that it had a surprising amount of power for a blade that was so light (mine is 79g).

Thank you for the nice review.

Edited by Nexy - 05/28/2012 at 9:16pm