Adidas P5 Performance Rubber Review

   Here’s a little background on what my old setups were like.  Earlier this year,  I was mainly using Tenergy 05 2.1 on the forehand and Tenergy 05fx 1.9 on the backhand.  My blade of choice was the Butterfly Michael Maze.  I found that setup was a good setup for my style (left handed all around attacker/looper with a BH punch).  But then I gave DHS Skyline 3 Neo a try, and, in contrast to the Tenergy 05, I found my shots to be more effective and controlled compared to the Tenergy.  I could serve a little bit lower and could pull off lower and shorter controlled loops from around the side of the table.  All in all, I felt that I had found my rubber.  It was cheap, consistent, and was noticeably allowing me to win more points.

And THEN, enter the Adidas P5 Performance Rubber.   My training partner, Channing, was the first one to adopt the new rubber.  His normal setup was the Butterfly Timo Boll ALC with Tenergy 05 on both sides. After a few days of playing with it, he said it was better than Tenergy, in that it was lighter and had more bite.  To me, that was not enough of a reason to make a switch, given the fact that it was 3 times more expensive than the Skyline 3 Neo.  But then, as we were doing our table tennis club hopping, trying to conquer one club after another, he gave me his paddle and said, “play with it for the rest of the day.”

I gave it a shot and right away, I noticed that the ball trajectory was very fast and straight off of a ‘top of the bounce’ warm up rally; which is pretty much the case for all of the newer tensor rubbers on the market.  And then I tried looping a few.  The balls came out very fast and sharp, dropping very drastically on the other side of the table.  ‘Maybe it was just the placebo affect’, I thought to myself.   And then the game started.  This was the first time I playing this opponent, but he was the ‘1900’ rated player in the club, so I had to try my best.

Needless to say, I plowed through that guy, generally ending the point with a 3^rd ball loop.  But when the rallies started to become prolonged, I noticed how much he had to go on the defensive just to keep the ball in play.   Also, I noticed my heavy pushes seemed a little bit heavier, although a bit deeper than normal, but I think that had to do with me being used to the Skyline 3.

Since then, I’ve been using the Adidas P5 exclusively and I am very pleased.  Because its maybe 10-15% lighter than Tenergy 05 and definitely a lot lighter than the Skyline, I can swing a bit faster.  It also produces a massive amount of spin when you really crank the ball.  It also produces a very nice and consistent arc when looping.  Not too high of a throw, compared to Tenergy 05, but good enough that it clears the net when doing more of a riskier ‘below the table loop’.

I have discussed these attributes with my fellow Adidas P5’ers and they all agree that it is an amazing rubber.  Much better than Tenergy 05 because of the following:

1.  Good speed
2.  Excellent control
3.  Lighter than Tenergy
4.  Spinnier than Tenergy
5.  Good consistent arc

It’s been almost a month of hard playing and training with it and the topsheet still looks brand new.  One thing I did notice about this rubber is the quality control.  The rubber comes in a very nice package with protective plastic sheet, moisture absorbent paper, and another plastic sheet with the rubber sandwiched between the 3.  And the sponge has a perfect grade and consistency, unlike the Chinese commercial rubbers.  And there’s nothing more beautiful than rocking this Adidas logo!

Original post and images found here

http://www.mtagsports.com/wordpress/2011/10/06/adidas-p5-in-depth-review/