How we rate rackets

Every racket on the site carries a score out of ten called Our take. Here is exactly how it is built, so you can decide how much to trust it.

The five scales

Each racket is scored on five attributes, each from 0.0 to 10.0:

  • Power - how much speed the frame adds to the ball on a full swing.
  • Control - how precisely the ball goes where you aimed.
  • Ball outlet - how easily the ball leaves the face without you forcing it. Matters most on the defensive lob.
  • Manageability - how quickly the racket moves through the air. Governed mostly by balance and weight.
  • Sweet spot - how forgiving an off-center hit is.

Our take is a plain average

The overall score is the arithmetic mean of those five numbers. Nothing is weighted, nothing is rounded up, and no marketing adjustment is applied.

Where the numbers come from

Every score here is our own reading of the manufacturer's specification. Head shape, stated weight, core grade, face material and frame thickness between them decide most of how a padel racket behaves. Those five facts are published by the maker and printed on the product page, so you can check our reasoning against the same sheet we used.

What this is not is a lab test or an on-court trial. We have not hit with every frame we sell. Where a number comes from the spec rather than from play, this page is where we say so rather than dressing it up as testing. When we do play a frame ourselves, the page will say so and the number will move.

What we deliberately do not score

Stiffness is the obvious one. A hard frame is not a better frame - it suits a fast, clean swing and punishes everyone else. Putting a number on it would only push stiff rackets up the rankings for no good reason, so we describe it in the Core and Face rows of the spec sheet and leave it out of the score.

The same goes for looks, brand and who endorses the frame. None of them change how the ball comes off the face.

Why the forgiving rackets score highest

Four of the five scales reward forgiveness, so round control frames come out near the top and aggressive diamonds come out lower. That is arithmetic, not a verdict.

A diamond scoring 6.9 is not a worse racket than a round scoring 8.2. It is a racket for a different player - one who already brings their own arm speed and wants the frame to get out of the way. If you finish points at the net, buy the lower number.

What the score does not tell you

A high Our take does not mean a racket suits you. Read the Who it is for line under the price first. It answers a more useful question than the score does.

Scores will change

As we play with frames ourselves, we will replace spec-derived ratings with measured ones, and the page will say which is which. If a score moves, it is because we learned something - not because a supplier asked.

Home/ How we rate rackets

How we rate rackets

Every racket on the site carries a score out of ten called Our take. Here is exactly how it is built, so you can decide how much to trust it.

The five scales

Each racket is scored on five attributes, each from 0.0 to 10.0:

  • Power - how much speed the frame adds to the ball on a full swing.
  • Control - how precisely the ball goes where you aimed.
  • Ball outlet - how easily the ball leaves the face without you forcing it. Matters most on the defensive lob.
  • Manageability - how quickly the racket moves through the air. Governed mostly by balance and weight.
  • Sweet spot - how forgiving an off-center hit is.

Our take is a plain average

The overall score is the arithmetic mean of those five numbers. Nothing is weighted, nothing is rounded up, and no marketing adjustment is applied.

Where the numbers come from

Every score here is our own reading of the manufacturer's specification. Head shape, stated weight, core grade, face material and frame thickness between them decide most of how a padel racket behaves. Those five facts are published by the maker and printed on the product page, so you can check our reasoning against the same sheet we used.

What this is not is a lab test or an on-court trial. We have not hit with every frame we sell. Where a number comes from the spec rather than from play, this page is where we say so rather than dressing it up as testing. When we do play a frame ourselves, the page will say so and the number will move.

What we deliberately do not score

Stiffness is the obvious one. A hard frame is not a better frame - it suits a fast, clean swing and punishes everyone else. Putting a number on it would only push stiff rackets up the rankings for no good reason, so we describe it in the Core and Face rows of the spec sheet and leave it out of the score.

The same goes for looks, brand and who endorses the frame. None of them change how the ball comes off the face.

Why the forgiving rackets score highest

Four of the five scales reward forgiveness, so round control frames come out near the top and aggressive diamonds come out lower. That is arithmetic, not a verdict.

A diamond scoring 6.9 is not a worse racket than a round scoring 8.2. It is a racket for a different player - one who already brings their own arm speed and wants the frame to get out of the way. If you finish points at the net, buy the lower number.

What the score does not tell you

A high Our take does not mean a racket suits you. Read the Who it is for line under the price first. It answers a more useful question than the score does.

Scores will change

As we play with frames ourselves, we will replace spec-derived ratings with measured ones, and the page will say which is which. If a score moves, it is because we learned something - not because a supplier asked.