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Johnkew Newsletter · June 22, 2026 · 9 min read

Our Updated Top 5 + New Eyewear Impact Comparisons

A refreshed leaderboard, slow-motion eyewear crash tests, and making paddle feel measurable.

By John Kew. Independent, lab-tested, no pay-to-play.

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Gear news and lab data, before it hits the site.

Pickleball News

Website Update

I spent Father's Day weekend building out the analytics tools in the paddle database and Comparison Lab: a Comparison Lab with a lot of analytical bells and whistles, z-score visualizations via radar and bullet charts, spin durability tiers, high resolution paddle imagery, and KewCOR face mapping. A redesigned spreadsheet that consolidates all of the data is available too.

A Scam Warning: Someone Is Pretending to Be Me

Someone impersonated me to contact the Juciao brand, asking for free sample paddles and dangling future sponsorships, with gear shipped to an Illinois address that has nothing to do with me. To be clear: I never charge for reviews, and I never ask a company to waive a fee, so any message framed that way is a red flag. If you are a brand, verify through the contact form on the official website.

Eyewear on the Ball Cannon

We Upgraded to a Dummy With an Anatomically Correct Skull

Earlier tests used a soft gel head with no bone structure. The upgraded ballistic dummy has a simulated skull, and we filmed everything with high speed cameras up to 9,200 frames per second. For reference on the ratings: ANSI Z87.1 is the workplace baseline, Z87+ is a higher impact tier, ASTM F803 is the racket sports gold standard, and ASTM F3164 is the pickleball specific standard.

Eyewear	Rating	Result
Gearbox Vision ($45)	Exceeds ASTM F803	Survived 112 mph point blank; lens never detached
CRBN Pivot ($90)	ANSI Z87.1	Clean at 41.6 mph; lens popped at 56.6 mph; no shrapnel
CRBN Drift ($95)	ANSI Z87.1	Temple and frame broke at 58 mph
Tifosi Navar ($40)	Shatterproof claim, uncertified	Held at 54.5 mph; shattered at 112 mph
Kitchen Blockers (lensless)	Lab-tested to 60 mph	No breakage; nose piece pressed toward eye
Generic readers ($4)	None	Obliterated at 160 mph; glass into the eye socket

The Gearbox Vision is the story here. It is the cheapest pair in the test at 45 dollars, it carries the ASTM F803 sports rating, and it shrugged off a 112 mph point blank shot without the lens even leaving the frame.

Our Updated Top 5

What's Actually in Our Bags Right Now

A caveat first: this is not a historical ranking, it is what we are reaching for right now, recency bias and all.

John's Top 5

1. Honolulu J6CR review, my number one, no question. Over 50 games on mine and the face still looks and plays brand new, tuned with tungsten tape, about 1 gram per inch along the bottom half of the sides plus a 9 gram cap coin, for 116 swing weight and 7 plus twist weight. 2. The 11SIX24 Ultré Power 2 review, updated to a longer, narrower shape than the Vapor, with better side to side forgiveness and a touch more pop than the Power 2 line. 3. The Six Zero Coral Pro review, which fixed the stiffness of the original and posted Tier 1 wear results; I run the hybrid to avoid edge guard contact on reaches. 4. The Selkirk Boomstik, my previous main, whose warranty lets me keep swapping in fresh grit despite edge guard and face durability issues, see the Selkirk Boomstik vs OMNI matchup. 5. The Friday Aura Pro, a well balanced elongated option with a large sweet spot and a smooth feel.

Eddie's Top 5

1. Honolulu J6CR review, same top pick, run with six inches of half gram per inch tape straight up the sides. 2. Spartus P1, his tournament paddle, big spin with forgiveness and power, distributed a little more toward the center than linear. 3. The Enhance Turbo review, a hybrid with amazing forgiveness and a hollow feel that would be a killer value with a durable grit surface. 4. The Six Zero Coral Pro review, upgraded from the original widebody, with a spin bump that resonated. 5. The Friday Aura Pro, the hybrid this time, which he has personally sold several people on.

Three paddles showed up on both lists: the Honolulu J6CR at number one for each of us, the Friday Aura Pro at number five, and the Six Zero Coral Pro in both bags. Two buying notes: coming off a C45 Dynasty Hybrid, prioritize the Coral Pro over the OMNI or Ultré for a closer firepower match; and between the Ultré and the Coral Hybrid, I lean Ultré and Eddie leans Coral Pro, so choose by feel given comparable durability.

Honolulu J6CR Blue Grit →11Six24 Ultré →Six Zero Coral Pro →Enhance MPP Turbo →

All of the above use code JOHNKEW. The Selkirk Boomstik uses code INF-JOHNKEW for a 40 dollar digital coupon, and the Friday Aura Pro is at fridaypickle.com/JOHNKEW.

Can We Measure Feel?

The Feel Wheel Is Getting Real Numbers

Engineer Keith from Technical Pickleball has been quantifying the subjective feel wheel on two axes. The hollow to dense axis measures audio frequency; the soft to stiff axis measures hand vibration with an accelerometer, both from standardized one joule impact hammer strikes. Hollow paddles ring around 400 Hz, the Boomstik, Thrive Inferno, and Bread and Butter Loco among them, while dense paddles ring toward 1,200 Hz, like the Selkirk Power Air and raw carbon true foam builds. On vibration, soft is around 10 G and stiff around 50 G. My paddles consistently land in the 400 to 500 Hz range, which matches the data, and a few came back softer than I had them subjectively, which is exactly the kind of disagreement measurement can settle. I am shipping Keith 15 more paddles, and the measured feel wheel numbers will land on every database card.

Kew & A

Concentrated Weight vs Distributed Weight

Concentrated weight near the balance point, at 9 and 3, gives you the best forgiveness, twist weight, and stability. Go too high, at 11 and 1, and you get whippiness and vibration distortion; too low, at 8 and 4, and the face flexes and you lose forgiveness. Eddie's practical rule: a consistent contact zone wants concentrated weight opposite it, while variable contact wants distributed weight that matches where you actually mishit.

Does a 45 degree carbon fiber layup change spin?

Not meaningfully. Spin comes from the surface texture, the roughed peel ply, which completely covers the fiber underneath, so fiber angle does not drive it. Where the layup matters is feel: standard 0/90 carbon is stiff because the fibers cross perpendicular, while a 45 degree layup gives a softer, more omnidirectional feel.

What's Up Next

Coming up: the measured feel wheel rolling out across the database, expanded high speed eyewear testing including ASTM F3164 spec models, long term spin durability past 100 shots, and Spartus P1 widebody testing. Thanks for reading, and for being the kind of audience that will voluntarily spend 90 minutes with two guys talking about vibration nodes and accelerometer data. That is our kind of nerdy.

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Explore the data behind these verdicts in the paddle database and the Comparison Lab. This issue was originally sent to subscribers on June 22, 2026.

I test every paddle independently, with no payment and no editorial input. The buy links above are affiliate links, and if you use them I earn a commission that helps support the website. It never changes how a paddle is tested or where it lands in the data. Read more about how I test.