Yonex Ezone 100L 2020 edition - first impressions

Our first consumer impressions after a short playtest with the latest Yonex Ezone 100L Deep Blue tennis racket

Yonex Ezone 100L deep blue
The Ezone 100L next to our current favorite - the Head Graphene 360 Instinct S 

We were quite excited to get our hands on the latest Yonex Ezone tennis racket and test it. Unfortunately, it didn't go as smooth as we expect. And what we expected was a premium racket from a Japanese manufacturer, famous with producing some of the highest quality frames on the market. 

Here are some of the positives and the negatives that we experienced in our first review of the lighter version of the popular Yonex Ezone 100 (deep blue edition, 2020 model).

Yonex Ezone 100L - product specifications

To get a better idea of the racket, here are the most important product specs of the Ezone 100L Deep Blue:
Weight unstrung10.1 oz / 285 g
Head Size99.98 in² / 645 cm²
Length26.97 in / 68.5 cm
Balance unstrung12.8 in / 32.5 cm
Beam Width23.5-26-22 mm
String Pattern16x19
Technologies usedIsometric, Liner Tech, M40X, VDM
Composition/MaterialGraphite

Yonex Ezone 100L - what we liked
During our first playtest we felt that the frame is quite stable from the baseline, even though it is the lighter version. At the net the Ezone 100L was also very responsive and accurate. Stability was on the good side but we've seen better rackets at the net (quite expected at 285 grams). 

When serving with the Ezone 100L we managed to get a lot of spin and adequate power. The racket is not great at flat serves. It was a bit harder to position the ball when trying to place straight flat serves.

The frame we played with was strung with Gosen multifilament which generated enough pop and spin during the playtest.

vibration dampening mesh

Comfort is good but the frame is just a bit stiffer than we hoped for. The VDM (vibration dampening mesh) helped a bit during extensive long baseline rallies.

Yonex Ezone 100L - negatives
To start with, the racket has a nice design with blue paint. The top paint coating is just not what we expected from a premium Japanese racket. This Ezone 100 racket scratched so easily that we started doubting the genuineness of our frame. It is really a shame if this is originally how Yonex intended to cover and paint their 2020 Ezone model line. 

The racket doesn't fill plush and premium at all but rather cheap and not durable. This came to a big surprise to us as we know Yonex as a brand that promotes quality in their products (that is how most Japanese brands do it after all).

yonex ezone 100

String movement was another thing that disappointed quite a lot. Well, it is true this may depend on the string type and tension but at strung at 25/24 kg with 1.25 strings I wouldn't expect the string movement to be that bad... but it really is. I had to adjust the string position every 3-4 shots which got really annoying at some point.

Yonex Ezone 100L bottom logo - video

These are our first consumer impressions with the Yonex Ezone 100L 2020 edition so far. We still haven't decided if we will keep the racket since it got us a bit disappointed considering the issues described above. 
Still, it has some very positive qualities and with minor tweaks could turn into a great intermediate racket. Probably new set of string, lots of efforts to keep the paint on its place and some adjusting to the super-specific Isometric frame geometry. 

Meanwhile, feel free t check:

Comments

  1. Hello, this racket versus the instinct S for a player with tennis elbow ? I play actually with the instinct S

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi, the Instinct S is much more forgiving for injuries, less stiff and more maneuverable compared to the Ezone which is harder to swing and feels heavier.

      Delete

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