Avalox AVX Pronte mini review

Finally got around to trying this rubber;

AVX Pronte 2.2mm Soft on a Dr N Firewall+ balsa blade

Topsheet is quite tacky and is one of the thinnest I’ve seen. It feels fairly soft too, but it’s a little hard to judge since it’s thinner. Sponge is marked as Soft, but did not really feel that soft, measured at about 39/40 deg. The Sterco seems to also have such a thin topsheet, but is totally non-tacky, and the sponge is softer.

The throw on loops for the Pronte is quite high as expected, but I had little trouble adjusting to it since the throw of my 999 Nat is high too. Speed was higher than I expected, similar to a lightly glued 999 Nat. that’s been well primed or worn in.

The thin and tacky topsheet seems to give it two definite gears which I really like. On slow brush loops it comes off very spinny, and you can feel the topsheet stretching a little, and then catapulting it back… result is a very spinny but slow loop. But when you hit through the ball a little more, the sponge kicks in and it gives quite a boost in speed with still very good spin, the balsa blade would have some effect there too. The sponge feels faster than most Chinese sponges, I suspect it’s Japanese.

I played a few games with it, and it many ways it seems similar to my 999 Nat, probably 80% of the speed of a boosted or glued up (2 layers) 999 Nat.

For serves it was tacky, which is all I would need to load them up with spin. Chopping was reasonably controllable as well.

I did not get around to trying to block or counter-loop against a strong looper, but I expect that with such a high throw, this will be harder close in, but not bad away from the table.

Did I like it, yes I did! If I ever decide to stop boosting my rubbers, it would be my #1 choice, as the sponge hardness is just about right for me (medium soft) and it has plenty of speed on loops to put the ball away. The slow spinny loops feature that is key to my game, seems to be hard to find in rubbers, an this one seems to do it very well…

We’ll try it boosted up next, will be interseting to see how it performs… hope the throw does not get too much higher…