Which Tennis Racket Should You Be Playing With This Summer?

Slazenger NX One - £RRP £100


Tom Lutz: Priced at £100 (although you can get it for as little as £39.99 if you have a look around on the interweb) the Slazenger was the cheapest of the rackets and therefore ideal for tightfisted misers like myself. Much to my delight, I actually found this was an excellent choice once I started playing though. It's not the most powerful of rackets, but you can get plenty of control - ideal for the beginner to intermediate. It's also modelled by our very own Timmy on the ATP Tour, and as you would expect is great for little dinked volleys, although you may start to bottle games when 40-0 up.

Rating: 4/5

Paolo Bandini: I actually found this one a little tricky to play with. It has a slightly smaller head (97 sq ins) than the Dunlop or the Head (both 100 sq ins) we tested, and I was definitely catching a few frames, though that may be because my attempts at a backhand slice were wilder than a night on the town with Timmy himself, and to be fair when I did connect properly the sweet spot was large and forgiving.

Rating: 3/5

James Dart: Solid, unspectacular and lightweight. But I still liked the NX: it had a lovely feel and any significant lack of power was unnoticeable, while a generous sweet spot made for controlled groundstrokes. Where it could come up short is with a harsh response at the top of the frame, lacking a certain measure of compensation for the intermediate player. But as a value option for the beginner, it would rank up there with the best

Rating: 3/5

Head MicroGel Radical MP - RRP £149.99


TL: One hundred and fifty quid will buy you a racket with the power to kill a small child from 200m away, but if you don't have the game, don't bother with this one. On the other hand, if you're the kind of cheat that's had lessons and knows how to do complicated stuff like spin and sliced backhands then this could be for you - the strings give plenty of bite and it will definitely add punch to your groundstrokes.

Rating: 3/5

JD: Either this racket was just too good for me, or it was absolute bobbins. Knowing my game, I'd trust the former. Its string pattern does offer a lively feel, in keeping with the kind of specifications that make this far more suited to aggressive players that deem themselves in the 'advanced' category.

Rating: 2/5

PB: Sorry to sound like a stuck record, but - again, I don't really feel qualified to review this one, as I suspect it was just aimed at a higher caliber of player. The MicroGel frame clearly boasts massive power, and was great fun for punching volleys deep from the net, but I found it very hard to control on my groundstrokes.

Rating: 2.5/5

Dunlop Aerogel 5Hundred - RRP £110


PB: Racket. Of. Champions. There really is no other way for me to describe this racket - I don't think I won a single game with any of the others but I took almost all my games clutching this one. More than any of the other rackets tested I felt the strings really grabbed the ball on topspin shots, and despite an impossibly light playing weight of just 315g, it packed a serious punch too. Apparently this is something to do with Aerogel, "the world's lightest solid with a strength up to 4,000 times its own weight", but frankly all I need to know is that it helped GU's most mediocre tester serve up an ace and even break the famous Tom Lutz serve. In your face, Tiger Tom!

Rating: 5/5

JD: Remember the tale of young Billy Dane? The comic-book hero who chanced upon the football boots of "Dead Shot" Keen and suddenly became an all-conquering wing wizard? Transpose this tale to my discovery of the Aerogel 5Hundred and sudden transformation from hapless amateur to, well, amateur. Its "three-dimensional nanometer-sized molecular network" provided surprising power and control, really letting you rip into your baseline strokeplay, and was a delight to play with. Racket of champions.

Rating: 4.5/5

TL: Woah! As lightweight as a 13-year-old on a cider binge, this is very easy to play with. If anything it felt a little too airy and made me wish I had something with a bit more meat to it. You know in those war movies where the grunts get big machine guns and the officers only get a pistol? Like a Michael Chang serve, I felt a little underarmed.

Rating: 3.5/5

Wilson [K] Six.One 95 - RRP £159.95


JD: By the law of the playground, Wilson owners always ruled the roost: from the Pro Staff to the Profile Hammer, the best kids always had them. Inevitably then, their latest offering (£159.99) is championed by none other than Roger Federer. Granted, the next generation of nano-technology was probably wasted on an amateur like myself, but even I could appreciate the greater sweetspot and control the new racket provided. A noticeably weightier racket than the others on test, the Wilson did offer extra power and stability through contact to put away first serves and winning groundstrokes, ideal for those playing at an intermediate standard. And if it's good enough for Federer, it's more than good enough for me.

Rating: 4/5

TL: Yeah, it might be good enough for you and a man who thinks cream trousers are the look this summer, but for a below average player like myself this was too hard to control. My serves would fly long consistently and I found the sweet spot fairly hard to connect with. That said, playing with the same racket as Federer is probably the closest I'll ever get to tennis genius.

Rating: 2/5

PB: I still get misty-eyed remembering the day I was passed down my older brother's Pro Staff - completely unfazed by the fact he had just cracked the frame in an on-court tantrum. That racket was perfectly weighted and instantly playable and while the [K] Six.One 95 also possesses these attributes, I was disappointed it didn't quite manage to combine them with the brute power I remember from the Pro Staff. Or is that just my addled brain speaking?

Rating: 3/5