Lobster Sports Elite Tennis Ball Machine - Auto Portable Tennis Ball Launcher, Preloaded & Custom Drills, Spin Control, Lob Elevation Switch, Ball Speed (up to 80MPH), with Multi-Function Remote

Bon rapport qualité-prix.

First a word about ball machines. For the majority of beginner and intermediate players, whether the goal is to win matches or to have fun rallying, the key is to be able to hit the ball consistently. At this level of play, the way to win is not to make errors. This is where practicing with ball machine comes in. Consistency can be achieved by hitting the same stroke repeatedly. With a ball machine the player can practice ground strokes, volleys, high balls, low balls. Baseline shots, approach shots, running forehands, running volleys all are easy to set up with a ball machine. Practicing directional control and depth control is easy. It's all a matter of how much time one spends on the ball machine. From experience, I can say that practicing with another player of the same level is not that effective. Practicing with another player who is much better is too boring for the other player. So in summary I firmly believe in using ball machines to practice. Selecting the machine to buy was a difficult. These are mechanical devices with the potential for a lot of wear and tear. I considered features, price, reliability, durability, availability of service and repair. The different brands are actually all comparable and all expensive. Ultimately it was talking to people I see using Lobster machines that made me decide to purchase one. It's now been over 3 months of regular use on the Lobster Elite 3 that I give it a 4 star rating. My Lobster so far has met my expectations. For 3 months I cancelled all my lessons and practiced with the Lobster; now my coach said there is a big improvement in my play. My machine so far has not had any problems at all. I do have several complaints. Having a remote to control the machine from the other side of the court would be a nice feature but the Lobster remote is just too expensive. Other brands include the remote with their ball machines. The Lobster is hard to lift because there are no handles on the side. I found the best way to lift it up without straining my back is with the hopper removed. The controls are in a protected area on the machine, which is fine but makes it hard to reach without getting on my knees. My biggest complaint is that the ball speed is not robust enough. As an intermediate player (NTRP 3.0-3.5) I have to set the ball speed to 70-75 mph (out of a max of 80mph) from day 1 on the machine. (The speed is a gross estimate of course). And I believe I do not hit that aggressively compared to other players my level. My other main complaint is that the charger that comes with the machine is not adequate. For better charging, safer charging and to extend the life of the battery, the fast charger ($99) or the premium charger ($149) are required. Lobster should make the fast charger standard. I used to pay $15 to use a professional machine at the local tennis center for a 45 minute practice session--that's only if I were lucky enough to find a time slot that fits my schedule. Now I practice for one and a half hours at a time whenever I want, and my tennis skills are much improved. There are some minor faults but I am quite satisfied with my purchase.

I would give the machine zero stars if I could. If the company offered to give me this machine for free and to pay for shipping I wouldn't want it, nor would I be willing to sell it to someone else. I've owned ball machines for about 15 years and since I have a lot of free time, I use the machines 3-4 times a week. I have loved the Lobster Elite 1 model for the past 8 years and have been wanting to upgrade to a programmable model for a number of years. I was hoping that someone would create my ideal ball machine, and that Lobster would be the company to do it, but I got tired of waiting so when I found their best ball machine on sale a few days before my birthday I decided that I had to buy it at the deal price of $1800 because I knew that I would never buy it the full $2500 price. I really, really wanted to like the machine because I got such a good deal on it, so I spent two days trying to talk myself into keeping the machine. The biggest issue is that I bought the machine because I wanted to take my game to the next level by using the fancy pre-programmed drills. I found that the first drill worked, but the balls bounced too high. Switching to other drills they either slammed the balls into the bottom of the net or shot the balls out so hard and fast that Roger Federer wouldn't be able to use the drill. I called about the problem and the company acted like they had not heard of the problem and explained how I could use the calibration process to adjust the drills. I really didn't like the fact that I would have to re-calibration the machine before using each drill, but I gave it a try and still found that I couldn't get the machine to give me drills that were useable (realistic), the balls either came out too fast or bounced too high. I decided that even if I couldn't use the pre-programmed drills I would just program my own drills. I found that it didn't repeat the drills that I programmed correctly. I created a drill to all four corners and it would start out with two short and two long only to decide to sometimes turn the two long into four long shots before going back to the two short shots. Also I wasn't impressed with the machine's ability to hit the locations that I wanted it to hit. As a last resort I wanted to see if the machine could just give me some basic hitting practice with placing the ball in one direction with a simple arc. That's where I really discovered the limitations of the machine. At the lowest speed the ball would hit the bottom of the net and at the next speed setting which was 5 miles an hour faster the balls would land past the baseline. I was able to change the height setting to keep the balls in, but at the expense of having balls that bounced too high. By going digital with this programmable machine they took away the great control that their basic analog machines gives you. If they changed their software to allow speed changes of 1 mile an hour that might make the machine usable, but the way it currently works is crazy. I tried to call the president of the company to ask him why he was selling an unusable product but he doesn't take phone calls from customers. Warning: You really don't want to buy a product with a large battery from Amazon, they are willing to sell you such products, but they don't allow you to return them. You can't return it to Lobster either if you don't buy it directly from them.

The extra couple hundred dollars for the 2 line feature (elite 3) is worth it. Makes working on both forehand and backhand from the baseline efficient. The narrow setting for just lots of hits, wide is a lot of work or two people can practice a single shot each without getting in each other's way. Can use 2 line to practice volleys as well. Great way to work on technique.

Two items stand out for those interested in this product. One, with less than seven hours’ use, the elevation mechanism broke; specifically, one of the bolts that controls the elevation arm fell out. With the manufacturer’s suggestion and help, I tried to find the missing bolt in the cavity of the machine and was successful. However, due to the angle of the insertion, I was unable to thread it back into the arm. The alternative was to ship it back to Lobster. And that ties in with item number two. This machine is extremely unwieldy. It weighs 47 pounds and it’s very difficult to lift. It’s not just the weight; it’s the awkwardness of being unable to grab the machine to do so. And then to place it in a car or the back of an SUV means raising it to waist level or higher. Well, I can do this without much difficulty since I’ve been training with weights for decades. However, there is virtually no chance the average woman could lift this into a vehicle—or at least not without great difficulty. Therefore, with the breakdown of equipment and the awkwardness of using this machine, transporting it back-and-forth, I would recommend one be careful about purchasing it. As far as the performance of the machine otherwise, it was up to specs.