Gearbox GX2 Review — Best Power Pickleball Paddle?

Hey everyone, Keith Valentine here. This is the new GX2 Power Edition from Gearbox. And for the first time, this is the first time for Gearbox, we can give a discount. So if you look in our description below, you can get a discount code. And I want to thank Gearbox for sending me this paddle to review. This review is my own and I'm not being compensated for it. Let me jump into it. And we're just going to launch right in with the technology. Gearbox really got this one right. Let's start with the face. So this is a carbon layup. The carbon twill bi-directional weave is what it's called. And you can see the little weaves in there on the face. This paddle has two layups like that. So it's got a top surface layer and then a layer underneath of the same material. On the inside of that, they've got this new proprietary carbon fiber core. And so what they've done is they've done carbon fiber strips in here that are full of foam on the inside. Then on the inside of that, there's foam that runs all the way around here. And so their edge perimeter foam is a denser gray foam that's going to really widen the sweet spot and give you some perimeter weighting on this. And then the yellow expanding foam core fills all the gaps. And so you got the foams filling the gaps in there and filling inside the carbon ribs. And then you have the gray foam coming in between. So this paddle by design in the core and with the face layout feels soft. But does that adjust the power and the pop and the spin? We'll get to that in a second. Other thing they've done is they got a full carbon molded handle here. So this is a solid one piece handle. This handle feels great. There's no seams on it. It looks good. It's very firm. So it's a it's a molded handle. And Gearbox has always had good handles. So they've done a really good job in the handle category all the way back to when they first had those wooden paddles. I played those back in the day. Well, they weren't wooden, but they felt like a piece of wood. And it's got a good, sturdy edge guard on it. So this is a nice, thick, controlled edge guard here that is is somewhat flat to the hit. But you're still going to have miss hits if you hit out here on the end. Right now, the one I have in my hand is the elongated. And I typically prefer the elongated shape just because I can take the ball out of the air. But a lot of times when you start getting to a power paddle, they're much harder to control. When I gauge a power paddle, it's one. Can I keep it in the court? And two, can I hit the touch shots with it? Can I hit the control shots? Can I hit the shots that I need to be able to win a dink battle and not get killed with a pop up, something like that? So I will say out of all the power paddles I've hit, this paddle is one of the softest feeling power paddles. But it is still by far a power paddle. This thing would test out in the upper 95th percentile on the power pop and the spin. So we're talking right around 2300 on the spin, which is top of the line. You have a 117 to 118 swing weight on the elongated. The twist weight on this is around six five. What they've done for this that's also helped this paddle out is that they've put carbon fiber strips in here. So you got carbon fiber reinforced strips on the inside of this paddle inside here to give it more structural support and to give it some weight down here because of how light the core is with the foam. Even with the carbon fiber ribs in here, it needs a little help because it is a foam paddle. And so it's not going to be head heavy. It's head light. And you're going to have to add some weight. The standard shape has around a six point seven six point seven five twist weight is much more stable. Still has a good size handle. You can still do a two on both of the paddles, but it is a little bit more forgiving because of the shape of it. It has smaller strips down here. Wider body, right? Standard shape. You get a little bit more spin out of that, a little bit more maneuverability at the net. So if you like maneuverability and you want to win hands battles and you don't necessarily need the extra reach, you like getting close to your work. The standard shape would be the best choice for you. One of the reasons I like elongated is because I like taking the ball out of the air in the kitchen and I'm only five eight. So any extra length helps. And I know it's only half inch, but I like catching the ball down here on the end of the paddle. And I find that I probably do that because I don't bend my knees enough. But that's what I do. And on the end of this paddle on just elongated shapes in general, down at the paddle end is going to be a little bit more of a dead area. So you can really control the ball out of the air and take it and do stuff with it and receive it softly. It did take a little getting used to because the feel of the paddle feels soft. But the behavior of the paddle is incredibly fast. It reminds me of the Diadem Hush, which is their foam core paddle that is the quiet paddle, fastest paddle that we've ever tested, fastest paddle that we've ever spun, the most spinning paddle. And it has a foam core and it feels super soft. But the ball rockets off of there like a champ. So it feels something similar to that where the paddle actually feels muted. You can still tell exactly where you're hitting the ball, but it's not crisp feedback. You can feel the dwell time and you can feel it just compress into the paddle. But then when you launch it, this paddle goes and it spins. If we're looking at the all around paddle, the standard would be more of the all around player paddle, right? That's the one that has the most power, the most pop and the most forgiveness out of and spin more, more centralized, more unified in all those metrics. Right. So it is definitely more of an all court. I would put this one in the power category. This is going to be up there in the power top 95 percentile. The type of person I think bangers, if you like baseline drives and you like hitting the ball hard, you like serving deep. This paddle is great for you. If you are a more of an all court player and you're really looking for something that is going to give you an edge from anywhere on the court, you can speed the ball up from anywhere with this paddle, but you can reset it. You can dink with it. You can hit drop shots. You can do everything you need to do with this paddle without worrying about it. There was very little learning curve going to this paddle. Now, I have been playing power paddles recently. So just a caveat there is that I've been playing the SLK. I've been playing the boomstick. I've been playing the more powerful paddles. So transitioning to another power paddle, this feels different than all of them. Different than the boomstick, different than the SLK, different than the vapor from 11624, different than the NF from Honolulu Pickleball. It feels different, but it is a good solid paddle. I highly recommend it. You got to get a swing with it. Find a place where you can do a demo. And I want to thank Gearbox for sending me this paddle. And I want to thank all of you that are using our code. Helps us keep the lights on. Helps us keep bringing you reviews like this. And if you don't want to try Gearbox and you want to check out a different paddle, check these out.