The ping pong robot is one of the unique additions to the equipment or training ground of a ping pong player and these ping pong robots can really improve the overall gameplay of a ping pong player and they can even be adjusted to give the ping pong player the opportunity of practicing various skills.
We have set out to find the best ping pong robots and show you how your game can be significantly improved by using them. There are various cheaper models of ping pong robots, but they will be very basic and many of them might only be good for having some fun at home. The more expensive ping pong robots offer much more versatility and will give you the opportunity to improve different aspects of your ping pong game.
Top Ping Pong Comparison Chart
But before we dive into the top ping pong robots, there are a few features that you will need to know about to ensure that you get great value for your money and that you are able to really get the best use out of your chosen robot.
Table Tennis Robot Buying Guide
Since we always try and promote the best value for your money, the features we have selected can be mixed and matched to help you choose the best robot for your needs and also save you a few extra bucks on the features that you will not be using.
Portability
You will be able to choose between the free-standing ping pong robot and the mounted ping pong robot. The free-standing robots can easily be moved out of the way and they are more portable, but the mounted ones must be attached and will take some time dismounting.
Hopper Size
the hopper size refers to a number of ping balls that a robot can take at one time and the more it can take, the less you will need to interrupt your training session to refill the hopper. A larger hopper size can be more expensive, but it does limit wasted training time.
Skill Level
Some of the cheaper robots will allow you to receive the ball straight (with no technical challenges like oscillation and spin) and continue dispensing the balls in the same way. Depending on your skill level and your needs, you might need to consider a robot that will dispense spin balls to help you with the technical elements of the game.
Programmability
Since a ping pong robot is like your mechanical coach, you will need to find one that will allow you to program it for various skill drills. The advantage of the skill drills is that they will significantly improve your overall play and place you in game-like situations, unfortunately, you will always lose to the accurate robot.
Additional Extras
Many ping pong robots now come with added remotes to make it easier to change the settings. These extras might add to the price, but everything can be seen as an investment in your skill level and the ability to improve.
With these 5 features, you will definitely be more likely to make the right choice for your needs. Many of these features might not be important to everyone and therefore, we have mentioned that you will be able to choose the ping pong robot with the features that suit your needs the most. Yes, the best ping pong robots are expensive, but we do recommend it as an investment in your ping pong future.
Best Ping Pong Robot Reviews
With that being said, let’s look at the best ping pong robots for this season:
1. iPong JOOLA V200 Table Tennis Trainer Robot
Best for: intermediate players (possibly beginners)
The IPong Topspin table tennis trainer robot is one of the cheaper robots on the list and it is great for developing your basic skills in ping pong. The hopper can hold about 110 table tennis balls, but the dispensing is mostly in the form of topspin with every ball.
The frequency can be adjusted on this robot and you can set it to dispense anywhere between 12 to 70 balls per minute, which should be great for players struggling with the higher tempo of table tennis as you enter some of the bigger leagues. The added remote takes about 6 AA batteries and this will save you a lot of time, thus you will not need to gallivant around the table every now and again.
This ping pong robot can be set up in under one minute and the added IPong catch net will ensure that you need not search for the balls after playing. Unfortunately, most of the accessories like the balls and the net must be purchased separately and this could significantly drive up the overall cost.
The machine in and though itself is fairly cheap and we recommend it for beginners and intermediate players to help develop their backhand and forehand shots for competition. This machine will also be great for doubles training.
Pros:
- Large hopper
- Added remote for faster adjustments
- Easy to set up in under one minute
- Really affordable
Cons:
- Accessories are all sold separately
- NO oscillation
2. Paddle Palace H2W Touch Pro Table Tennis Robot
Best for: pro players
The Paddle Palace bot didn’t make it to #1 only because it’s not only pretty darn pricey, but it’s REALLY expensive (nearly FIFTY TIMES the price of our #1 bot). We choose our list based on (among other things) pricing and affordability, but this bot ranks very poorly on that metric.
Having said that, it really is a feature-filled pro-level bot with touch screen control, spin indicator panel, quick start ability, 30 built-in ball sequences, and lots of other finessed features like the ability to see the type of spin that’s coming for a more human-to-human experience. It has 22 landing spots and 4 spin styles. It’s on par with the most sophisticated robots available anywhere! It even comes with 120 training balls.
You will also be able to train against various shot types to help adjust for these shots and also learn some of the counter shots to play in the game. You will be able to select the time it takes to dispense the balls and the hopper is also large enough to hold up to 200 ping pong balls. With this robot, you will receive about 4 dozen balls to start off with as well as an analog interface to help adjust the settings.
Furthermore, this ping pong robot offers you the opportunity to do various drills to help improve your game and all of these drills can be adjusted on the analog interface, thus allowing you to improve your game without having to go around the ping ping table every now and again.
We highly recommend the Paddle Palace Touch Pro ping pong robot to more advanced players, but beginners should also be able to make use of all of these features as they get better. The ping pong robot is quite expensive, but this will be a great investment in your game.
Pros:
- Offers multiple spins and shot variations
- Offers drills to improve your game
- Comes with 120 training balls
- Touch screen control
Cons:
- Insanely expensive
3. Newgy Robo-Pong 1040+ Table Tennis Robot
Best for: Professional players
The Robo-Pong 1040+ table tennis robot has been newly re-tooled to handle 40+ balls (which are a tad bit bigger than the standard 40mm celluloid balls) and it even comes with 48 of them! The controls are analog but you can adjust ball speed, the oscillation of the robot and the frequency of ball delivery.
Lots of spins are available including a backspin, topspin, left sidespin, right sidespin, and a combination spin. The shot selection options include push, serve, chop, fast loop, counter, and lob.
The head angle can be adjusted from high for lobs and low for serves. Of course, you can position the bot anywhere along the baseline of the table to ad even more challenges with different angles and trajectories.
Included in the deal is a ball bucket that has an extender cage to hold around 200 balls for many minutes of continuous challenges and an analog control panel. it also includes 48 orange 40mm Robo-Balls and the owner manual.
We highly recommend this for professional and serious amateur players to help them hone their skills. The robot is quite expensive and we do not believe that beginners will manage to use all the features as they start out. It does, however, provide great diversity and features that a beginner will grow into as they advance their skills.
Pros:
- Good value for the price
- Can handle 40+ balls
- Includes more options than most players would regularly use
- Quick and easy to set up and take down
Cons:
- Not able to program (as would be possible with a digital system)
4. Practice Partner Butterfly Table Tennis Robot
Best for: Intermediate to pro players
Here’s a great machine that fits perfectly into the category I believe most beginners to very serious players would fit. It offers a whole lot of features that pro-level competitors could really use, and the rest of us don’t have to until we progress in our abilities. For example, the ball holder fits 200 balls which can be delivered at any one of 9 different speeds using topspin, backspin or sidespin. And, speaking of the ball holder and feed, it’s made of actual alloy metal with resistant rubber that stabilizes ball direction and placement. It can return the ball as a serve (2 bounces) or a return (1 bounce). It features oscillation which less pricey models won’t have, and it has a ball delivery rate (frequency) of 23 – 80 balls per minute.
The unit is lightweight and portable (less than 10 lbs).
Pros:
- Large hopper
- Easy to set up
- Reasonably priced
- Offers an advanced game like oscillation challenge
Cons:
- Potential operational problem of not emptying container fully if tilted slightly forward or backward.
5. PROMOTOR Table Tennis Robot Ping Pong Training Machine
Best for: Intermediate to professional players
The Promotor Training Machine has a lot to offer for a decent price. Some machines cost close to $2K while this one comes in at under $400. Let’s see what it offers!
There are at least nine types of ball spins like topspin, underspin, backspin, sidespin, mixed spin and more! (Officially it would be: topspin, right upper rotary spin, left upper rotary spin, left rotary spin, right rotary spin, left lower rotating spin, right lower rotating spin, backspin and mixed!) Let’s just say you won’t have a shortage of “spins”). There’s a remote than can control all the available functions like ball serve frequency, head angle, ball speed, etc.
Let’s look at some of the specs:
The serving frequency is 30 – 80 serves per minute at a speed of 4 – 4 meters/second, the oscillation offers 9 speeds, the ball speed is adjustable and the whole machine is made for both 40mm balls and 40mm+ balls. The unit itself can accommodate up to 300 balls.
Pros:
- Wide serve frequency of 30-80 balls per minute
- Serving speed of 4-40 meters per second
- Random points of fall
Cons:
- Relatively expensive
6. ZXMOTO Ping Pong Robot
Best for: Players at all skill levels
This is a relatively new bot on the market, so there’s not a ton of history or info on its performance or longevity. We can say that it looks pretty cool and it has some practical features. It holds around 110 balls and it offers a variety of spins and ejection variations like frequency of output, speed of ball travel, etc. The remote control allows you to change features from your side of the table, so that’s a bit of a bonus. The output of balls is 40-70 per minute. It goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway), it’s a Chinese-made product and the instructions may need some careful interpretation given the questionable choice of words and order of words, but you’ll figure it out! Current owners who have written reviews are quite pleased with it and all reviews so far are 5 stars!
Pros:
- Great for players of all skill levels
- Decent price
- Offers multiple shots and spin selection
- Easy to setup in under 2 minutes
Cons:
- Chinese quality and instruction manual
7. Oukei Table Tennis Training Robot 2700-e1A with Wireless Remote Control
Best for: All players
The Oukei bot has 2 throwing wheels and has an 80 ball capacity. It’s made for 40mm balls and it can fire out 35-70 bpm (balls per minute). It can deliver 3 spins – top spin, bottom spin and no spin – very cool! You can change the spin strength from 1 to 5 on a scale of intensity and it comes standard with 3 fixed landing points on your side of the table. In addition to all those variables, it has three serve modes which are circle, fixed and random. The only color is blue (big woopie!)
While this machine does not enter the category of a pro machine with something like 18 landing points and 9 spin types, it will more than adequately handle the needs of about 98% of table tennis enthusiasts in the world! In fact, if you actually buy a ping pong robot, you will have entered a world that 99.9999% of the world’s table tennis players will never experience!
Pros:
- Offers excellent features for the price
- 3 serving modes
- 3 landing points
- Easy to set up
Cons:
- For those who are very familiar with table tennis bots, this machine will be feature-poor compared to machines of 5 times the price!
Okay, This is just plain COOL!
Playing against other players is great for training, but it has been proven that the more balls you hit, the better your performance gets and with ping pong robots you can hit up to 24000 balls per training session. This will improve your overall game much faster and you will also face a greater variety of shots.
We highly recommend all of these ping pong robots for the improvement that they will bring to your overall game. Top players also use robots and even though they might be expensive, they will be a good investment in your future.
We would like to thank you for reading this article and we would like to encourage you to let us know what you think of our selection. We would also like you to comment and let us know how ping pong robots have increased your playing ability.