I heard konkave are good. Any suggestions?
Use the search function. There was a thread nearly identical to this that was last bumped from not even a week ago.
http://yoyoexpert.com/forums/index.php/topic,74405.0.html
TL;DR It doesn’t matter too terribly much
If you got the money, please invest into Gold Plated CTX.
Doesn’t matter
Hmm…depends what you’re looking for. Do you want the best performing bearing or the longest lasting bearing?
NSK Gold and NSK Platinum are the best performing I’ve used (and I’ve tried pretty much all of them) with YYF Gold CTX in close second, but these bearings don’t last long relative to ceramics or even steel bearings. I’d recommend them for competition but not for everyday practice unless you just have money to burn.
Hybrid ceramics tend to last the longest and require the least maintenance. They don’t perform any better than steel bearings in general, but some ceramics are quite good. I really like the Crucial Grooved Ceramic even though it’s super loud. The KK Ceramic is good but overpriced. The Terrapin Delta cut bearing is good for the price.
For steel bearings I like YYR Double Straight and Twisted Trifectas the best, but they cost as much as most hybrid ceramics so they’re not really worth it IMO.
I’d recommend any of those bearings, depending what you’re looking for.
Don’t get too carried away with bearings. Sure, people have their preferences, but any old bearing will run just great as long as you look after it. I mostly just use ordinary SPEC bearings. Cheap, run right.
There are vast performance differences between bearings. The bearing is the most important part of the yoyo after the yoyo itself.
SPEC bearings are just okay. They may be good enough for some people but they peform worse than every bearing I mentioned. I’m not talking about “preference,” but sleep times and longevity.
Yes, longevity is important to consider, and I’m sure a more expensive bearing would provide that. However, I believe longevity is more related to proper maintenance. I also believe that spin time is more closely related to the design of a yoyo than the bearing.
Having said all that, I’ve only tried a handful of different brands of bearings, and clearly you are more experienced having tried many. Your post is the more trustworthy.
You would be wrong about spin time. I’ve done a lot of sleeper tests with dozens of different bearings and using the same yoyo (a Draupnir) I get results ranging from 2 minutes to 8.5 minutes. With a Movitation I got results ranging from 2 minutes to 7.5 minutes. The yoyo does matter but if it’s designed decently well, then the most important factor for sleep times is what bearing you’re using and the state the bearing is in.
Longevity IS related to maintenance but in addition to debris slowing down bearings, which you can fix through proper cleaning, the bearing will over time become damaged in ways you can’t fix. For example, the steel will corrode over time, at different rates depending on many factors. And when there is debris in a bearing and the yoyo is spinning, the debris can scratch the races and the balls, which will reduce performance permanently. In addition, relatively small shock forces (like the yoyo colliding with another yoyo, hitting the ground, or hitting a counterweight at high speed) can cause brinelling of the outer race. None of these things can be fixed and will lead to a gradual (or rapid, if you’re not careful) decline in bearing performance.