Honestly, any yoyo you can manipulate well is a good competition yoyo. I mean gentry Steind won nationals with a replay pro so what ever yoyo you are comfortable with and know how it reacts to certain things is a good competition yoyo. Heck, Eric koloski at VA state yoyo competition a few years ago (I think) did his prelims with a YYF velocity.
With that you have a ton of options. From YYF you have the Shutter (used to win worlds 2014), Northstar (used to win worlds 2010) Protostar (won US nationals 2010), Too Hot, Czechpoint and more. From Onedrop there’s the Benchmark series and Vanguard. Duncan just released Sebby’s new sig the Bassacuda. Yoyofficer, C3yoyodesign… There are a ton of great throws under $65 it really comes down to your preference of shape, weight, size, weight distribution, aesthetics and the like.
I agree. A lot of those are YoyoFactory yo-yos too. If you’re looking for variety, at a budget price, marketed for competition, with proven performance, YoyoFactory models are a really good roster to check out. Replay Pro, Northstar, Protostar, Shutter, New Genesis, Horizon, TooHOT, CzechPoint, Dogma…I can hardly name them all. For about $50 or less, there are endless options just within that brand.
YoYoFactory was born in 2004 with a focus on functional technology to improve the playing experience. This has been a goal of the company which relies on the experience gathered from over 30 years of demonstrating yoyos around the planet. The end...
Why not compete? Is there not more to yoyo competitions than winning? I’m sure even coming in dead last would still be a great experience. Minute long combos as a standard? The longest combo i can think of seeing is Jensen’s World’s 2010 and it was around 50 seconds… unless you want to count his 2011 World’s routine as one super long combo seeing it was only one throw with a number of regens.
Folks, it has been said time and time again, but it is true. Virtually every yo yo produced today could be used in a competition. End of story. Without more criteria it is nearly impossible to narrow the field. Pick one with a color you like at a price you can afford and get after it if competing is really your thing. Buy more later when you have more cash and experiment if you want. One player’s preferences will not be the same as yours. Also, yes, compete whenever you want. You might not win but so what, it can still be fun.
I guess i just see it in a different light, as i compare compititions as a performance. Like a play (theater) is a performance showing all the hard work and rehearsal, the choreography, the timing, the fore thought and proper execution (assuming its not just a full on freestyle or jam session, in which case nothing matters other than the flow). By “combo” i dont mean a singe throw at all but a performance of a show of your experience and skillsets youve worked your butt off to “get”. They call them routines for a reason.
Dont get me wrong, Im not trying to be discouraging, and all activity and interactivity is a good thing! I just see a competition as something other than playing on stage. Its showing what you got, and showing the mastery levels attained. It doesnt have to be complicated, or even difficult tricks to be effective, if you can do them WELL is what matters. Watching someone struggle to get through a trick that is beyond their current skill set is not great, but watching someone do even the most simple basics with such grace and ease is where any performer should be.
Sure you can bust the big bangers here and there on your free time but it would be a bad idea to try one in a competition. Those (while the payoff could be huge) would likely result in a fail, thus impacting your score/placement with the judges.
Also let me slide in here that I im very new into the yoyo scene (less than a year) and have not (nor am i interested in) competing.
Im sorry if my comments come off as offensive, i dont mean them to be at all. I just want everyone to represent themselves as good as they can while on stage is all. Thats the place to perform, not play. At least imho.
Bottom line-
As long as your enjoying yourself, thats all that matters. ;D
I’m personally on the same page concerning competing and even making yoyo videos in general for that matter and almost didn’t even throw a video together for the Battle of the Elders under a year vid (also because i only had a day to do it and a lack of hardware and software to do anything decent). I wouldn’t want to discourage anyone who wants to though. I wouldn’t want to till I’m confident enough that i wouldn’t feel terribly embarrassed but that’s an mental barrier as well as lack of skills reason. I’m still confused by the " minute long combo " thing, like i said Jensens first combo at worlds 2010 is the longest I’ve seen and it was less than a minute. Do you just mean being able to bring your A game as it were, consistently, for longer than a minute straight without screwing up? That makes sense to me personally as i often struggle to do so.
The cheapest yoyo I’d be totally comfortable with using in a competition is probably a YYF Shutter, but that’s just me. I could use a $13 plastic but I’d rather use the Shutter. It’s totally a personal thing. Pretty much any unresponsive yoyo could do, the price doesn’t really matter.
There are 2 lines coming to mind, One is the yoyofactory line, but u heard enough about it already, Th other Line is the C3yoyodesign line. You got the Accelerator, Level 6, and the upcoming Imagine breaker and Railgun (both only around $40). For me personally, I will wait for the ThrowRevolution Zephyr coming at around $50, Marcus Koh said this yoyo will perform with speed and stability. ;D