Initial impressions, to be updated with a follow up in a few weeks.
First let me preface this with a disclaimer: I received this as a gift from a fellow yo-yoer. Additionally this is 100% biased, I really enjoy what Jeffrey is doing at the moment for the yo-yo community and his local community. On top of that Yejune and Jacky are two people I massively respect so it was an incredible treat to see them on the packaging. The collective involvement of all three of them made this that much more special.
The A4
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Quality: Fantastic! Nothing stands out as a negative, the yo-yo came dead smooth with one of the smoothest concave bearings I’ve ever played.
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Packaging: Standard box with a lot of very nice subtle details. From the skyline to the player first marketing on the yo-yo supporting insert, this was a joy to look over and I will be keeping the box.
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Play: Overall I wouldn’t say that the yo-yo is anything revolutionary in the monometal bimetal space (which I do not feel like that was the intention of the design) however it would be unfair to judge it by those standards. While the play is much closer to a monometal, the change in weight distro caused by the PA66 rings cause it to retain power however still lean toward the relaxed/laid back category of yo-yo’s. Spin times were long enough to get through my current tricks and combos without issue and I didn’t notice any major string rub with the new pads. I will say that with the Fat string included I did end up snagging pretty often until I adjusted in play to the pads, but with normal string, which is what I tested with initially I did not have these issues. The bearing choice felt complimentary to the design and I haven’t felt the need to change it for something with a more aggressive bind bite, ie. DS Plat.
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Overall: For $85 you are getting a design which is trying something new, succeeding to compete against other yo-yo’s on the market. Extremely well designed packaging, along with a whole new response setup which compliments the design. So at this current honeymoon point (I will revisit to update), I think its something which is worth checking out if you were on the fence before. I see myself further supporting Polyform projects when I can based on this first release.