There’s really not much to review with a yoyo and every aspect aside from feel can be evaluated by design.
Brandon Vu’s reviews may be entertaining to watch him shred up tricks, but really he doesn’t say a whole lot.
I have seen a Draupnir and have never thrown one. Let me see how accurate I can evaluate it performance by looking at it.
It’s a V/W hybrid, and under 64g, so it will move very quickly easily. The W/V hybrid means it also has a nice open catch zone, so it will perform pretty well for risky catches even though it’s width is less than the more popular 45mm+ of these days.
It is a bimetal so it will have plenty of stability coupled with its low walls so long complicated tricks will work just fine on it.
It performs very well for horizontal due to its low walls and plenty of rim weight.
If you have one with the blast finish, it will perform very well with hand grind, but not palm grinds due to the shiny SS rims.
I understand I didn’t address everything here, mostly because I can’t be bothered, but am I on track, Draupnir owners?
The fact that you can accurately describe a Draupnir without ever having played with one shows why yoyo reviews are kind of pointless in the first place…
I mostly watch reviews because I like to see tricks from the people in the review.
Yoyo reviews can be helpful if you don’t know how to interpret specs. In some cases yoyos will not exhibit the properties that the specs imply. In this case you would need an advanced player. However, I would say most yoyos can be judged from the spec sheet and the design/material.
I’ve been thinking for a little while about posting a guide on how to ‘read’ a yoyo from the design and specs to help inform buyers. I may do that in the near future.
All of this still doesn’t address the issue that if an unskilled yoyoer picks up a Draupnir it will tilt more for them than a skilled yoyoer and therefore they can’t accurately assess how stable it is. If they can’t perform speed combos they won’t be able to assess how well it performs them. So they can say, as you did, theoretically this yo-yo can do speed well and is really stable. But they can’t confirm that through play.
And as you admit, by looking at specs you can’t evaluate how a yo-yo feels while playing, which is incredibly important. Light heavy rim weighted bimetals still can feel like a brick when playing fast with them. So while they can move fast they may not feel great while doing so.
If an unskilled player picks up a Draupnir and it tilts more for them due to lower skill, any other throw will tilt more for them in relation to their skill. However the Draupnir will tilt less enabling them to evaluate the attribute effectively anyway.
This argument does not counter what I was saying earlier anyway: you only need to look at a yoyo to get a good idea of its stability. It isn’t difficult to evaluate simply from the design itself.
You don’t need to throw speed combos to be able to tell if can do speed combos well. If the yoyo plays fast in any capacity, it will perform quickly in a speed combo too. Wouldn’t it be strange that a yoyo can perform say, Skin the Gerbil at lightning speed, but be kinda slow for a speed combo?
Good luck giving an evaluation of this that isn’t entirely subjective. @Mazdarx7FD says that the Magpie is ‘floaty’, I disagree. I don’t feel like the DV888 plays like a rock, @codinghorror disagrees.
Having said that, there are definitely specific design choices that contribute to rock feel and float etc. Is it a 66g bimetal? There’s a very high chance it will have a heavy feel. Does the yoyo have a fair bit if centreweight? There is a good chance that it will have a somewhat bouncer feel than a heavier rim weighted one. There’s a lot more that could be added to this.
I only have a few of their models. I really dig the ones I have for just having fun. They feel nice on the string. (Wm1, bassalope albeit modded, and peak2)
I haven’t played a canvas but I have played quite a few CLYW throws, and I’ve got to agree with @JohnnyJ that the Chief is the best performance wise. Really stable and plenty of power with a comfortable shape.
Peak 2 is probably my favorite CLYW, just like the original but a bit lighter rim weight. Bonfire is another good one too.
The only CLYW I’ve ever tried is the Pickaxe, and only because I was into acquiring smaller throws at the time I bought it. I just sent it out for a trade today.
CLYW, for whatever reason, just doesn’t have any models that appeal to me. I’m not sure I can explain it, but there hasn’t been a single one that has made me think, gee I really gotta have that!
I’ve had a Compass and a Peak 2. Both were kind of… wait for it… bland. What does that mean to me exactly? I can’t really quantify it. I tried really hard to like them, but I just couldn’t. Does that make them bad yoyos in my opinion? Not at all. They were just… bland.
Dings, dents, and scratches on metal yoyos are not positive indicators of anything, except maybe that you’re diligently working on 3a. It is one thing for a throw or two to have a tiny bit of accidental damage, but if most of one’s collection is scratched and ding’ed, it just means you’ve been needlessly careless. When impact/damage potential is high, use plastic rather than metal. Your hands/body will thank you for it, as will 99% of your future BST buyers.
