Just curious about what other punchy yoyos people have in their collection. My most powerful yo is the Valkyrie (new edition), which as far as I know very well might be one of the most powerful yos in general.
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I’d say Grasshopper GTX. Interestingly, the Top Deck comes close!
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Yoyos that feel very powerful and heavy in play are my favorites. I feel like they inspire so much confidence, and the extra force required to move them makes every motion I do feel more deliberate and intentional.
I think powerful can mean a lot of different things to different people, but for me it’s mostly about that feel, not the performance. I want to feel a yoyo with a lot of kickback, something that takes extra force to move around, and something with a very heavy and commanding presence on the string. Longer spin times are just an additional byproduct of yoyos that carry this feeling to me. The feel is what inspires the confidence I mentioned previously in play.
I’ve got a handful (not all of these are mine, but they’re what I’ve been playing).
From left to right, top row first:
Turning Point Ordinal 1: 80 grams of weight packed into the steel rims on the body of a 52mm diameter yoyo. Smaller yoyos are already going to feel heavier in general if they don’t scale down their weight proportionally, so this feels like it might be one of the most powerful yoyos ever in this form factor. Only rivaled maybe by the Sancti Grail and potentially MGSS Counter Jet.
Turning Point Kiwi: Full sized yoyo clocking in at 76 grams. This yoyo feels a little fatty and sluggish because a lot of that weight is actually located in the walls, this yoyo doesn’t play like a rimweighted beast a yoyo, but just that weight alone lets it have a commanding presence on the string and a spin that’ll last for days while sitting in mounts trying to make tricks.
Turning Point Entangle: Yoyos with a greater diameter:width ratio will tend to feel more powerful. This yoyo is 57x40mm at 68g. It’s also pretty cheap and affordable, this yoyo feels nice and powerful but without the fatty/sluggish feeling movement of the Kiwi. I personally like this yoyo more than the Kiwi, but the 40mm width could be a turn off for some people. This yoyo is like all catch zone though so I don’t think the width is an issue, amazing budget tech yoyo/3A staple.
C3yoyodesign x CLYW H5xChief: This yoyo is a behemoth. Bigger diameter paired with heavier weights leads to yoyos that perform like monsters without even really feeling “heavy.” This yoyo has a ton of kickback and feels pretty solid/rimweighty in play, but this yoyo feels so much lighter on the string than 73g. I actually wish this yoyo was heavier just so it had a bit more presence. I strongly dislike the trend of jumbo sized yoyos going with super light weights, the H5xChief shows to me that jumbo sized yoyos should if anything just be going heavier.
Japan Technology Shaqshine: A quad rimmed bimetal. This yoyo has inner and outer steel rims which basically just means the entire rim is all steel and no AL. It feels like playing with floating weight rings that weigh a ton. Really wild yoyo feel, it’s certainly powerful. One of my favorites.
Hydrangea Magnolia: No nonense just using a higher grade aluminum alloy to have thin walls and super thick rims at 67g, and keeping the width narrow to let it have a really nice heft and powerful feel. It’s like a beefed up Entangle almost.
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I’ve been learning to like the Valkyrie more and more as I play with it. While it doesn’t feel symbiotic with me like how my Hydrogen Crash does the kick it has is nice because it lets you know where the yo is and how it’s moving as opposed to it being nebulous. I can see why it’s considered to be part of a trinity of amazing yos. After sticking a Dif-E-Yo bearing in there (I’ve had better luck with those bearings even though the stock bearing the Valkyrie came with was nice) i have gotten spin times of 5+ minutes pretty consistently, which is something that I couldn’t even think of with the Crash.
Also holy crap 80 gram Ordinal! A friggin chonk
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Probably alnilam and mustang es. Both are ultra stable and spin forever.
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Yeah that extra presence is nice. It’s interesting to look at players like Nate Dailey or Jason Liu Zichen who have speedier styles of play but still skew towards heavier/more powerful feeling yoyos for a combination of a greater sense of control and a little bit of extra performance. I kinda feel like it’s mostly techier players who end up on the heavier weights though, I’m especially thinking back to like Iskandar Shah using a Diamont Noir Celestial lol.
Although when you look at a lot of players and general comp trends you can see that a lot of players just prefer having a yoyo that takes less effort to move around. I’m a nervous/jittery player so I tend to make a lot of jerky movements that end up making me struggle to control lighter yoyos how I want to.
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I didn’t owned a OG surveillance, but when I tried it the weight distribution from the rims are sure powerful and super stable for long combos and can regens for days! I’m not a big fan of its narrow width but the yoyo was indeed a beast.
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The quad metal Shaqshine I got from Mable(my edc).
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This topic has already added about $1500 to my wish list.
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I own Valkyrie and agree. I’m with @mable in that I seek this out too!
Butter has this sort of presence on the string and is also one of my favorite.
The new EVO is right up there as well.
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Duncan Grasshopper GTX. That thing is still spinning and I put it away last night.
Jokes aside the thing is a tank literally and figuratively and I love it. I don’t play fast so the extra heft keeps my pacing where I want it, plus it’s just so stable and on rails. It’s my trick learning throw too because you can literally just sit there in a Mount and think about everything for a minute lol
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Mable I had no idea you liked heavier throws too all this time
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This is why I must cop a Top Deck when that new batch comes in on here
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Top Deck has always remained my go to for learning new tricks because of how stupid powerful it is. Especially with a concave (or your choice of centering bearing), it’s not even fair how well it holds up to stress.
On the slightly lighter and smaller side, I recently got a Kamuraiju and the rims on that thing are crazy. They make it feel so much heavier and powerful for its size.
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I don’t have a lot of throws compared to some of y’all here, but my most powerful by far is my OG Draupnir 
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Better to have a small rotation unless you’re a collector, in my humble opinion. I’m thinking about downsizing and I only have maybe 20ish throws? Idk I’ve never actually counted lol
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My most powerful Yoyo in my collection is the yoyofriends nucleon. I don’t have a huge collection at all nor have I tried very many yo-yos but this thing feels like a beast compared to what else I’ve tried. If it stops spinning, it’s because I messed up or binded(? Bound? Did a bind?). It also binds super tight.
“Power” is one of the terms people use to describe yo-yos and I’m still a little fuzzy on what this means exactly. From what I’ve gathered, it’s like the initial punch but also related to spin time and seems like it’s kind of just a “feel” type thing. Versus like “speed” which seems like how fast you can move the Yoyo around in space and more directly tied to weight but I don’t know I might totally be mistaken.
I’m curious how y’all think the tightness of the bind affects a yo-yos power like I get that weight and distribution are the prime factors that affect power, but some of my yo-yos very a lot by like how tight the string can wrap around the axle.
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I need to remember to say this when giving my opinions on here. I feel like sometimes I talk like I own and have played hundreds of yo-yos when in reality I have not! Also sorry for filling up this thread. I’m working from home today and it’s disgustingly slow lol
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Speed is just about as esoteric of a term as powerful. When somebody says a yoyo plays fast, I think people kinda universally know though that what they really mean is it’s a yoyo that’s very agile and easy to move with relatively little effort, immediately responsive to your movements. Lighter weights are more conducive to that, but that doesn’t really make lighter yoyos “faster” than heavier ones. A term I kind of like is just pacing, which describes the general speed of movement you feel like the yoyo plays most naturally at. And different yoyos will definitely have a faster/slower pacing to them, although even this can get a little abstract.
This whole video is with a 76g yoyo. The extra presence on the string and more deliberate motions required is preferred by some players when playing quickly.
Imo tighter gaps definitely feel more powerful since you can have weaker throws give you a more solid spin off the unwind. But really I think more often than not though tighter gaps are just a byproduct of more powerful feeling yoyos tending to be more rimweighted/heavier overall. A more rimweighted/heavier yoyo will just tend to be more slippy on binds, so gap widths are shrunken slightly to compensate for that. I can’t speak for all designers/yoyos, but at least this is the logic why UNPRLD/SFYOYOS/Japan Technology used smaller gap widths on their more heavily rimweighted designs.
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Seems like I need to break out the Top Deck and try it with a different bearing. I think it has good power as is, but based in the posts here I am not getting the most out of it.
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