Every badminton player, whether new or experienced, will always end up asking themselves what badminton racket to buy next. After all, rackets to badminton players are like wands to wizards and witches – they’re a part of your identity and can affect your gameplay based on its own unique properties. There are, however, so many rackets to choose from! So what is the best way to choose from them?

How to Choose a Badminton Racket

While there are many different factors in badminton that can affect one’s choice, we’ve found that using the following information helps narrow down the options:

Skill Level – decide whether you are a beginner, intermediate, or advanced player
Play Style – assess whether you prefer power, speed, or a combination of both
Budget – determine how much money you are able to spend on a new racket

We’ll go over why each of these are important and what rackets we recommend for each of these different factors in the tables at the bottom of the post. Make sure to read these above sections first to make sure you have a good idea as to why we recommend a certain racket. We don’t want you getting a racket that you won’t like!

Before going on, you may wonder if playing singles or doubles should be a factor in what racket you buy. We don’t add it here as a factor because we think there isn’t a clear cut answer to that. Play styles are very different even within a particular discipline that it doesn’t become a deciding factor.

Skill Level

Skill level is a very important part of determining which racket you should buy. A common misconception people have is that advanced rackets are just better than other rackets. But the truth is that rackets are designed specifically for different skill levels so that they can be used to their maximum potential.

Beginners, and even intermediate players, would not be able to take advantage of the properties of an advanced racket and would actually make their gameplay worse. This is because advanced rackets are usually much stiffer and are also designed to perform better with higher string tensions – both of which beginners and intermediate players usually cannot handle.

Roughly speaking, we consider skill level based on how long you’ve been playing and if you’ve had professional training before. Beginners would be players who’ve played between 0 and 2 years and who are still learning to perform all the basic shots.

Play Style

Play style refers to the way you like to play and is used to help you determine what type of racket series may fit you the best. The 3 most distinct styles are power, speed, and balanced. Players who like power tend to like smashing from the back and constantly hitting the shuttle downwards.

Players who prefer speed like to cut shots off and change the direction of the shuttle quickly with a flick of their wrists. Balanced players are somewhere in the middle. If you’re completely new to badminton and don’t know what your play style is yet, we recommend starting out as balanced to start.

Depending on your play style, you should be able to narrow down your choices of rackets. We recommend choosing among the Yonex racket series because Yonex is known for their excellent quality among all of the badminton brands.

Each racket series has its own unique signature trait, which you can see below. Determine what racket series you’re interested in based off your play style and then you can take a look in the below sections as to which racket you should look more into based off skill level and budget.

Power players should choose between Astrox and Voltric rackets – both of which have all head-heavy rackets. Astrox rackets focuses more on the steepness of the shots while Voltric rackets are designed more for power. Both are great options for power players, but the Astrox series is actually going to replace the Voltric series, so you may see fewer Voltric rackets for sale in the future.

Speed focused players should choose a racket in the Nanoray series. Every racket in the Nanoray series is head-light and is specifically designed to help players move their racket head quickly.

Balanced players should choose a racket from the Duora or Nanoflare series. The Duora series is a new and revolutionary way of making rackets – with the 2 sides of the racket having different properties, making it great for players who like a combination of power and speed.

They aren’t like other rackets though, so it’ll likely take you some time to get used to them. The Nanoflare series is an all head-light racket series that attempts to add power that you see in head-heavy rackets with new state-of-the-art technology. This gives its rackets a boost in power while maintaining a head-light balance.

Budget

Budget is determined by how much you’re able to spend at the moment for a new racket. Unfortunately, badminton isn’t the cheapest sport around but we hope to help you get the most out of your money. The good news is that you may be able to still get the perfect racket for you even if you don’t buy the expensive rackets. Just because it’s more expensive doesn’t necessarily make it better for you – just like how advanced rackets are not better for you if you can’t utilize it.

Roughly speaking, rackets under $100 USD are considered low, rackets from $100 – $200 USD are considered medium, and anything more than $200 USD is considered high. Of course, prices are always changing, so who knows, maybe you’ll find a racket on sale at some point if you check often!

In general, beginner rackets tend to be the cheapest while advanced rackets tend to be the most expensive. This is because beginner rackets use cheaper material and use less advanced technology. And this is a good thing.

Advanced rackets break easily when they clash with other rackets while it’s much more difficult to break beginner rackets. And guess who clashes rackets more? You got it, beginners.

Not only will you save money as a beginner when you buy a beginner racket, it will also be more difficult to break your racket (please don’t try testing it on purpose though) – saving you even more money. The moral of the story is to buy a racket that fits your needs.

Other Badminton Racket Considerations

Besides the above factors of skill level, play style, and budget, there are 2 other considerations that you should take note of before buying a racket – racket weight and grip size. Each racket normally offers several options for both weight and grip size so make sure you select the one that fits you when you buy the racket.

Racket weight is indicated using units of 1U to F, which would probably be strange to you if you aren’t used to it yet. Take a look at the following table to see how that is converted to grams:

Unit	Weight
1U	95g – 99.9g
2U	90g – 94.9g
3U	85g – 89.9g
4U	80g – 84.9g
5U	75g – 79.9g
F	70g – 74.9g
2F	65g – 69.9g
3F	60g – 64.9g

In general, beginners tend to do better with lighter rackets because they allow beginners to swing more easily and not get tired as quickly. Beginners usually don’t have a strong forearm or wrist so lighter rackets allow them to use less effort to move the racket around. We recommend that beginners get a racket no heavier than 3U (max of 89.9g).

Grips use units of G1 to G6, which measures the circumference of the handle.