Released in 2022, the Andro Rasanter C53 is one of the newest top-of-the-line offensive rubbers. According to Andro, the Rasanter C53 was created to “dominate the game and take every chance to score with a spin or counterspin”.
They claim that they achieved such a rubber by developing a new technology: the Counterspin Damper.
We played with it for around 10 hours to determine exactly how it plays, determine whether Andro’s claims are true, and help you decide if it would be a good fit for your game.
The strongest attributes of this rubber are its spin and power. It is a true powerhouse that excels at the topspin and countertopspin game. These attributes make it an incredible rubber for the forehand side.
In addition to this, it is an excellent rubber to play out the serve-and-receive game because of its sticky topsheet. And, blocking with the Rasanter had great results, as the hard sponge really helped with the stability of these shots.
The C53’s greatest strength though (over all of the strengths already mentioned) is how fun it was to use.
This rubber is the best we’ve ever tried for countertopspins, and we found it hard to put it down once this review was done because of how much we enjoyed testing it.
Perfect for: Upper intermediate and advanced offensive players on the forehand side. 3-10+ years of playing.
Ace
Recommended Playstyles
We recommend the Rasanter C53 to upper intermediate and advanced offensive players who want one of the best rubbers in the market for looping and counterlooping.
Design of the Andro Rasanter C53
The Andro Rasanter C53 comes in a high-quality sealed package. The packaging features vibrant colors and a unique design.
Inside, we can find the rubber, covered by a protective film.
The topsheet of the rubber is quite grippy and tacky. In fact, the one we tested could pick up the ball from the table for about a second.
It was tackier than I expected. Probably slightly more so than the Rakza Z and the Dignics 09c, but of course, less tacky than true Chinese rubbers like the Hurricane 3 NEO.
Its sponge is bright green and quite hard. To test its hardness, we used our durometer. Its adjusted reading was 50° on the ESN scale, not quite the 53 degrees that were advertised, but still within tolerable error range.
Design Features
Before talking about the design of the Rasanter C53, I want to quickly mention that we tested it alongside the Tibhar Hybrid K3. This was done on purpose, as we wanted to compare the two against each other.
When I took both rubbers out of the package, I realized that both had the exact same protective film. Here are the two side by side:
And, what’s more, when I tested the Hybrid K3’s hardness, it was just 1° harder than the C53.
I asked myself, could both rubbers be the same model with different branding? This didn’t seem too outrageous to me, as the Hybrid and the Rasanter are made in the same factory. We’ll come back to this later when we compare the C53 to the Hybrid K3 (and the Dignics 09c!).
Now, for the design, the Andro Rasanter C53 features a relatively straightforward formula, with a twist.
The Rasanter C53 is a typical ultra-offensive, hard hybrid rubber, with the difference that this rubber incorporates something Andro calls the “Counterspin Damper”
Here’s a video from Andro demonstrating how this new technology works:
Playtesting the Andro Rasanter C53
We tried the Andro Rasanter C53 with our usual testing blade: the Donic Original Carbospeed.
I was worried that the combination wouldn’t work because both the blade and the rubber are extremely hard.
However, in practice, the blade and the rubber meshed quite well. I attribute this to the fact that the Rasanter C53 is a very high-throwing rubber and that it isn’t too bouncy. Both of these characteristics helped the C53 work together with the blade better.
We recommend pairing the Rasanter C53 with OFF and OFF+ blades, preferably composite ones. It isn’t too bouncy, so you can get away with using it on extremely fast blades without the usual loss of control.
This rubber was designed to work with fast composite blades. Blades like the Viscaria, the Timo Boll ALC, the Hurricane Long 5, and other 5+2 offensive blades would work perfectly with the C53.
I wouldn’t pair it with a blade that’s slower than an innerforce style blade or a fast 7-ply. For example, I wouldn’t pair this rubber with a 5-ply offensive blade like the Petr Korbel or the Stratus Power Wood.
Why not recommend such a setup for intermediate-level players or beginners? This rubber’s hardness is way too high, so they’d benefit more from using softer rubbers.
Driving and Looping
Looping is essentially what the Rasanter C53 was designed for. Driving, not so much.
As for this rubber, I don’t feel like drives are an important attribute to rate, as upper intermediate and advanced players won’t really ever drive the ball in a match situation, but they do give us an initial glimpse of the rubber’s characteristics.
Drives have a hard and clicky feel to them and the ball has an extremely high parabola. In addition, the contact feels quite hard and stable.
In the beginning, I really couldn’t believe how high the throw of the C53 was. It’s one of the highest throwing rubbers we’ve ever tried, but our stiff composite blade gave it the directness it needed.
When looping, this is an extremely good rubber.
Loops have quite a high arc. Something I liked about the Rasanter C53 is that it’s one of the select few rubbers that have a special characteristic.
I put it in the same group as the Donic Bluestorm Pro AM, the Nittaku Hammond Z2, the Butterfly Dignics 09c, and others.
These rubbers make the ball dip very violently into the table, and it feels quite hard to miss. With sufficient acceleration, the ball always seems to find the table, with great quality.
When it comes to the C53, this effect is achieved due to its high throw and its extreme grip.
Throughout our testing, and especially when performing difficult shots, this rubber always made me feel like I could close the angle of my racket, hit forwards, and play extreme angles with confidence that the ball would land on the table.
When performing forehand loops, you get a long dwell time, tons of spin, and good power.
As this is a very hard rubber, you get as much speed as you put in, that is, you won’t get fast loops if you don’t accelerate fast.
This is not to say that this is a slow rubber. Far from it. If you swing fast, you will get tons of power, and the rubber definitely has a strong catapult effect.
Its speed level is akin to that of the Dignics 09c, maybe very slightly faster.
However, where I think this rubber is truly different, is in the countertopspin and open-up departments.
We first tried countering away from the table, and the results were excellent.
The C53 is an excellent rubber for this shot due to its extreme hardness, its superb grip, and its very high throw angle.
I felt like I had to put in little effort to clear the net and trouble my opponents when playing away from the table.
Even if I hit with 70% power, my shots landed deep onto the other side of the table. And, if I closed the angle and hit forwards with more power, I could hit winners from meters away from the table.
After playing away from the table, we tried countering close to the table. Both my training partner and I agreed that this is the best rubber we’ve tried for this shot, ever since we started reviewing rubbers.
This rubber scores 10/10 for countering close to the table for 4 key reasons:
- It has tons of grip.
- It gives the player more dwell time because it isn’t as bouncy and because of its tacky topsheet.
- You can hit forwards and clear the net easily because of its high throw.
- Its hard sponge gives a sense of stability and tons of power.
The feeling is perfect.
In fact, when we tried countering close to the table, both our consistency and our power improved with this rubber, compared to the ones we use normally in our own rackets.
In addition, we could both place our shots anywhere we wanted with great control.
It’s hard to believe how good the Rasanter is when countering close to the table. It really feels like it’s somehow tricking the power-control equation.
Here’s a video showing the sheer power of this rubber when countering close to the table:
The current trend among professional players is to use these types of rubbers (hard hybrids), and we can really see why that is when performing these shots.
This rubber also gave us great confidence when performing open-ups because you get tons of spin and dwell time with the ball.
It was really hard to miss the table, and we got great quality on our shots.
I especially liked one specific type of open ups with this rubber: straight winners against backspin.
You see, because of the Rasanter’s grip and high throw angle, if you accelerate forwards with a high enough swing speed, you can hit winners against backspin very easily.
The tacky topsheet, the hard sponge, and the high throw angle make it so that it’s very easy to neutralize the incoming backspin and clear the net.
It sometimes felt like backspin was not even an issue when hitting forward. See for yourselves:
With other rubbers, this shot is very hard to land consistently on the table, but this rubber made it a lot easier.
Judging from everything I said, it may seem like the Rasanter C53 is the perfect rubber, that you should run to the nearest table tennis store and purchase it, and you’ll play like Ma Long straight away.
So, what are the drawbacks when looping with this rubber? We could find two:
1) You need to have good technique and a high swing speed to get the most out of it.
This rubber excels at shots such as counterloops and hitting winners off of backspin balls. However, you need to be at a certain level to be able to play these shots consistently.
Even if the rubber helps the player a lot in these shots, you still need a high swing speed to activate the sponge, and good timing and technique to counterloop consistently, hitting the ball with the center of your racket.
2) It isn’t as explosive as other rubbers.
Say that you have a high swing speed and good technique. Now, you can choose pretty much any rubber you want.
The thing is, rubbers like the Tenergy 05, the Hammond Z2, or the Tibhar MX-P, are much faster.
Even if the C53 is extremely powerful on the top end due to its hard sponge, you won’t get nearly as much power when looping with 70-80% power close to the table as with the aforementioned rubbers.
The Tenergy 05, for example, is a much better rubber for hitting loops against a blocked ball, as you can generate a lot more speed more easily than with the C53.
The C53 has the edge in the control department and when playing hard shots such as counterloops, but, if you like ultra-fast rubbers that do much of the work for you, this is not the one for you.
Serve and Receive
This is a great rubber to serve with. It produces a bit more spin than most other offensive rubbers and you get tons of time with the ball. It is really easy to control the depth and placement of every serve.
It also performs superbly when returning serves. The tacky topsheet is great when it comes to touching short, providing fantastic control.
This is yet another area in which the C53 has the edge over bouncy rubbers such as the Tenergy 05, it’s just much easier to touch short or to push long with great control.
In comparison, flicking was not that easy. For this shot we do prefer softer and bouncier rubbers that help us produce “easy” speed and spin.
Blocking and Chopping
Blocking with the Rasanter C53 is superb.
The rubber felt extremely good for blocking, the hardness was perfect and we could control incoming speed very easily.
And, if we blocked a bit more actively, blocks could become dangerous but still very stable.
In terms of chopping, we could create sufficient spin with it, and we felt we were able to control the ball better than with faster rubbers.
We didn’t do it any favors when pairing it with an OFF+ blade. Taking into account that we tested it with such a fast blade, the Rasanter did just fine.
Rasanter C53 vs Tibhar Hybrid K3 vs Dignics 09c
The most frequent comparisons of the Rasanter C53 are with the Tibhar Hybrid K3 and the Butterfly Dignics 09c.
Other rubbers such as the Yasaka Rakza Z can be good options for beginner and intermediate-level players who want all the benefits of a hybrid rubber, without being hard to use.
As for the Hybrid K3, the differences were very noticeable: in our opinion, the Tibhar Hybrid K3 is, to put it simply, a worse rubber on all metrics than the C53.
We tried both at the same time, one on either side of the racket, and the C53 was able to produce noticeably more spin, it had a higher throw angle, and it was also more powerful. We both felt the C53 was the better rubber.
And, as for the Dignics 09c, the Dignics is much harder, slightly spinnier, and slightly less bouncy. It’s quite different to the Rasanter C53.
If I had to say, I prefer the Rasanter for counterlooping and for hitting winners against backspin, they’re about equal when hitting loops against blocks, and I prefer the Dignics for playing out the short game and when playing spin-heavy shots such as slow open ups.
Alternatives to the Rasanter C53
The Butterfly Dignics 09c is a slightly spinnier and harder alternative to the Rasanter C53.
The Nittaku Hammond Z2 is a more explosive and slightly softer alternative to the Rasanter C53.
It’s a great rubber for beginners and intermediate-level players who want to try hybrid rubbers.
Overall Reflections on The Andro Rasanter C53
The Rasanter C53 is a superb offensive rubber.
In my mind, there’s a select group of offensive rubbers that I consider to be a step above the competition; special rubbers that have qualities and characteristics that make them stand out above the rest.
The Tenergy 05 with its trademark explosiveness, the Dignics 09c with its incredible spin, the Hammond Z2 with its amazing speed-spin-control ratio, etc.
In my opinion, the C53 is up there with that group of offensive rubbers, as it’s the best one we’ve ever tried for hitting winners against backspin and for counterlooping.
If you’re an upper intermediate or advanced offensive player and you have a strong forehand, I highly suggest you try the Andro Rasanter C53.
Alvaro’s a qualified ITTF Level 1 Coach who's been playing Table Tennis since he was 15 and is now ranked within the top 50 in his native Argentina. He loves to compete in provincial tournaments and is always looking for ways to improve. Alvaro made his favorite memories with a racket in hand, and he joined the RacketInsight team to share his passion with other players!
Blade: Butterfly Fan Zhendong ALC | Forehand: Butterfly Dignics 09c | Backhand: Butterfly Tenergy 19
Playstyle: The Controller
Hi, great review! Can you please give your opinion on Rasanter c53 vs Dignics 05 for forehand, particularly as a weapon against backspin and for blocking & counterlooping?
Hello Roland,
Both are 2 of the best rubbers for these shots. I think Dignics 05 has a bit more spin but I’d rather counterloop with the C53. Both are great for blocking. In fact, both are outstanding rubbers and they suit roughly the same players, advanced players looking for a hard offensive rubber.
You can’t go wrong with any of the two if you’re this kind of player. Both suit the TB ALC wonderfully as well.
Cheers,
Álvaro
Thank you so much!
On a different note – do you have any plans to test the Xiom Jeckyll & Hyde C55?Hugo Calderano’s new rubber?
Or if not, do you have any experience with it?
Hello Roland!
No plans yet but we’re constantly trying out new rubbers and it’s one of the most popular ones so I guess that sooner or later we’ll get our hands on it 🙂
Cheers,
Álvaro
Apologies, this is on a Timo Boll ALC.
Amazing review! Is good to see innovation on ESN rubbers that actually produce results. Do you have any idea if the c48 is a good alternative for the backhand?
Hello Murilo,
We don’t really know, we’ll let you know if we write a review for it.
Cheers,
Álvaro