Released in 2022, the Nittaku Hammond Z2 is one of the newest top-of-the-line offensive rubbers. According to Nittaku, it promises to be “a powerful and spinny rubber that suits the requirements of the top players.”
That makes it a very interesting rubber for any experienced attacking players.
Since its release, the Hammond Z2 has become one of the most popular rubbers in the world so we had to purchase a sheet and give it a test.
We played with it for around 10 hours to determine exactly how it plays, and help you decide if it would be a good fit for your game.
The strongest attributes of the Hammond Z2 are its spin and power. It is indeed a top rubber that excels at looping, powerlooping, blocking, and counterlooping. These attributes make it an incredible rubber for the forehand side.
Unlike similar rubbers, we found that it isn’t hard to receive serves and conduct touch-play at the net with the Hammond simply because it isn’t as bouncy as other rubbers (like the Tenergy 05).
Overall, we thoroughly enjoyed playing with the Hammond Z2 and expect it to continue being a very popular rubber for offensive players.
Perfect for: Upper intermediate and advanced offensive players on their preferred attacking side. 3-10+ years of playing.
Ace
About the Reviewer
Alvaro brings 7+ years of playing experience. He’s tested 20+ rubbers for Racket Insight and his style is The Controller.
About the Review
Blade Used: Stratus Power Wood
Rubber Thickness: 2.15mm
Hours Tested: 10+
Recommended Playstyles
We recommend the Hammond Z2 to upper intermediate and advanced offensive players who want a very powerful, hard, and spinny rubber without losing too much feeling and control.
Design of the Nittaku Hammond Z2
The Nittaku Hammond Z2 comes in a high-quality sealed package. The packaging is particularly noteworthy in this review as it’s quite likely the best we’ve ever seen.
Nittaku have outdone themselves with this packaging. Inside the package, we can find the bright red, max thickness rubber we ordered.
In addition, we can find a high-quality protective film!
This is something that I didn’t see coming, and a very positive surprise. Seeing Nittaku go out of their way to include a permanent protective film, exactly the same model as the one they sell separately, gives a great first impression.
In the past we’ve reviewed other Nittaku rubbers such as the excellent Fastarc G-1 where they didn’t include the protective film, so this is a very welcome change.
I’ve also never found protective films even on more expensive rubbers. The Butterfly Dignics 05 we reviewed is nearly double the Hammond’s price and now I feel short-changed.
This small detail shows that Nittaku believes this rubber is worth taking care of. A great start.
The topsheet of the rubber is quite grippy and slightly tacky. Its sponge is bright red and quite hard. To test its hardness, we used our durometer. Its adjusted reading was 52° on the ESN scale, making the Hammond Z2 a very hard rubber.
It’s nearly the same hardness as the Dignics series or 39-40° Hurricane 3.
In terms of weight, the rubber came in at just 47 grams when cut to my Donic Original Carbospeed, which is a sensational weight for a rubber this hard and with the playing characteristics we will discuss below.
Before we talk about its playing characteristics, I would like to talk about the design of the Hammond Z2.
I’m going to let you in on a little trade secret here: There are a handful of factories in the world that produce rubbers for all of the rubber brands.
Think about Andro, Donic, Tibhar, Joola, Xiom, Yasaka. All of these brands have their rubbers made by the same German factory: ESN.
If you see a rubber with the “made in Germany” inscription, that rubber almost certainly came out of the ESN factory.
These rubbers do have many differences between them, but, if you want something that’s truly completely different, you have to look for rubbers made in different factories, such as DHS or Butterfly rubbers, which have a completely different feel and playing characteristics.
However, this Hammond rubber, unlike other Nittaku rubbers (like the Fastarc G-1, that’s made in the ESN factory), is made in Japan.
Because of this, the Hammond Z2 has the potential to be something different: because it’s not made by the same people who make all the other rubbers!
Playtesting the Nittaku Hammond Z2
We tried the Nittaku Hammond Z2 with our usual testing blade: the Donic Original Carbospeed.
As the Hammond Z2 is quite a hard rubber, we believe that it would be better suited for slightly softer and more flexible blades than the Original Carbospeed.
As a matter of fact, when we concluded our playtesting, I passed this rubber on to one of my clubmates, who uses a Donic Waldner OFF World Champion 89 blade.
He let me have 15 minutes with it and I instantly realized it was a much more suitable blade. The power was still there, but the arc, the feeling, the ease of spin, and the control all felt better.
Therefore, we recommend pairing the Hammond Z2 with OFF and OFF- blades that are either composite or all-wood to bring out all of its speed and spin potential while retaining a good amount of control. It would play extremely well on most offensive blades.
Driving and Looping
Driving and looping is essentially what the Hammond Z2 was designed for.
Drives have a clicky feel to them and the ball travels quite fast. In addition, the contact feels quite hard and stable.
When looping, the Hammond Z2 is an extremely good rubber.
Loops have a medium arc. The ball shoots off the rubber rather violently with great amounts of speed and spin.
Even though it’s quite a hard rubber, you retain a great feeling with the ball. It feels like getting the best of both worlds.
You can really feel how the topsheet grabs the ball and how the ball sinks into the sponge. When playing, it doesn’t feel as hard as a traditional Chinese rubber like the Hurricane 3 NEO.
With the Hurricane, the ball contact feels quite hard, metallic, and dull. With the Hammond, even if the rubber is as hard as the 38-39 degree variant of the Hurricane, the feeling upon contact is much better because of its porous sponge.
In terms of power, the Hammond has nearly limitless power reserves because of its hardness, but, what I liked about it, is that its base speed is higher than other harder rubbers.
You see, the Hammond Z2 is a relatively bouncy and clicky rubber, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
It is not as bouncy nor as spin sensitive as the Tenergy 05 or the Tibhar MX-P so playing out the short game isn’t as hard, but its base speed isn’t low like the Dignics 09c or the Hurricane 3 to the point which if you don’t swing hard you don’t get enough speed.
If I had to say, this is the main virtue of the Hammond Z2, its defining factor.
The rubber bridges the gap between powerful and very hard rubbers that require high swing speeds (for example, the Hurricane 3 NEO or the Dignics line) and medium-hard, bouncy rubbers that do much of the work for you (many ESN tensors, the Tenergy line, etc.).
If you loop at 70% power with the Hammond, you already get adequate amounts of speed and spin, and, if you hit harder and harder, the rubber responds perfectly.
The downside to this is that it isn’t as explosive as the fastest rubbers nor it doesn’t generate as much quality when hitting extremely hard as a boosted Hurricane or a Dignics.
However, I think the Hammond does both of these things extremely well, so I don’t think this is a “jack of all trades, master of none” situation. I think the Hammond is great at both scenarios: explosiveness and top-end power.
If you purchase a Hammond Z2, you can expect power, speed, spin, stability, and explosiveness.
As you will see in the following videos, the Hammond Z2 is an extremely fast and powerful rubber in its own right, it’s definitely up there with the very top rubbers in the market.
In terms of open-ups, the rubber behaves amazingly. We get sufficient dwell time with the ball and the feeling is very good.
The topsheet grip is excellent and it’s easy to impart very high amounts of spin on the ball. More than with most offensive rubbers, but ever so slightly less than with the best rubbers for this shot (the Dignics, Tenergies, and Hurricanes of the world).
I was able to force easy mistakes time and time again from my opponents just from my spinny open-ups.
We tested the Nittaku Hammond Z2 with the DHS Gold Arc 8 on the other side of the blade, a good offensive rubber, and we compared their spin on open-ups side by side. This was the result:
As you can see, we quickly realized that the rubber was markedly spinnier than the Gold Arc. Both me and my partner could feel the difference and he struggled to block the Hammond’s open-ups a lot more, sending some of them long.
The Hammond Z2 is also superb when it comes to counterlooping. It has great feeling, the perfect hardness, and more than enough power.
I loved playing with the Hammond because I felt I could just rip through the ball. It gave me a lot of confidence when countering, and my shots were extremely powerful.
Here’s a video showing the Hammond’s power when counterlooping:
Serve and Receive
The Hammond is a great rubber to serve with. It produces a bit more spin than most other offensive rubbers, helping you win more points from the serve alone.
In terms of serve receive, the Hammond is a good rubber. It isn’t a particularly easy rubber to receive as it’s quite hard and relatively responsive, but you can definitely get used to it.
Flicking was easy and with proper acceleration you can generate very high amounts of speed and spin.
Blocking and Chopping
Blocking with the Hammond Z2 is superb.
I loved blocking with the rubber as the feeling, the speed, and the hardness was just perfect.
Active blocks were extremely dangerous and passive blocks were fast enough to cause problems for my opponents as well.
In terms of chopping, the rubber was up to par. You can generate tons of spin when chopping because of its extremely grippy sponge.
However, it isn’t the most controllable rubber for chopping just because it is quite a fast rubber.
Even then, if paired with a more defensive blade, it could be a good forehand rubber for modern defenders who alternate chops with loops.
Hammond Z2 vs Dignics 05 vs Tenergy 05
The most frequent comparisons of the Hammond Z2 are with the Tenergy 05 and the Dignics line, especially with the Dignics 05. This is because these two rubbers are the most popular high-end offensive non-tacky rubbers.
You see, coming back to what we explained before, the Hammond Z2 is not made in the same factory as ESN rubbers.
If you ask me, ESN is still not at the same level as Butterfly. I believe that ESN rubbers can be near the same quality as the Butterfly offerings, but either missing the control and touch, missing the durability, or both.
For example, the Tibhar MX-P is the natural competitor of the Tenergy 05. From my experience with my level of usage, the MX-P lasts around 1 month in playable condition, while the Tenergy 05 lasts 4.
A friend of mine also purchased a Joola Dynaryz ZGR recently, which we haven’t prioritized for review because of its durability. It lasted only 3 weeks and it was completely dead afterwards. The first two weeks, it performed quite well, but it decayed incredibly quickly.
In addition, this same friend of mine (poor guy) purchased a Donic Bluestar A1, the current top Donic rubber, used by most Donic sponsored players.
This is how it’s looking after 2 training sessions:
Yes, you read that right, just 2 training sessions, not two weeks, not two months, just two individual training sessions.
I checked back with him three days later and this was how it was looking:
As you can see, ESN rubbers can indeed achieve the level of Butterfly rubbers, but only just for a small fraction of the time.
However, the Hammond Z2 has been rated 8.8/10 for durability. Now, as we only tested the rubber for 10 hours, we can’t speak about its long-term durability, but users online feel very positively about it, and my experiences with Nittaku’s level of durability are also great.
Given the playing characteristics and the durability of the Hammond, I believe it is on par with the Tenergy 05 and the Dignics line. I believe the 9.6/10 rating on Revspin is warranted.
Do I think the Hammond Z2 is better than these rubbers? I think it’s as good as them, it’s priced significantly cheaper than both, and it should hold up well over time.
I think the Hammond Z2 can compete with both the Dignics 05 and the Tenergy 05 in terms of quality, for sure.
In fact, in my opinion, the Hammond Z2 sits right in the middle of the Tenergy 05 and the Dignics 05 in two ways:
The most explosive of the bunch is the Tenergy 05 which makes it incredibly explosive and dangerous by itself, while the Dignics 05 has a moderate base speed, which makes it very controllable when counterlooping and in the short game.
The Hammond Z2 is right in the middle with a high base speed but one that is not as high as the Tenergy.
In terms of hardness and top speed, the Tenergy 05 is the softest at around 48 degrees ESN. Then, the Hammond Z2 sits at around 52 and the Dignics 05 is ever so slightly harder at around 53, but the Dignics feels much harder when playing.
Where I think the Hammond Z2 is not quite on par with the other two is in terms of spin.
You see, the Hammond Z2 is a very, very spinny rubber, but it doesn’t have the same ease of spinning the ball as the Tenergy 05, nor does it have the same outstanding level of grip as the Dignics 05.
I think the Hammond can achieve 90% of the spin of the aforementioned rubbers in most scenarios, but it doesn’t have the easy spin of the Tenergy, nor the maximum spin that you can achieve with the Dignics.
However, as I said before, I think the Hammond Z2 is an extremely capable rubber and definitely a top rubber in today’s market. In addition, being able to compare it with both of these rubbers at a better price point is definitely something worth mentioning.
If we were to compare it to a normal offensive ESN tensor rubber like the Rasanter R47 or the Fastarc G-1, the Hammond Z2 is markedly faster, spinner, and harder offering. It’s simply a superior rubber in my opinion.
It’s definitely a step above regular ESN offensive rubbers. It bites the ball much better and the speed you can generate with it is markedly higher as well.
Alternatives to The Hammond Z2
It’s the other mainstream high-end rubber that can compete with the Hammond Z2.
The Butterfly Tenergy 05 is a more explosive and softer alternative to the Hammond Z2.
The Butterfly Dignics 05 is a tamer, spinnier and more controllable alternative to the Hammond Z2.
Overall Reflections on The Nittaku Hammond Z2
The Hammond Z2 is a superb offensive rubber.
It is an extremely good rubber for looping and counterlooping. It’s hard and fast, and you can generate very high levels of speed and spin with it.
What we found is that it’s explosive and it has a high top-end speed, while being very stable at the same time. Our favorite feature of the rubber was its overall strong capabilities across every facet of offensive play.
If you’re an upper intermediate or advanced offensive player looking for a forehand rubber, you should really consider the Hammond Z2. It’s an excellent rubber. It can also be played on the backhand side if your backhand is strong enough to handle its hardness.
Have you played with the Hammond Z2? Let us know in the comments below if you agree or disagree with my review.
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
Hello Alvaro,
I was wondering if you have any recommendation for a high throwing, very high spin and highly grippy/tacky backhand rubber which isn’t very bouncy for short touches and is maybe even long lasting? I know that dignics 09C suits these criterions but it’s too expensive for me.
Best regards,
shao
Hello Shao!
Maybe Donic Baracuda can suit your criteria? I think it ticks all the boxes 🙂
Cheers,
Álvaro
Hello just wanna ask do you recommend nittaku Hammond z2 and nittaku fastarc g1 with blade acoustic carbon?
Hello Ammar,
Yes, that is a great setup for advanced offensive two winged loopers. I’d recommend this setup for these players, if you aren’t advanced or upper intermediate I’d choose something slower.
Cheers,
Álvaro