Got a table tennis table at home from reading one of my great table tennis table reviews? Have you ever wanted to practise anytime you want? No friends around? No problem! My answer to this is below!
OK picture this, it’s Tuesday night, you’re home alone and no-one is up for playing table tennis with you. A little frustrating right? You have a quality table tennis table at home and you’re tired of folding the table in half to practise your shots, as folding it in half has limited creativity in what shots you can play and the returns you get by yourself.
Step in the room, The Newgy Robo Pong – Ping Pong Robot Machine! The Newgy Robo Pong have been clever and produced several different models for different levels of players and are priced accordingly. I wished I had one growing up!
First-up! Newgy have produced the Robo-Pong 540, for beginners.
WHAT A GREAT INVENTION.
The easy to use controls:
So let’s start with the first of the Newby Robo –Pong range, the Robo-Poing 540
The Newgy Robo-Pong 540 is a robot built and designed to practice your shots on your own! You can place the Robo-Pong 540 anywhere at the end of the table at the place it at different angles to give you the shots you need to practise. If you want to practise your forehand strokes, or backhand stokes you can just position the Robo-Pong anywhere on the table. The machine comes with a neat analog machine so you can adjust the frequency and speed of the ball.
These easy to use controls help you have control over the types of shots that you want to practise. The Robo-Pong 540 can provide good variation of spins, shots and angles. The types of spins available are almost an exact replica as a decent player returning your shots would be. The Robo Pong 540 machine can give you topsin, backspin, sidespin both left and right, just perfect if you want to focus on one type of shot.
I also found it interesting that you can use the controller to give you a combination of spins. That’s going to keep your mind sharp, focused and practise as if it was in a real match mode. The truth is, if you’re up against a good player who can serve well, then you never really know what serve they are going to give you and that makes the game really exciting. With the Robo-Pong 540 you can practise your shots like the back hand chop, forehand push, forehand loop or smash.
One of the cool features is that you can adjust the head angles. You can practise your return of serves with the low angles adjustments and long, lob shots if you move the head facing up. This is where it gets exciting as once you get used to the ball coming at you and you become confident at returning the ball, you can start to use the analog controls and add side spin to the balls! It forces you to setup your game and have a harder return of serve or shot.
I love the fact that is has a basket for the balls, this basically allows for continues play for several minutes depending on the speed of which you all the balls to come at you. You can hold about 120 balls in the basket
The Analog controller has a long cable so you can place it on your side of the table, if you need to adjust the speed and frequency of the ball. The speeds are from 1 – 10 and so is the frequency.
Ha, watch out friends when you’re next down the club and you have been practicing all night long to beat them! Well isn’t that what being competitive is all about? Staying up all night to become the best player in your neighbourhood? I would completely do that! But then again, I’m a complete Table Tennis Geek!
Overall summary?
With 6 available spins and 5 Available shot selections, a Head that can be adjusted for different Angles, this entry level Newby Robo-Pong 540 is a fantastic beginner’s entry level machine. A perfect buy if you want to practise on your own or with your family. GO SEEK and start having hours of fun! It comes with a one year warranty – YAH!
Key features at a glance included with the Newby Robo-Pong 540
- Table Tennis Ball thrower
- Bucket for the table tennis balls
- Analog Control Box
- Fab little Cable Clip
- Transformer
- Connector Cable
- Instruction Manual
- 48 Orange 40mm Robo-Ball (USA only)
Is it easy to set up?
It takes about 5 mins to set up, you connect the machine to the power cable and the control box! Once you have placed the Newgy Robo-Pong 540 at the other end of the table tennis table, you can start practising. It's that simple!
What’s the shipping weight?
It’s very light at 10.8 pounds
Is it easy to store away?
Once you have picked up all the balls and put them back in your basket, the machine doesn’t take up too much room.
Is it possible to program the Newby to hit left and right?
Yep! And that’s the great thing about this machine, it has so much flexibility it resembles real playing.
Do I need a ‘Catch Net’ for this model?
You don’t need one if you’re on a budget, but it does help as the table tennis balls will be flying all over the place. The iPong catch net works perfectly. You can check it out below and purchase the net here.
Is the machine noisy, from 0-10 if 10 is loudest where it is?
You can expect a little noise, as it has an engine attached to it, so somewhere between 4 and 6the noise starts to increase a little.
Does the Newgy Robo-Pong 540 come with table tennis balls?
Yep! It sure does it comes with 48 balls. Although it does say inside the USA only, but if that is a problem you can purchase some great practice balls discounted on Amazon here.
Thank you for stopping by my review of one of the best table tennis robots - the Newgy 540. Please do go ahead and leabe a comment for others below!