CRBN Barrage Review: CRBN's Most Aggressive Paddle Yet?

The CRBN Trufoam Barrage is the 3rd paddle in CRBN's Trufoam line.

CRBN came out with the first full foam paddle, and it had some popularity — especially since it had the gen 4 durability. Lots of reviewers gave it good remarks, but it wasn't aggressive enough for the average consumer who wants more power.

Then the Waves came out and I would say it underperformed. It was pretty hyped to be a super powerful version of the Trufoam, but the sweet spot was pretty bad in stock form and I don't see much of them around.

It looks like CRBN is going in a new direction with the Barrage, and it is marketed to be super poppy and aggressive, rather than focusing on dwell time.

Let's see if the Barrage can redeem the Waves.

Intro

My name is Pickle Li. I'm a 5.0 pickleball player and I've reviewed over 45 paddles on this channel. I created MyPickleList, which does community-driven paddle ratings, and there are currently over 850 ratings.

Caveats & Disclosures

Reminder: This is a first impressions review, not a full review.

I played with this for a few days, so I can't speak on long-term durability.

I'll be rating this paddle on my website MyPickleList at the end, so stay tuned for that.

If you do decide to get one, use code PICKLELI for 10% off.

The paddle releases around mid-March.

Shout out to CRBN for sending this over!

Quick Specs Overview

The Barrage uses CRBN's Trufoam core, which is a full foam core. This time they have circular indents throughout the core.

They all come in 14mm, and at this time, only the 2 and the 4 are releasing. The 2 is the standard shape and the 4 is their hybrid shape.

Andrei Daescu used the 2 shape in his most recent PPA.

One thing people didn't like about the Genesis was the fiberglass patch — they got rid of fiberglass entirely in the Barrage.

The CRBN 4 came in at 7.97 oz and the 2 came in at 8.02 oz.

On-Court First Impressions

Pop

Given how CRBN marketed the Barrage — at least how I took it — I thought it would be super poppy like the Boomstik.

This is definitely not like that. It has more pop than a lot of paddles when you hit the sweet spot, but overall it feels softer than your Boomstiks, Infernos, and RPM Q2s.

Counters and flicks are powerful, especially after adding weight, so they did well in that area. Just saying it's not as poppy right off the face as other poppy power paddles.

Control & Feel

To start with what I didn't like as much:

In stock form, I would say the sweet spot is below average to average on the 4 and about average on the 2.

Albeit playing against some good servers, I felt a lot more edge hits on returns. Sweet spot for resets was a little worse on the 4. On the 2 it was a lot better.

That being said, on out-of-the-air stuff I noticed a bit more pop-ups, maybe due to the sweet spot popping a lot more than slightly off. That made it harder to predict some shots in my opinion.

It has a more two-part feel like I mentioned with the Paddletek Reserve. So it feels like you hit the face first, then the core, rather than one cohesive core. Probably not my preference, but in-game it's not on my mind.

Overall it just feels a bit softer than other power paddles, especially coming off the Q2. It pops quite a bit but it has a softer dense feel and it's not quite instant. The Q2, Boomstik, and even Inferno and Loco are more instant than this.

In general I feel like CRBN did a good job in terms of intuitiveness. I could play pretty well right away.

After Setup

After adding weight, it is still on the softer/slightly muted side but does have some pop.

I noticed that my cross-court dinks were a lot more aggressive and felt really good. It kind of feels like the ball hits the face, then hits the core, then shoots out.

The overall feel definitely grew on me the more I played with it.

I will say after coming from the RPM Q2, the sweet spot is just not as good on the Barrage. I would say it is probably an average sweet spot — not bad or anything — but I definitely felt edge hits here and there, and I rarely did on the Q2.

You can feel it yourself by bouncing the ball on the paddle and noticing the difference between the sweet spot and off-center.

Overall I did enjoy the feel of the Barrage, especially on dinks. Feels like a softer yet poppy paddle and the ball kind of sits then shoots off.

With the weight, I might like the 4 better surprisingly. It felt pretty natural and a bit better at shaping the ball. Plus I still felt some edge hits on the 2 and the 4 actually felt less — small sample size though.

Power

I would say this paddle is a mid-tier power paddle.

I think it's a step down from the Boomstiks, RPM Q2s, and even Infernos.

You won't have trouble putting stuff away or anything. Just not as crazy power as other high-tier power paddles have.

I think the serves, returns, and drives are good. Putaways hit really hard, especially after the slight weight at 3 and 9.

Early Verdict

Now let me rate this on MyPickleList.

MPL is a website I built that does community-driven paddle ratings — a quick and easy way to see how good a paddle is without having to watch YouTube videos like this one. We currently have over 200 members and over 860 ratings, and it's only going to get better with more ratings, so please join!

If you're in the Atlanta area, you're in luck — we're currently giving $20 gift cards to Premier Racquet Sports if you rate and comment on 5 paddles. Link in bio.

Back to the review.

I don't think the Barrage lives up to the claims of being the most poppy and aggressive thing on the market, but I do think CRBN made a good paddle — especially coming off the Waves, which I rarely see on the courts.

The Barrage falls into the mid-tier power category with aggressive pop, just more plush and muted feeling than other poppy paddles like the Boomstik and RPM Q2.

I'm going to give the CRBN Barrage (both shapes) an 8/10.

The feel grew on me and I could place my shots well with the paddle. I just wished the sweet spot was super big like other paddles — the sweet spot I would say is just average/good, at least in terms of edge-hitting and getting the ball back over.

The CRBN 2 performed better in stock form, but after adding a bit of weight on 3 and 9 on both, they both played well.

I do think there will be some people who like the feel. One of my friends reset super well with this, and my mom's friend actually liked it and bought the Barrage over a bunch of other paddles like the RPM Q2, the Inferno, etc.

So overall, I think it has a bit more interesting feel than the typical paddles on the market — more plush and muted but has a bunch of pop. Solid paddle that is more aggressive than the past Trufoams, just not enough change that will disrupt the current paddle market.

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