Gearbox GX2 Power Review: Best Top Tier Power Paddle?

Pickleball is currently in its power phase - everyone seems to be using a power paddle.

The Joola Pro 4's in particular have flooded the market.

Gearbox just dropped their GX2 Power, a paddle many reviewers are calling the direct competitor of the Joola Pro 4's.

Is this the best top tier power paddle out there? Or will everyone keep using the same old Joola Pro 4's? Let's find out.

Image via Gearbox

Caveats & Disclosures

As a reminder, this is a first impressions review.

I've only played with this paddle for a couple of days, so I don't have much insight on long-term durability.

This paddle is actually marketed to break in, and supposed to get more powerful and have a larger sweetspot.

I am not too sure where exactly I am on that timeline, but I will go more into it later.

Shout out to Premier Racquet Sports in Atlanta for letting me borrow this paddle. Check them out if you're in the area.

Gearbox GX2 Power Specs & Price

The GX2 Power comes in both a hybrid and an elongated shape.

I'm testing the hybrid version today.

It features Gearbox's SST 2.0 CarbonRibCore, which has carbon fiber ribs filled with foam, just like the original GX2.

My paddle came in at 8 oz.

I did test this paddle out with my normal setup, which is 3g strips at 4 and 8 o'clock right above the curve and a 9g flick weight.

The weight after the setup was 8.54 oz.

Image via Gearbox

Gearbox GX2 Power Performance: Power, Control & Feel

Pop

In stock form, I'd say this paddle is on the higher side of pop.

It packs a punch on counters, but the paddle doesn't pop off the face right away like some other poppy paddles, which is interesting.

If you flick right at the opponent, you can bag them easily, but it doesn't feel overly poppy in general, like how I felt with the Selkirk Boomstik.

I really enjoyed hands battles with this thing because of it.

Resetting the first day I used it was very difficult because of the pop. Everything was just going very high and I needed to use two hands on all my resets to try to tame it.

This did get better over time.

Control & Feel

This paddle has a lot of dwell time for a gen 3 paddle.

The ball really sinks into the face and then launches off.

Coming from my CRBN4 Trufoam Genesis, I didn't have much trouble dinking with it from the beginning.

I had to be a bit more cautious because balls would come off a little hotter, but I could pretty much use it right away.

The dinks were very consistent and had good spin.

The sweetspot is good as well - I could take dinks out of the air easily and not really edge hit much.

This paddle excels in the kitchen. You can consistently dink well and it has good spin, and when you counter something, it's fast.

Controlling drops were decent, definitely better with my setup.

It wasn't even the sweetspot, but the balls just felt easier to control - perhaps I just had better feel because of the weight.

I do think where this paddle could improve is the sharpness of shots though.

My drops and drives were a bit loopier, which gets the ball over the net, but especially on heavier topspin shots, I sometimes wished the ball dipped a little faster and had a lower trajectory.

Although I did not speedup that much off of the bounce this time around, I do think this applies to off the bounce speedups as well.

They were coming up higher than I would like sometimes. It could be just a getting used to the paddle thing though.

Also regarding feel, the last GX2 didn't really have much feel and everything was very muted. This paddle does have more feel than that, which is an improvement - just so you have more of an idea where the ball is going.

Power

The drives with this thing hit hard, but they're not as crazy as the Boomstik or a broken-in Pro 4.

The thing is that with paddles like these, at least the Pro 4 and GX2 Power, it really depends on how broken in they are.

Like I mentioned earlier, two people demoed this paddle before me, and I don't know how long they hit with it for - whether it be one day casually or a week of playing with it for hours.

I personally played with it for 3-4 days and didn't notice any major changes, for what it's worth. Felt more controllable the longer I had it, to be honest, but it very well could just be me getting used to it.

Anyways, back to power - shots definitely go deeper but not overly uncontrollable. I actually think my returns were consistently deeper. Serves probably were as well - it just didn't feel like they were hitting like a rocket, for example. The sound could play a role in that though.

There is an increase in putaway power, and I felt like I could end points a bit quicker because of it, which is always nice.

Image via Gearbox

Gearbox GX2 Power Rating & Verdict

Now let me rate this on MyPickleList.

MyPickleList is the website I built where you can keep track of all your paddles and in the meantime help others determine which paddles to get. This ideally makes it really easy to see if a paddle is good or not without having to watch a bunch of YouTube videos or blogs like this one!

Overall, I really enjoyed playing with the Gearbox GX2 Power.

Even in stock form, I could play relatively well with it, and maybe even regarding kitchen drills due to the pop and power.

Of all the paddles I reviewed excluding my mains, I think this may be one of the ones I enjoyed playing with the most.

For me, because of it having more dwell time, which is my preference, I could play well with it - just needed to tone down my shots a bit to account for the extra juice, particularly in the back.

If I had to pick between the 3 big power paddles right now - the Pro 4, the Boomstik, and this - I think I would play best with this paddle. Although it would be close between this and the Pro 4.

For context, I am referring to the Pro 4 Scorpius and the elongated Boomstik, which may not be the fairest comparison, but that's the only one I had a chance to try.

I do think the shots are a bit loopier - maybe too much dwell time - but everything felt really nice for me, even resetting towards the end of my time with it.

It has been a while since I played with the Scorpius extensively, so perhaps I just got better, but as of now, I do think I would pick the GX2 Power over it.

All in all, I think if you like using paddles near the top in power, I think you can't go wrong with any of the "big" three.

I know PB Studio really likes the Boomstik, which I did not enjoy as much - I felt way more comfortable with this.

All in all, they will all be similar in power, and the decision would be depending if you like more pop with the Boomstik, more dwell time with the GX2 Power, and an in-between with the Pro 4's.

I'm giving the Gearbox GX2 Power Hybrid a 9/10 - this is on par with my top ratings I've given out.

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This is a first impressions review based on a few days of play testing. Long-term durability and performance may vary. Shout out to Premier Racquet Sports for providing the demo paddle.