Paddletek Reserve Honeyfoam Review: Their Best Paddle Yet?

A year or two ago, Paddletek released their Bantam series which were super popular power paddles. During a time where everyone's Joola's were breaking, Paddletek provided more durability and power everyone was looking for.

Since then, Paddletek's paddles faded away in popularity.

The sweetspot was always on the smaller side, and paddles just as powerful and arguably better in performance and durability were released.

It's been a long time since Paddletek made a new paddle with a different core technology, but it's finally here.

This is the Paddletek Reserve, their new gen 4 paddle.

For those who don't know, gen 4 paddles are paddles with full foam core.

Core crushing was a huge issue for the past 2 years, and the introduction of full foam cores seemed to have fixed that.

Let's see how their new paddle performs and if it can combat them losing Anna Leigh Waters.

My name is Pickle Li. I'm a 5.0 pickleball player and reviewed over 40 paddles on this channel. I created MyPickleList, which does community driven paddle ratings, and there are currently over 740 ratings.

Caveats & Disclosures

Reminder: This is a first impressions review, not a full review. I played with this for a week straight so can't speak to long-term durability.

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

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

General Overview

The Paddletek Reserve is a bit interesting because it is currently only limitedly released to select retailers, Premier Racquet Sports being one of them.

They released to these retailers on January 27th 2026, but will be available to everyone in April.

Really weird to have such a big gap in release date, but that's just my opinion, maybe they're onto something.

Anyways, they supposedly are coming out with all 3 normal shapes, elongated, hybrid, and standard.

Premier only has the elongated shape when I picked this up, so that's what I'll be reviewing.

I also checked online and on Paddletek's website, there is only the TKO-K shape which is the elongated shape we have here.

So I guess they are releasing just the elongated ones first.

Anyways, the Reserve features their new honeyfoam technology, which I thought would be some honeycomb shaped foam in the core, but it's actually a dual density foam core setup.

It has the Joola propulsion core layout, just the foam version.

So there is an outer ring of foam with the majority of the core being a different density foam.

They come in 14 and 16mm options, and I chose to go with the 16mm.

My paddle weighed in at 8.27 oz.

On-Court First Impressions

Pop

I would say this paddle has above average pop although it doesn't have that traditional feel of a poppy paddle.

It is not the most instant pop, but did not have any issue with countering, and I will say the ball pops off further than you would think.

I think the feel is interesting so let's dive into that.

Control & Feel

In my first impressions video where I literally hit with it for 10 minutes, I mentioned how it has a two part feel where you can kind of feel the carbon fiber face first then the core.

This feeling was more so when you hit slightly off the sweetspot, and if you hit the sweet spot. It feels very plush, yet rebounds right after.

I can confirm this is the general feeling if you pay more attention, and did confirm the feeling with some other people who tried it.

When playing a game though, I didn't notice it too much.

The overwhelming general feeling you get in game is just a very soft plush paddle that is surprisingly poppy for how soft it is.

It kind of feels like the ball holds on the face an extra split second before coming off the paddle.

The sweetspot is pretty good on the paddle, a definite upgrade from the bantam series.

I did notice it is more dead towards the bottom and towards the top, which is pretty normal though, especially for an elongated shape.

Overall regarding control and feel, it was not my favorite. I didn't find it to be the most predictable paddle.

Because it is very plush and soft yet poppy and I would say a bit more muted than average, I found it harder to know how far the ball was going to go.

It was better on drives and drops + it has more dwell time to add spin.

But I definitely felt myself popping up more resets than I would like because I wasn't used to how far the ball was going to go.

When adding weight it didn't really do too much to help the control or feel but it's probably one of those paddles that are already weighted up a bit to play well in stock form.

One of my friends said he felt like it was good just a bit heavier than his normal RPM's.

I felt like I could play with it decently, just had some things like the intuitiveness that made it hard to play really well with it.

Power

Power is an interesting topic with this paddle.

Because of the softness, you wouldn't think nor does it sound like it hits hard.

But because of the pop you think it hits kind of hard.

After asking a bunch and noticing throughout my playtime with it, I will say it's a low to mid tier power paddle.

I hit it right before a Loco hybrid and I think it may hit a bit harder on certain shots, or at least equivalent.

My friend who came from an RPM also said it was around the same level. I personally think it's less.

On putaways and stuff you definitely don't feel like you will end the point instantly, but in terms of power from the baseline like serves and drives, I think it is a bit closer to a low-mid tier power paddle.

Early Verdict

Now let me rate this on MyPickleList.

MPL is a website I built that does community driven paddle ratings.

The purpose is to be 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 150 members and over 740 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 since we are currently giving $20 giftcards to Premier Racquet Sports if you rate and comment on 5 paddles.

Back to the review.

The Paddletek Reserve is an interesting paddle in my opinion.

It has one of the most soft and plush feels of paddles I tried but has lots of pop.

I played ok with it, but just didn't find the paddle to be the most intuitive with my limited time with it.

For that reason I have to give it a 7/10.

If you like a really plush and soft feel in general, but you wanted something with more power and pop, then this could be good paddle for you.

I think the sweetspot is solid and is for sure an improvement from the bantams.

And in my opinion, this is probably Paddletek's best paddle.

Solid low-mid tier gen 4 power paddle and I'm honestly glad all the gen 4 paddles I played with recently have different feels.

When gen 4 cores first came out they were relatively similar, but now it seems like they all can be very unique, for example, from this, to the CRBN trufoam, to the Boomstik, to the Flik F3.

Just another gen 4 option you can choose from if the others didn't match your preference, and I think innovation is just going to keep getting paddles better and better.