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Austria, Vienna
1 Level
727 Review
41 Karma

Review on STIGA SensorScore Table Tennis Scoring System With Innovative Sensor Technology by Jay Kowal

Revainrating 3 out of 5

Very effective, but a narrow target audience

This is a very interesting gadget, though my opinions about it are mixed. First off, in our experience, it is remarkably accurate. It registers even the slightest table strikes - including glancing edge/corner strikes - and it keeps very accurate score. The accuracy of the net sensor is similarly good, though it might be a little less reliable in my experience (once, I think I struck a glancing blow across the top of the net, which it didn't register.either it or I was mistaken). All in all, though, it's quite remarkable.The downsides are not insignificant, though, and they include (1) that it it is so sensitive that you have to be careful about making ANY kind of contact with the table - even putting a ball back into the side rail, or taking a new one out, is enough to register a false positive table strike. To avoid this sort of thing from happening, you need to get used to using the remote control, turning the sensors on and off to let the gadget know when the ball actually is in play. This means a lot of manual intervention throughout the game, which in my mind undercuts at least part of the premise of having an automated scorekeeper in the first place. And (2), we should remember that scorekeeping is not exactly an onerous chore, and I'm unsure whether your garden variety table tennis enthusiast needs it to be automated at all. Finally, (3) there are a lot of cables to snake around the underside of the table, and you need to drill and then screw-mount the primary sensors underneath.all of which may be undesirable or impractical for some people.So basically my thoughts are that if you're a table tennis enthusiast, and you get into frequent arguments about glancing/oblique net and edge strikes, this Stiga SensorScore may be really useful to you as a neutral arbiter. But I do suspect that most people, most of the time, would see this as table tennis "bling" - a novelty complication that they don't genuinely "need" at any price.

Pros
  • It eliminates the need for scorekeepers or referees, giving players peace of mind and full autonomy during matches
Cons
  • Players may become too reliant on the system rather than developing their own scoring skills