Customer review for Newgy Robo-Pong 3050XL

Review by symbat for Newgy Robo-Pong 3050XL on September 7, 2018

I purchased this robot to upgrade from my Huipang JTA, which is a great cheap robot. I wanted something more programable and something that could produce better spin shots, as well as "rally" type of drills. In the end I was not happy with this product.

First issue I had was with the power supply. The supplied power supply has the cable length that is too short. Meaning, the heavy "brick" part of the power supply is suspended above the ground and is pulling on both the cable and the port on the robot. This is not good and is just begging for either the cable or port to fail quickly. you have to use a box or something else to hold the brick about 3-4" off the ground. Next is the issue with the bluetooth connection. If for any reason the bluetooth gets disconnected, it is hit or miss if it will reconnect. Mostly miss, which means that you have to reboot the robot. Sometimes it requires more than one robot reboot and a reboot of my iphone 6. This got old rather quickly.

This robot also gets bound up fairly often. My JTA robot sometimes does not feed a ball, but generally will spit one out the next attempt. On the JTA I think the feeding problem is in the bottom of the robot where the balls get fed up the tube. On this robot I think the problem is in the head. This will bind up, shake a little bit then move on the the next ball. However, on the next ball you will get 2 balls thrown at you.

I really dislike the net on this robot. It seems that the netting is soaked in some sort of ink and you will quickly get black stripes and marks all over your practice balls. Yes, using a robot will mark up your practice balls, but this is way beyond anything that my other robots have done.

At this point I was not 100% happy with the robot, but it worked pretty well when it worked. Unfortunately, it kind of stopped working on day 4-5 of ownership. It started to throw 25% of the balls at the net. Resetting and recalibrating the robot did not help. The problem seemed to get worse and worse. I ended up returning it for a refund and went with the Power Pong 3000.

Oh, and the free practice balls that it comes with have a lot of soft spots on them. Enough to cause problems with impacts on the bat.

The thing that shocks me the most about this experience is the fact that Newgy has been making robots for a long time. One would think that they would not sell their flagship robot with a power supply that is too short and will end up failing. You would think they could find a way to provide a net that will not paint lines all over your practice balls upon first impact. You would think they could figure out how to resolve that strange feeding issue. Once my robot failed and started to randomly throw balls into the net I had the option of returning it for a new one, or a refund. Based on the above issues that one could argue never should have never existed on this robot in the first place, I decided to go with the refund.

Manufacturer response:
While the Bluetooth calibration was hit or miss on some of our earlier robots we have worked hard to get this fixed. We recently (March 2019) updated the 3050XL App to address this issue as well as the feed issue you were having. The Bluetooth connection issue has been resolved and we no longer have the “double ball” issue that you were seeing. Keep in mind that since the 3050XL is controlled by an app we will continually update the app with any fixes that are needed as well as add new features over time. We take all of the feedback on any issues that we may have to make a better app and product for everybody.
The marks you are seeing on the balls are actually from the two throw wheels and not the net. This is due to the high rate of speed that the wheels turn to throw the ball. The ball is very slightly compressed to get through the wheels to provide the spin that each player wants resulting in “marks” on the training balls. We are currently working through options to fix this issue as well.
As always we are here to provide customer support with any issues that you may encounter. We want your experience with our products to be the best that it can be and to provide you with many years of training and use.

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