Badminton String Selection Guide
22 badminton string sets from Yonex, Ashaway and Victor. Say what you want more of, narrow the list, and compare up to three side by side. The ratings start from each maker's own figures, put on one scale so the brands can be read together.
1 · What do you want more of?
Pick one or more. The list keeps each brand's top three for what you picked.
2 · Narrow it down
3 · The chart
Yonex (14)Ashaway (5)Victor (3)
Each mark is a string, or several that sit together. Click one. Gauge is a measurement. The scores start from each maker's own ratings: Yonex's are shown as published, and Ashaway's and Victor's are stretched onto the same range, their lowest rating to Yonex's lowest and their highest to its highest. That makes the brands readable side by side; it is our adjustment, not a measurement, so treat a few points' difference between brands as no difference. A string appears only on the axes its maker rates.
4 · The feel map
Yonex (14)Victor (3)
Where Yonex and Victor place their own strings: harder or softer on the racquet, and leaning to repulsion or to hold and durability. Yonex's left-hand side is "maximum hold", Victor's is "durability". Ashaway publishes no such map, so its strings are not on it.
Your shortlist
How to choose a badminton string
Start with the gauge. Across every brand here, the thinner strings (0.61 to 0.65 mm) are the ones their makers rate highest for repulsion and hitting sound, and the thicker ones (0.68 to 0.70 mm) highest for durability. If you rarely break strings, try a thinner one; if you break them often, go thicker.
Then the feel. A hard-feeling string gives a crisp, direct hit; a soft one holds the shuttle a little longer and is easier on the arm. Yonex and Victor say where each of their strings sits.
Hybrids pair a thicker main string with a thin cross string: durability where the wear is, repulsion and bite from the crosses.
The ratings on this page start from the manufacturers' own figures for their own strings. The makers do not use one scale - Ashaway rates all of its strings 8 to 10 where Yonex uses 5 to 11 - so Ashaway's and Victor's figures are stretched onto the range Yonex uses. Read the result as a guide: it shows each string's strengths and trade-offs, not a laboratory ranking. See every set in badminton strings.
Every rated string, by brand
Yonex (14)
Ashaway (5)
Victor (3)
Not rated by the maker (2)
We carry these sets; their maker publishes no ratings we could use. They are on neither chart.