As I had trouble finding retailers (and up the chain, manufacturers) that would send me at least 3 true to spec racquets, I decided to try and order a bunch myself and keep the (best) fitting ones.
The last few years, I mostly played with the 2019 Prince TeXtreme Tour 100 310g. Occasionally switching back to the trusty RF97A. Had demo'd a bunch lately including the VCORE 98 but couldn't find the (next) one.
The 2019 Tour 100 310 had felt always quite harsh to me, which was a big disappointment since the previous gen of TeXtreme had one of the nicest feels I could remember. Also e.g. on stretch shots I could feel the hoop wobble.
The successor was supposed to address both. I had a hit with it over the summer and quite liked it. Despite the visual design :) (On this overview page, note that Prince mistakenly lists this as 300g.)
But we're starting to get into a review here...
In regards to tolerances, here's what I was able to measure for the 9 frames at home:
These would be "grip only". Compare to the official 310 / 310 spec.
Since I didn't want to unwrap all 9 frames, I estimated the values in () based on the following findings:
Weight
Prince cardboard 12g
Plastic grip wrap incl sticker 2g
Finishing rubber 1g
(for wrap and rubber combined, the scale sometimes goes to 4g => 3-4g)
=> -15g for grip only (no board wrap rubber)
Balance
Prince cardboard ~12g moves balance up ~7mm => -7mm w/o cardboard
Plastic grip wrap and finishing rubber 3-4g (without cardboard on frame) move balance down ~1mm
=> -6mm for grip only (no board wrap rubber)
So based on my sample of 9, we have very high ~7g and ~5mm spread.
The 306 / 311 combo should be much too light feeling.
The 312 / 312, especially in comparison with 306 / 311, quite heavy.
Since I couldn't measure swing weight at home, I went by the above measures and dry-swing-feel.
So far I strung up 91795236, 91784919, 91780027, which are within +/- 1g and 1mm.
Despite this close range they so far feel quite different to me: 1 like a sharp tournament stick, another one like a tweener power racquet, and 1 in between. Maybe that's partially due to where the weight ended up distributed in the frame.
Once I get the chance of course I'll measure swing weight...
So far not enjoying this try-out, and not loving one of the racquets - but we'll see.
Again, in an ideal racquet world, one wouldn't even have to do all this work, but would get true-to-spec and/or "same-playing" racquets straight from the source.
What do do? Looks like in terms of trusted specs, Yonex seems to have fallen too...
P.S.: Reminder that the player's goal is to find a racquet including specs that work for them, not (only) that the specs between racquets match :)