Shot! 905 Two - 23 g
Shot! Darts are produced by the New Zealand dart manufacturer Puma.
The dart manufacturer Puma has nothing at all to do with the at least in Europe well-known sports good manufacturer bearing the same name. To prevent confusion and to protect the copyright the Puma product line got the name "Shot!".
At first sight I got a good impression of the darts I was kindly provided to test by premierdarts though I was not really impressed by the
packing - usually renowned dart manufacturers now-a-days don't send their darts in a simple cardboard box though to be sure it has not to be the
by now used darts case from Unicorn.
The darts came together with short aluminium shafts and a set of Shot! standard flights - black with Shot! logo - and a set of all black spare flights. Beside this I got a stainless steel dart holder and a Shot! sachet.
The darts felt comfortable - the barrels are grinded by laser and really are very "grippy", though I think the silver looking rings give a lot
of grip as well.
The surface reminded me a little bit of sandpaper which is a problem for the flights which showed obvious sanding marks after a short time. The
other problem is that the sandpaper surface is not really consistent, even after a short fortnights testing phase in many areas the black
sandpaper had already disappeared. The moment you take the darts in your hand the darts of course rub at one another and the abrasion starts.
A positive surprise was that the aluminium shafts jammed tight in the barrels without any rings one usually needs for this kind of shafts and that it was very easy to get flights into the shafts.
The flight characteristics are very positive and convincing - the darts land straight in the board and fly without much wobble, it really is a pleasure to play with them. The barrels are well balanced and the set-up works well.
When I had a closer look at the darts I found out that the workmanship has some flaws. The points of the three darts all have a different length
between 2,4 and 2,7 cm - I never had seen anything similar in a set of darts.
Of course I then used a scale - I haven't got precision scales, I used my letter scales but even this showed three different weights for the three darts. Rather astonishing was that on this scale the dart with the shortest point was the heaviest.
I would say such things shouldn't happen with a "top" dart.
I was not really happy with the supplied storage and transport items. The dart with the longest point didn't really stay fixed in the stainless steel holder and I've no idea how to transport flights without damage in holder and sachet. The sachet itself is quite a good idea as it offers space for some coins and other small items but should the darts drop out of the holder - which easily can happen - everything will tumble around in the sachet - certainly not good for flights, darts and shafts and probably the sachet will not stay unspoiled for long either.
Conclusion
My verdict is very ambivalent. On one side the darts really have very good flight characteristics and I enjoyed playing with them but on the other side the shortcomings are too serious for a dart in this price category.Should Puma plan to keep up on the European market there would be aerodynamically no problem at all but the workmanship needs a scaling up.