Padel Racket Review - Adidas Adipower CTRL 3.3 2024

What the reviewers say

Four independent reviews land in almost the same place. The control and the sweet spot are the headline, the power is what you pay for them.

Virgin Active Padel Club ZA spent much of their test hitting deliberately off centre to find the limit: "The soft performance foam feels extremely bouncy. I can feel the ball sit inside the foam and trampoline off, and at the same time it does not feel like I can miss."

Timo at Padel FYI is the clearest voice on what changed. He scores it 8.9 overall but reads the new core as a step down in level: "The softer core is easy at slow and medium speeds, but it absorbs at high speeds and it takes power off flat smashes." He now points it at lower intermediates, where he recommended the 3.2 to high intermediates.

PadelZoom scores it 8.4, with a 9 for control and for handling and a 7 for power, and they are blunt about where it runs out: "The smash is this racket's handicap. You need a good level to bring the ball back, although the texture still lets you take it out past the side fence."

Padel Chiquito's zone by zone numbers tell the same story from another angle: 8.1 from the back, 9 for handling, 8.5 for the sweet spot, then 6.4 on the volley and 6.2 off the wall. Their line on wall balls: "The control is excessive, in the best sense."

Where they disagree is level. Padel FYI moves it down a step because of the softer core. PadelZoom and Padel Chiquito keep it as an advanced control racket, precisely because you need technique to get power out of it. Racketguide measured a test sample at 364g with the balance at 58 percent of the length, and their machine read the core as fairly firm despite the soft label, which matches reviewers who describe the feel as medium rather than plush.

Our take: Christoph's summary

The Adipower CTRL 3.3 builds points, it does not end them. It does the repeatable work well: depth from the back, a clean block, a bandeja that lands where it was aimed, and it forgives contact away from the middle better than most rackets at this price. The limit is honest and it shows up at the net and above the shoulder, where anyone used to closing with a flat volley or a fast smash meets the power ceiling long before the control runs out. Buy it to stop leaking errors, not to add pace.

Defense is the strongest zone. The large sweet spot and the even balance mean a ball taken late off the back wall still leaves the face with usable speed, so you rarely get pinned. The soft core absorbs pace from hard groundstrokes, which makes the block genuinely reliable, and the texture bites enough to float a deep lob without pushing. At high speed that absorption turns into a trade-off: the ball sits a fraction too long and the counter loses its sting.

Offense asks for your own power. A round head, a central balance and a soft core are exactly the three ingredients that flatten a smash, and reviewers land around 7 there. The kick smash and the topspin smash work better than the flat one, because the moulded roughness grabs the ball and the spin is what takes it out past the fence. A bajada played for pace instead of placement is the shot that most often comes back.

Net play splits in two. Placement volleys are easy: the racket is quick in the hand, the face stays stable, and the ball goes where you point it. The punch volley is the weak spot, 6.4 at Padel Chiquito, because the soft core swallows some of the speed you put in. The bandeja and víbora are a strength again, around 7.8, since both are spin shots and the texture does the work.

How it compares

Against the Adidas Adipower CTRL Team 3.3 2024: the Team uses a fibreglass face and costs roughly half. It is softer and has even less power, but for a player still building consistency the on-court gap is smaller than the gap in price. Take the CTRL 3.3 when you want the crisper 3K carbon response and the stronger moulded texture.

Against the Adidas Adipower Multiweight CTRL 3.3 2024: the same control-first intent, but the weight and balance screws let you move mass towards the head and buy back some of the punch the CTRL 3.3 lacks. Pick the Multiweight if the power ceiling is your main worry. Pick the CTRL 3.3 if the bigger sweet spot and the quicker hand at the net matter more.