When you are taking your very first steps in table tennis, the question of whether you are using a good ball or not is not very important. Once you have attained some proficiency at the various strokes, however, you begin to notice, by the spin, balls that are not perfectly round. Such imperfections can make a ball play strange tricks when spin is imparted to it and you will be astonished at how different it is from a normal, truly round, ball. Correct weight and resilience are also important. You should be careful to use only balls from a reliable supplier. The difference in effect between playing with hard or soft, heavy or light balls is very considerable and it could mean the difference between victory and defeat in a match if you use a kind of ball that you dislike playing with.

Usually, suppliers of high quality table tennis equipment offer so-called “training” and “competition” balls. Competition balls are also called 3star ITTF approved balls. They have to meet the requirements of the ITTF. They must be carefully selected by weight, roundness, and have a consistent bounce. Training balls could also be very high quality. Sometimes, the highest quality training balls could outperform even 3star balls of average quality.