Volkl V-Cell 9 Racket Review

We enjoyed the whippy nature of the V-Cell 9 and found the 6pt head light balance allowed us to get it swinging nicely through the air.

It seems simple, but it’s an important part of playing with any racket – if you can’t get the racket head speed, then you’re not going to be able to maximize your strokes.

The technology Volkl uses in its rackets also does a great job at making this racket comfortable to play with.

It’s still a fairly stiff racket, but the technology does well at dampening any nasty vibrations and making it easy on your joints.

On the flip side though, the dampening does have an effect on the feel.

We couldn’t get perfectly comfortable with the feel, and sometimes found it was a little bit too involved for our liking.

When you’re going for your big groundstroke drives though, that’s not a big issue, and there is a lot to like about this stick.

You’ve got a lot of spin potential, which means you can easily add some extra RPMs to your ball and start pushing your opponent onto the back foot.

For me, this is never a problem on the forehand side, but it was a big help on the backhand side where I got a slightly better flight path and was able to be nice and aggressive.

The other slight negative I had with this stick is that I would have enjoyed a little bit more stability.

The V-Cell 9 has a swingweight of 317 and I’d love to see that bumped up a little bit more.

It was a bit more geared to speed and spin, but for players who already generate plenty of these, the stability would give them a little bit more in the power and control departments.

All in all, we enjoyed playing with the Volkl V-Cell 9 from the back of the court and felt it would suit players looking for speed, spin, and comfort.

If that’s you, then it’s certainly worth taking a look at this racket.

We gave it an 8 out of 10 from the back of the court.

The characteristics of the V-Cell 9 seemed to lend themselves much more to play from the back of the court.

Stability and feel are key at the net, and although they’re not areas where the V-Cell is terrible, they’re not the strongest points for this racket.

We felt most comfortable coming into the net with the Volkl when we were following a strong approach shot and could play volleys from above the height of the net.

In these situations, the V-Cell is nice and crisp, allowing you to inject power into the ball to put it out of the reach of your opponent.

When you’re forced to play the more difficult volleys, the ones off your feet or on the stretch, that’s when you miss that extra bit of stability and feel.

This would rule this racket out for me if I was someone who loved to get to the net really quickly because I just didn’t feel that comfortable hitting the most difficult volleys.

That’s not to says it’s a bad racket at the net, it’s just not one we’d recommend for the Tim Henman’s of the world.

Looking at the positives though, it’s very easy to get into position, and again you don’t suffer from horrible vibrations.

This makes the V-Cell 9 very easy to play with at the net and gives you a good platform from which to improve your technique.

We’d say the Volkl V-Cell 9’s performance at the net was good, if not great.

If you’re someone who comes into the net just to finish off the point, then it’s got everything you need, but if you like coming in off a whim and a prayer, then you might want something with a bit more stability.

The Volkl V-Cell 9 gets a 7 out of 10 at the net from us.

We might not have been able to get the V-Cell 9 working how we wanted it at the net, but we certainly did on the serve.

Tons of racket head speed allowed us to attack the ball with purpose and really get the ball travelling through the air.

On the flat first serves, we were able to crank up the MPH, but there was also plenty of spin available to mix things up.

This worked particularly well for me on the slice serve out wide, where I was getting the ball to move nicely off the court and drag my opponents outside the trams.

The access to spin also worked nicely on the second serve, allowing us to get plenty of height over the net to add extra margin for error.

The spin also meant it was much more difficult for people to get on top of our second serves and put us under pressure.

So, a high percentage of serves in court, with plenty of variety meant a great serving performance, and we rarely found ourselves in trouble on service games.

If you can look after your serve, then you’re going to win a lot of matches, so this is a great place to start from.

We really enjoyed this part of the playtest and gave the Volkl V-Cell 9 a good score of 8.5 out of 10.

I always find the return is an area where you need to feel extremely comfortable with the racket you’ve got in your hands.

When you’re returning a 130mph bomb, you want to have complete confidence in your feel and control, and I never quite felt that with the V-Cell 9.

It was a little easier on the second serve where I could take slightly bigger swings at the ball and make use of the V-Cell’s maneuverability, but it was another area where I wanted slightly more stability.

There are going to be players who really get on with the more involved feel and easy swinging nature of this stick though, and they might just find it ticks all the boxes on the return.

For me though its an area where I really go for control, and I would have liked a little more from the V-Cell 9.

Similarly to the volleys, the Volkl V Cell 9 doesn’t do badly on the return, but I was missing a little something.

This brought the score down a bit, but still, this stick earns a respectable score of 7.5 out of 10.

Overall, this is another good racket from Volkl.

It’s going to suit those players who thrive on speed and access to spin to play at a high intermediate or advanced level.

It’s certainly got that modern feel so if you’re someone who looks for classic, control-oriented rackets, then it’s not the one for you, but if you go in for the modern type rackets then you will find you enjoy this stick.

We really enjoyed the easy maneuverability of the Volkl, which lead us to be really aggressive on the groundstrokes and serves, but we did want just a little bit more control to help us tame our shots.

Sometimes with Volkl, we find we’re never quite sure what we’re going to get, but on this occasion, we found we got exactly what we expected.

A nice alternative to rackets like the Babolat Pure Aero Tour and Head Extreme Pro, if you’re looking at those rackets, then you should also consider this one.

An 8 out of 10 for the Volkl V-Cell 9.