Premium Pickleball Paddle Cleaner Carbon Fiber Pickle Ball Racket Cleaner for Quick & Effortless Removal of Ball Residue, Dirt, and Minor Scrapes/Scratches

They are not as pictured, no box. Cellophane wrapped with just a white pattern on one side. They are about 1.75" square and about 3/8" thick. So kinda smaller than you would expect. They do a good job of cleaning pickleball paddles. Too expensive at ~$8 to recommend though.

Since I’m only playing pickleball indoors in the winter, I did not think my racket would need any cleaning until I began to use it outdoors in the spring. But for many events, the club where I play provides the balls. To limit the number of balls that might be taken away, they mark their balls with black markers. As a result, our rackets pick up black ink stains. This cleaner removed those stains so it should work well on dirt and other contaminants. Note: It did not arrive in a box as pictured. It was simply wrapped in plastic. But I would not have kept the box anyway.

Last year there were only a couple of brands of pickleball paddle erasers to choose from, but now there are dozens. I ordered nine different brands at different price points to compare, and this is what I found. In no particular order, these are the competitors:1: Velocity Paddle – This eraser comes with a free grip tape, which I did not review. The box is about twice as big as it should be.2: Yuxitia – This came as a three-pack, except the three erasers were all just loose in the shipping box. This might be a good option if you want to share these with your friends.3: WCIC – This eraser is twice as large as any of the others, and I chose it to see if the shape made any difference.4: Ace Pickleball – This eraser has a cool ace-of-spades logo.5: QOGIR – I chose this eraser because it was a different shape.6: G GoodGear – I also chose this eraser because it was rectangular, but I didn’t compare the photos to the text description or to each other. I was actually a bit confused at first when it arrived because it looks nothing like the one in the pictures, but by process of elimination this is the G GoodGear eraser.7: SPOENGRU – I chose this eraser because it kept appearing in my search results.8: Courtcraft Provisions – This one looked about the same as the others but had a stamped logo.9: Professor Pickleball – The name sounded cool. But then again, the competitors seemed to mostly be named by an AI choosing words or letters at random.Unboxing:All of the erasers arrived wrapped in plastic except ACE, QOGIR, and Courtcraft Provisions, which were just in a box. Like many of these, the QOGIR was sticky around the edges, which made it particularly difficult to remove from its snug box without just tearing the box off. ACE Pickleball made their box a little bigger and Courtcraft Provisions made their box open on the wide end to combat this.All of these erasers are about the same thickness, though Courtcraft Provisions and QOGIR are a few mm thinner than the others. They are all about two inches square, except the rectangular ones and G GoodGear which is smaller all around. The smaller variances in size might not be brand specific though, because the three Yuxitia erasers all vary by several mm except in thickness.Out of their packaging they all look pretty similar. Most of them claim to be made from pure natural rubber, though some claim they are formulated specifically for pickleball. I think they just mean they are black like most paddles with raw carbon fiber faces instead of the tan natural rubber color. This picture shows a common rubber stick used to clean belt sanders, and you can buy a two inch by two inch by twelve inch stick (or 12 times bigger than most of these) for about the price of 1-2 of these, but it will be tan. Some of the erasers also claim to work on abrasive belts and discs or skateboard grip tape, which makes sense, while others claim to work on ping pong or tennis rackets with is nonsense. You can also find erasers in red, orange, green, and probably other colors, but black is the most common.These all feel about the same when squeezed, though the G GoodGear was noticeably softer, the WCIC was just slightly softer, and the ACE Pickleball was considerably stiffer than the rest which were about the same.The ACE Pickleball eraser was the least sticky of the bunch, SPOENGRU and Courtcraft Provisions were slightly tackier, and all of the others were pretty sticky around the edges. This stickiness abates with use or as the eraser gets dirty.And finally, before we get to results, the QOGIR and ACE Pickleball erasers are both clearly made from two layers pressed together while the others appear to be solid slabs. The ACE Pickleball eraser looks the roughest of all.Test Results:These erasers remove the tiny bits of pickleball and other detritus that get stuck in the texture of your paddle face with the goal of restoring the look and texture performance of the paddle. If you want more details about this, there are lots of videos about how to use these and even before and after comparisons with a microscope. I’m assuming you get the idea.Many of these erasers claim to restore minor scrapes and scratches. This is nonsense; damage to the paddle surface itself is not fixed by rubbing it with a rubber eraser. However, all of these erasers did leave residue on the surface. After cleaning with the eraser, put a few drops of water on the paddle face and rub your palm back and forth along the grain. You will get the rubber residue to roll up and brush off. You may need to do this several times before it stops coming off. This rubber residue may be “repairing” the scratches in your paddle face, or it may be filling in the texture that you depend on to produce spin. Maybe a thin coat of rubber helps the spin more than clean carbon fibers? I haven’t tested this. I do know that the black rubber residue is basically invisible compared to the raw tan rubber from an abrasive cleaning stick. Is that why these are almost all black?Even after cleaning with various erasers and cleaning some parts of the paddle with several different erasers, there are lots of marks on my paddle that simply don’t come off. They are, however, much less obvious than all of the stuff that did come off, and you have to hold the paddle at the right angle to the light to see them at all. Casually the paddle looks much cleaner. I haven’t noticed much difference in actual performance either way, though, so the variability in my performance probably matters more than the cleanliness of the paddle.ACE Pickleball’s eraser was surprisingly my favorite to use because it was stiff and left less residue. WCIC is by far the easiest to use because it’s easiest to grip. With both of these I was able to get enough pressure on the two-inch edge to clean the paddle, while I needed to use the thinner one-inch edge on the others. The QOGIR was awkward on any edge, and the G GoodGear was just too small and squishy. All of the others were basically the same.Photos: 1 – Packaging 2 – Unboxing 3 – Face-up size comparison 4 – Edge/thickness comparison, and small belt sander cleaner for color comparison 5 – Face-down thickness comparison 6 – My paddle after cleaning with ALL of the erasers: Yes, it’s a little cleaner.