Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Can a smart basketball make you a better shooter?”.
Hey guys, this is Sean with The Verge, and this is the Wilson X connected basketball, Wilson X, connected basketball is a smart basketball. That knows whether or not you made or missed your shot without needing to add anything to the rim or to the net. It connects via bluetooth to an app on your phone that can track a whole practice worth of shots and there even a couple games that you can play to help make yourself a little bit better in the clutch, and we wanted to test this out for ourselves. So we came over to Brooklyn to play some basketball – I’m not very good. At basketball haven’t played in a long time, so I brought my colleague, Frank P out with me, because he actually can make a few shots bottom line. Is this thing’s a lot of fun to play with, but there are some limitations. First, you have to have a net on your hoop.
Second, you have to shoot from outside seven feet. This thing’s not gon na attract layups or dunks. Even if that’s not a problem for you, the app also gives you constant feedback, whether you’ve made or missed the shot.
But you need a Bluetooth speaker. Some Bluetooth headphones to be able to listen to that, while you’re playing setting your phone on the side of the course just isn’t gon na cut it, you’re, never gon na hear that feedback. It’S really simple to use to pair it.
All you have to do is flip the ball ten feet in the air and let it rotate it connects to the phone really fast, there’s no buttons, no USB dongles, no charging. In fact, Wilson says you could shoot this thing 300 times a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year before it would start to die. But the biggest problem of this thing might be the accuracy Wilson says it’s 97 percent accurate, but it definitely didn’t feel that way.
While we were out here on the court, miss shots didn’t register as miss made, shots, didn’t register is made and the biggest problem is the lag even when it is working. It takes a while for the Bluetooth to register all the way back to your phone and tell you that you’ve made or missed a shot. That’S fine in free throw modes, but in the game modes can be really annoying.
All that brings us around to the price. This thing is not cheap for a basketball, 199 dollars gon na be out on the court shooting hundreds of times a day every day to make sure that you make the team, maybe that’s worth the investment, but for that much money. We’D expect a little bit more accuracy. This basketball was one of the first of its kind, and it’s only gon na get better. It’S already better than some of the other ones that are out on the market. Wilson’S also gon na be bringing this tech to some of the other sports, like tennis, volleyball and baseball that is involved with, but it’s the kind of thing that could fundamentally change how we play sports and how we get better at them.
If your goal is to get better at basketball, this can definitely help, but it’s not gon na do all the work for you. .