Ashaway Powerkill 120 Meta Review

Racket	Ashaway Powerkill 120 Meta
Shape	Traditional
Advertised weight (strung)	120 grams
Weight distribution	Head heavy
String	Ashaway Supernick ZX
Stringing pattern	16×19
Head size	500cm sq
Colour	Black/Silver/Orange
Release date	2022
Purchase links	PDH Sports
Price at launch	£140

The Ashaway Powerkill 120 Meta combines high quality Japanese graphite, an oversized traditional head shape and a dense stringing pattern to deliver a unique squash racket to the market.

Replacing the older 120ZX, Ashaway have upgraded this frame with higher quality materials and a new colour scheme. We took it on court to see exactly how it plays.

Purchase links
PDH Sports

Ashaway Powerkill 120 Meta – first impressions

Unboxing the Ashaway Powerkill 120 Meta and taking a quick look, there were a few things that immediately struck me about this racket. The first was the size of the head – it looks a fair bit bigger than just about every other racket I’ve hit with.

The second was how light the racket feels. I had a look at a few similar rackets in my cupboard from Head and Dunlop, and this felt much more manoeuvrable. We’ll get to that in the next section.

Putting the Ashaway Powerkill 120 on the scales

Racket	Weight in head	Weight in grip	Overall	Weight distribution
Ashaway Powerkill Meta 120	81	65	146	55.5%
305SQUASH Procell 120	81	69	150	54.0%
Head Radical SB120	82	70	152	52.9%
Dunlop Sonic Core Ultimate 132	83	71	154	53.9%
Ashaway Powerkill Meta ZX	74	63	137	54.0%

Taking the Ashaway Powerkill 120 Meta on court

Manoeuvrability – 8.5/10

For the last few months I’ve been using the Dunlop Revelation Pro Lite – a medium weight racket that feels fairly manoeuvrable to me. Certainly not the lightest, but far from the heaviest. Switching to this Ashaway frame – wow.

Though this racket is technically head heavy, it feels comparatively light when measured alongside other squash rackets. This is because when weighed across two scales (one under the head, one under the grip), just 81 grams of its weight is in the head. That puts it inside the top third of squash rackets tested for weight in the head.

Hitting the ball, you really feel like you’re in full control of your shot. Where you want the racket to go, it goes.

For players with a well developed technique, especially those who favour ‘whipping’ the racket with a strong wrist, changing the direction of their shots, and chopping the ball into the front, this racket could open up the doors for some extra creative freedom on your shots.

The larger head size is the one thing that reduces the manoeuvrability of this racket – you can definitely feel the size of the racket as it travels through the air. If you want the ultimate racket for manoeuvrability, look towards Ashaway’s Meta ZX – with its small racket face, that racket is truly in a league of its own.

Power – 6.5/10

The Powerkill 120 Meta isn’t a heavy racket, and therefore has less potential energy to transfer into the ball on impact when compared to other, heavier rackets.

Does that mean you can’t hit the ball hard? Absolutely not. When I wanted to put pace on the ball, I could do so with relative ease.

The unique advantage to power with a racket like this, is that you can generate lots of racket head speed with a relatively short swing. With heavier rackets, preparation is key. Try using a heavy racket with a short backswing and see how weak your shots feel (as well as your arm!).

This is further helped by its large head size, which in theory should allow the racket to generate more power than those with smaller racket faces.

I’ve used a car analogy before and I’ll use it again. Take something like the Head Speed 135 – it’s a beast of a racket that can absolutely crush the ball through the front wall. I likened it to a Bugatti – incredibly fast in a straight line, but far from agile.

This Ashaway racket is more like a Lotus Elise – it doesn’t have the fastest top-end speed, but it’s ultra-fast and agile around corners. If you squint hard enough, I think this makes sense!

Control – 8.5/10

With the design of this racket, I found myself able to consistently play a wide variety of shots – both to the front of the court and the back.

I found it easy to place the ball exactly where I wanted it to go. This is thanks in part to the light weight and dense stringing pattern, and also the beautiful Supernick ZX strings that come as standard.

You really feel your shot through the frame as you hit the ball. This is thanks in part to the new Meta material used in the racket, which results in a fairly stiff frame. There’s tons of feedback which in turn helps the racket to feel like an extension of your arm.

Thanks to its larger head size, I also found the racket fairly forgiving, more so than the smaller-headed Meta ZX. Off-centre shots were noticeable, but still hit with a reasonable amount of comfort and consistency.

Design

For me personally, I really like the colour scheme on the Ashaway PowerKill 120 Meta– the black/silver/orange combination goes well together and looks really sleek – especially with the orange Ashaway Supernick ZX strings as standard.

I would like to see Ashaway try their own take on a cleaner design – the tribal style paintwork feels a little dated when compared to some of the new rackets hitting the market. I’m being fairly critical here though, and of course, the paint on a racket doesn’t change the way it plays.

Ashaway Powerkill 120 Meta – Summary

The latest racket from Ashaway is a unique racket in a somewhat saturated market. What sets the 120 Meta apart, is the combination of one of the largest racket-head sizes of any traditional shaped racket, an ultra lightweight frame and dense stringing pattern.

All of these attributes combine to produce a racket could be a great choice for ‘shotmakers’, especially those looking for a little extra comfort and forgiveness compared to smaller-headed frames.

Finally – worth the cost?

At the time of writing, the Ashaway Powerkill Meta 120 can be picked up for a scrape over £110. Rackets are becoming evermore expensive, so this is a fairly standard price for a top-tier racket. Do consider however, that you’re also getting an incredibly high quality set of stock strings, which should help forego any temptation to get the racket restrung before the strings break.