The Best Pickleball Paddles 2025

The Best Pickleball Paddles 2025

We’re always excited to see a paddle brand break onto the scene with immediate success, and it’s with good reason that the Double Black Diamond Control from Six Zero did just that. While this paddle may not lead the league in any single category, its unmatched combination of power, spin, and control stands out, offering a better balance of all three than any other paddle we tested. We try new paddles every week (yes, we’re spoiled—we know), and adjusting to each new one usually takes a few games for us to break them in. Our team had no delay with this paddle. The points reflected the length and intensity we have while playing with our individual favorites. For these reasons, and based on the feedback we’ve received from our customers, this paddle from Six Zero earns our claim as the Best Overall Paddle of 2025.

Best Overall Pickleball Paddles

Why waste your time drilling to improve your dinks and resets, when you can buy a new paddle to upgrade these parts of your game instead? Take the easy road, give the Selkirk LUXX Control Air Epic a try (we offer a 30 day paddle guarantee). If you prefer to dink your opponents to death rather than drive every chance you get, our team found the LUXX Control to be the best weapon of choice for that style of play. While a 20mm thick paddle may not be for everyone, what it lacks in plow-through, it more than makes up for in precision. The gritty surface of the paddle grabs the ball and with the oversized sweet spot, slice and topspin dinks are easily dropping at your opponent's feet.

Best Control Pickleball Paddles

JOOLA is a brand known for pushing the limits of innovation (and price) with their paddles. Their high-end models with names like Ben Johns attached consistently deliver power and advanced technology that justify their higher price tags. With the Andre Agassi Edge, JOOLA introduces a paddle with a new price point, shape, and name—and once again, they’ve stuck the landing. The unique tapered and rounded shape did take some break-in time with our drives, and we found the sweet spot to be slightly shifted toward the top of the paddle. For players with a tennis background, this shift provides familiar leverage. For those without a tennis background, you’ll still be able to use it, but expect to grunt a little more, probably adopt a two-handed backhand, and maybe start to complain about the noise pickleball makes. No other adjustments to your game are necessary. Overall, the paddle felt fantastic—offering easy access to power with a familiar JOOLA grit and core, and a uniquely expanded sweet spot that produced predictable output on off-center hits. The paddle is incredibly well-rounded and outperformed competitors in a similar price range. Best bang for your buck, hands down.

Best Value Pickleball Paddles

"Let it go! It's going out!.......nevermind"

The intention behind Selkirk LABS paddles is to test out new paddle technology and see where it gains traction. The Project 008 Tour is packed with innovation—and it certainly delivers on traction. The components under the hood of this paddle are exciting: its foam construction reduces vibration and prevents crushing, with an expanded sweet-spot you will have enough control that you'll quickly gain confidence with your drives. In those long dink rallies where you are waiting for a ball just high enough to strike, the height of that ball will be lower with this paddle in your hands. We recommend this paddle for players who interpret the "D" in 3SD as "drive," not "drop." The T700 Raw Carbon Fiber face is common in high-end paddles, and this paddle wins our Best for Spin contest thanks to the design surrounding the face, which lets you utilize it to its full potential.

Best Spin Pickleball Paddles

If you have ever played with someone using a Gearbox Pro or Pro Ultimate paddle you may have noticed the effortless power they can generate with a slight flick of the wrist. The latest from Gearbox, the Pro Ultimate Power brings this effortless level of power to your game while also being PBCoR certified. This means it passes the test of not having an "illegal" amount of power. If we had to guess, it must be a grain of salt below the limit. If you try this paddle after using a more traditional shape or paddle with an edge-guard know there is a break-in period as you would expect from something with a distinct construction, shape, and being 14mm thick. Once you are over that hurdle, expect your game to elevate with added power to every shot in your arsenal, without a corresponding increase in effort. Beyond a high ceiling of power, the floor of control in this paddle is a few stories underground. This paddle will take you under the (legal) radar, and onto the podium.

Best Power Pickleball Paddles

Selecting a suitable pickleball paddle is important, but having an ideal or the best paddle is optimal. Considering the ever-expanding menu of paddles to choose from, narrowing the process down can be a little tricky. To help new and experienced players alike make a more well-informed search and purchase, we try to list all aspects of paddle performance, in terms of where the sources of power, control and comfort are derived from. Ultimately our aim is to deliver you a paddle that is both fun and easy to swing, right out of the box, and also provides room for skill improvement.

The best paddle is one that feels, looks and sounds good to you. Aspects like paddle weight, shape, handle length/size, core liveliness, and spin potential all play into a paddle’s performance. Other factors to consider include affordability and durability.

Power comes in three basic forms: Weight, length and the energy return produced from the core and surface materials. Weight and length are more closely related to each other, as you can feel paddle mass and length just by picking a paddle up. You cannot really feel how lively the core is or realize a paddle's spin potential until you have played with it.

Heavier paddles feature better stability, vibration control and have a larger sweetspot compared to lighter paddles. However, at a point, can be at the expense of maneuverability. Ideally you want enough mass to keep the paddle stable, especially on off center contact of the ball, yet light enough to swing over the period of time you most often play. Beginners to intermediate skill sets will probably gain the most from a middle-of-the-road paddle in terms of weight, maybe 7.7 - 8.1 ozs.

A longer paddle offers increased power, not to mention extra reach.

Core wise, polypropylene is by far the most popular material these days. And when players refer to a paddle as having good "pop," that usually indicates a noticeable degree of power coming from the paddle's core. The thinner the core, the livelier the response. Thicker cores absorb more energy at impact of the ball and return less to the ball.

Along with a loopy swing path high friction surfaces are probably the most effective way to improve access to spin, with raw carbon currently leading the way. Manufacturers are now able to deliver top tier levels of spin using fiberglass and carbon composite face materials.

Simply put, a paddle that delivers good performance, is reasonably priced and withstands regular use over a longer period of time without compromising its quality can be considered the best paddle! With our vast selection to choose from, we are confident that we have a paddle that will suit any player's needs. Although players ultimately have to make their own decision, Pickleball Warehouse can help minimize the search time, which will help maximize your play time.

Our "The Best Pickleball Paddles" list is based on playtester feedback. We begin, and repeat this process every few months, with approximately 30 paddles, and then test each one under similar play conditions. Our playtesters score each paddle based on a variety of criteria, including player experience level. The result is a list containing, what we feel are, the very best pickleball paddles.