Over time I’ve gotten quite good at swatting flies here during the summer, I live on farm land and we get them in the house more so than those in the city, but perhaps not compared to those on summer picnics as the advertising imagery suggests. Not a tennis player myself, I can see the appeal of the sport first thing in the morning, which during peak season this racket will be the first thing that you’ll reach for when getting out of bed. The first thing anybody wants to do when they get a new toy is to try it, but avoid overconfidence trying to hit the big flying beasties in their prime, you’ll never catch them before they find an exit. Best close the windows and doors and turn off the lights to draw them to the window light where you can trap them between the glass and the electrified grill! Holding the racket in different ways until I developed my technique I initially felt that a second button closer to the neck of the racket would have given me greater control for greater hitting power, however the suggestion would only be countered as inconvenient by another with this one size-fits-all device. The answer then seems to be that the entire handle should be capacitative so that the circuit completes whenever picked up, this way it could even be double-gripped by those who prefer. The handle being the main point of interaction for the user I would highlight the all plastic grip, which would benefit from more aggressive stippling, not sandpaper, but more pronounced as summer makes people sweat more, the exercise trying to catch a flying beasties alone, and those on a picnics may well have oily hands (not to mention that they always seem appear when one is eating), and the last thing anybody wants it a broken TV set because the racket flew out of their hands! One of the biggest problems with flying beasties is that they choose when to alert you often when the racket is not to hand. My preferred position for uptake is to leave the racket handle side up so that I don’t grab the wrong end of the stick as it were, allowing me to react quicker. An improvement of my own creation for my carpeted surroundings was to affix a small piece of rough (the bit with the hooks) adhesive velcro to the outer rim of the racket’s head, which prevented it from sliding and falling flat onto the floor when resting it upright against a surface. A more expensive solution would be the strategic placement of neodymium magnets both at the neck and crown of the head, as many common magnetically attracted objects around a house would make for a useful holster, given that two magnets allow for infinite orientation the racket could be positioned more readily accessible with the handle left poking out. However even at scale, the costs would double the racket’s price, so it would be welcome if strategic areas were milled away for customers to add their own (neodymium magnets come in a wide variety of sizes), so long as this didn’t impede the structural integrity of the racket. I bought the racket based on a decision that dominates most purchases I make these days and that’s hygiene. I’ve purchased an electric racket in the past with a crossed-mesh design and it was impossible to clean, trapping dead flies that smoulder every time the circuit was completed. All I need do with the Executioner is fling any freeloaders off (after juggling them around on the grills to make sure they learned their lesson of course). Therefore the Executioner’s single direction grill was the main reason I purchased this racket, it as easy to wipe clean as you’d imagine, as experience showed. The other main factors were online reviews of the Executioner, particularly video based ones, where this racket seemed to be the go-to for pranks the world over, meaning that with global reach it was likely a reliable choice. Online reviews here on Amazon too were not far from the truth, as reassuring cracks would result from most frags, but a clean kill was not always the case. With larger foes a single tanning is insufficient, leaving them spinning like a ninja turtle, only to regain their bearings and fly away shortly after, but not before you give them the old roily-poly under the electrified grill, followed by a stomp for good measure. There is a “Pro” version of this racket, but unlike as you’d imagine, that does not translate into more power, rather it means greater surface area for the electrified grille, but not enough to justify the price if you ask me. I do wish that the company would MAKE THAT CLEAR, as most would be forgiven for thinking it had more power. I can’t help but wonder if they’ve not missed a trick here as the handle is easily long enough to accommodate another pair of AA batteries. I have not opened up my racket (it’s not broken!) and cannot be sure of its internals, but am convinced that it would be a welcome option if users could either increase the power stored in the capacitor, or to extend the life between charges. I don’t know if there would be legal health and safety issues storing more power, or if it would even make a difference to those flying beasties that have more resilience, but the main thing is that if it does make a significant difference, then to make four battery operation ancillary, possibly with an internal switch for either more power, or higher zapping output, or ignore the option all together. The great thing about the Executioner is it doesn’t need to have bells and whistles, it just does one thing very well, which gave me the confidence to choose it over their competition, but few would not buy a music player because it had a volume button on it. On the subject of power I checked online to see what kind of batteries would be best for these kinds of rackets as I recall that power would run low quite easily from the one that I had before (but that was likely those rechargeable batteries being old), otherwise you might as well use a badminton racket. I checked to see if higher mAh batteries that photographers use for their DSLR flash-bulb cameras would be best as I imagined that the sudden demand of power would require that kind of battery, but the feedback I received was that those power hungry batteries hand short life cycles and therefore wouldn’t be worth the money compared to standard ones. So I opted for the normal Fujitsu rechargeable batteries (the real Eneloop) and charged them slowly on a PowerX MH-C9000, and they’ve lasted for a whole months use, with daily frags! CONCLUSION • I feel confident killing flies with this racket, even stunning those in their prime gives time to finish them off. • More pronounced stippling would be welcome on the handle as grip can reduce in the heat of summer, or from oily hands for those on a picnic. • The single direction of the grille makes for simple cleaning, which means that you’ll actually do it, and so used for more than a single summer (the Star Wars lightsaber sounds from the air passing through the grill is a bonus). • Fujitsu’s standard rechargeable AA batteries easily provide a months life, with daily frags. • The racket has not smashed itself into pieces, although I’ve been careful as I use it indoors only. • Heeding the warning sticker’s advice I’ve never shocked myself, but I’d prefer mother nature to sort that out. • The handle is long enough to accommodate a second set of AA batteries, this for me would be to increase the shocking power, but I don’t know if doubling the capacitor’s ability would lead to one-hit-kills for those wee flying beasties in their prime? • Adding velcro (the rougher part with hooks) to the outer edge of the head of the racket stopped it from sliding over on carpeted environments, but neodymium magnets installed inside the racket would have been a more aggressive solution to keeping the racket to hand. • The colour combination is not an eyesore and better than the Union Jack flag version the company believes the UK market sorely craves (it would have been more fun if manufactured from a material that changes colour based on ambient temperature given the season this product is likely used in). • The simplicity of the design should inspire confidence, it doesn’t need a torch on it! UPDATE: 30th December, 2018 (7½ months later): Putting the racket away for the year (which I really could have done back at the end of November) I found that my batteries, which I had swapped out as a matter of course around half way though, so around 3½ months ago, only took around 15minutes to charge, when flat ones should take around an hour or more. Which means that the battery was not being drained in all that time of inactivity, another good feature.