I'm a yoyo noob. I decided to review some yoyos because I thought they would make a fun fidget toy to play with as I walk around my house during zoom meetings with my wireless headset. Use case: Up and down, that's it. No tricks, no flourishes, no mods, nothing else. Just up and down. I decided to try 3 yoyos from the same price point in the "metal responsive yoyo" product space head-to-head to compare them for anyone else looking for a simple quality up-down yoyo. The 3 yoyos I decided to look at for this are YOYOSTUDIO H17, WATIEOBOO C130 (this one), and 7YO S2. All of these yoyos are marketed as primarily responsive yoyos that are good for both beginner and professional use. The key here for me was "responsive" and "beginner" since I want a responsive yoyo that is easy for a beginner. The H17 is the first one that arrived. I played with it for hours over the first few days I had it. Just up and down. I was really enjoying it at first. Then the C130 (this one) arrived a couple days later, and I played with this one for hours too and liked it better. - The construction of the H17 and C130 is very similar, with a few millimeters in difference in diameter and width, with the C130 being the larger of the two. - The H17 and C130 came in identical boxes, with identical accessories arranged the exact same way. - For both the H17 and C130, once I started throwing them I noticed how big they feel in my hand. I'm a man with normal sized hands (size 9 glove, normally snug fit in a medium nitrile glove or roomy in large nitrile glove), and this feels like it was made for someone with big gorilla fingers. The groove where my middle finger goes is very roomy and the sides of the yoyo make contact with my index and ring fingers much before my middle finger. I don't see how this could be comfortable for a child's hands if it feels awkwardly big in mine. The C130 is similar to the H17, with C130 being slightly roomier. - I could get it to go up and down, but not really as consistently as I'd hoped. After winding it up I could usually get at least 3-5 throws out of it but after that it seemed kind of random. Like it would just "hop" at the end of the string and wouldn't return to my hand. It seemed to work better if I threw it down harder and yanked harder. But sometimes when it would return it would only get like 70% of the way and then fall, resulting in me needing to rewind the string. Some other times it would come up, but the string would not be tightly wound around the axle anymore, then it would fail to return the next time I threw it. I blamed this on myself for being a noob and that I must be doing something wrong, but I could not determine what I was doing wrong. I had the same issue with both H17 and C130, with C130 being significantly better (I only got like 2 throws out of H17). - I realized I was actually spending quite a bit of time winding the yoyo since I was only getting a few throws out of it each time. The C130 was quite a bit better about this but was still quite frequent. Then I got the S2 a few days later, and it was shockingly different. - About the same diameter as C130, but about 5mm less wide - The middle area between the sides is filled in more, leaving a lot less finger room (less depth and width). This was actually great for me, and when the yoyo returned to my hand my middle finger slid into the groove in a very satisfying tactile way. - Much more responsive than C130. Flick down, flick up. Not "hopping" at the end of the string like H17 and C130. Doesn't require nearly as much throw or pull. - Was much more consistent for me than C130. I could do 20+ down-up without it getting messed up and me needing to rewind the string every minute. It was less frustrating because I wasn't getting into the situation where I couldn't tell what I was doing wrong. S2 worked unless I did something dumb like throw it sideways or hitting something. Overall, I'd say the C130 is in the middle for being "responsive" out of the 3 I tried. It is largest for the size (but much closer to the slightly smaller H17). I would say C130 is the middle for beginner friendliness of the three in terms of what I was trying to use it for as an up down yoyo. I would say I might be able to recommend this to someone with larger hands who is not a beginner and is looking for a somewhat responsive yoyo, or perhaps someone wanting to use the included unresponsive replacement bearing and use it for tricks or something like that. For me it wasn't a great match because I just want an easy up down yoyo for a beginner. Feel free to check out my other reviews on H17 and S2. Thanks to Vine and WATIEOBOO for providing the sample for this testing.
