Are you in the market for a Butterfly Amicus but have no idea which one to get? Which one is the best for what you need? In this article, we hope to clear that up and help you decide.
The Butterfly Amicus line has three robots. The Amicus Basic, Amicus Advance, and Amicus Professional. Which one should you get?
What Do They Offer You?
Similarities
All Butterfly Amicus robots are easy to carry and set-up – they attach safely to one end of the table. Amicus robots can send up to 120 balls per minute. They also have three heads allowing them to deliver variable amounts of topspin, backspin, sidespin and no spin. You can also adjust the height of the robot head. These are top quality robots that really stand out from the others on sale.
The Amicus series allows balls with no spin – which is a nice addition. Not all robots are able to give no spin balls. You are also able to control the amount of spin – which isn’t an option in all robots out there.
Another feature that I really like is the random function. It means you can set the robot to deliver balls randomly over the table. Playing with a robot and doing loads of regular patterns can make you a bit predictable and less able to adjust to surprise placements. This random setting should help a lot to address that problem.
I’m pleased to say that all Butterfly Amicus table tennis robot work well with both the old celluloid 40mm balls and the new plastic 40+ ones. For a while, I know a lot of players were worried that the new balls wouldn’t work in their robots due to the small increase in size – but they do. You can read our ball reviews here.
Lastly, all Amicus Robots come with a bag to carry it in and only weigh 6kg.
Differences
With such drastic differences in price, you can expect there to be quite a bit of difference in what each robot can actually do. Here are the things that stand out the most between the Basic, Advance, and Professional.
Getting the Amicus Basic vs the Advance or Professional
The biggest difference between the Amicus Basic to the other two robots is the ability to pre-program and save complex drills. This means you can save some of the favorite drills into the computer and then easily switch from one to another during your training session.
With the Amicus Basic, you won’t have this option. Is paying an extra $400 for this feature worth it? We think so. The ability to store drills and move from one to the other with ease will make training easier and faster.
Getting the Amicus Advance vs the Amicus Professional
The Professional has three key upgrades from the Advance.
The first upgrade is an increase in the number of balls per exercise from 6 to 8. This could be useful if you particularly want to practice drill that requires more than six balls. Most of the time we reckon six will be enough, though.
The second is additional memory space from 22 exercises to 99. This will be good if you have loads of exercises you want to program into your robot. Again, we feel like 22 is plenty for most people, though.
The third upgrade is quite cool. The cluster feature allows you to play up to ten saved exercises in a sequence. Although, we’re not sure if it is really worth spending $300 more.
The Price Tag
The differences in the price of the Amicus Basic, Amicus Advance, and Amicus Professional is quite large. The Basic is $1,259.99, the Advance is $1,699.00, and the Professional is $1,999.00. Spending the extra $300 to upgrade to the Advance is worth it but we think the next $300 leap to get the Professional is not.
Which Robot Should I Buy?
You should definitely go for the Amicus Advance. Saving an extra $300 is worth the wait as the ability to save drills and play them whenever you want is an option you will really want, and enjoy.
On the other hand, spending $300 more and getting the Amicus Professional isn’t really worth it. The ability to save 22 drills should be good enough. Having 99 drills saved is overkill and we don’t think you’ll be able to make use of all of the extra saved drills as efficiently. Also, having 8 balls per drill as compared to 6 isn’t a deal-breaker. 6 balls per drill is more than enough to get sufficient practice.
Buy The Robot
You can buy the Butterfly Amicus Advance robot in the USA from Megaspin. If you are in the UK, TeesSport is the Butterfly dealer.
- Megaspin.net: The Amicus Advance retails for $1,699.00.
- TeesSport: The Amicus Basic retails for £1,124.99.
You might be interested in reading Ben’s popular article The Best Table Tennis Robots, which is available on his Expert Table Tennis blog. And don’t forget to check out all of our other Table Tennis Robot Reviews as well.
Have you used and of the Amicus Robots yourself? What did you think of them? Please share your experiences and leave a review below in the comments.