An elongated pickleball paddle trades forgiveness for leverage. That is the whole deal, and every paddle below makes that trade slightly differently. This is the honest version of the list: six elongated paddles we hold in stock in Sydney right now, what each one is genuinely best at, and who each one is wrong for. Nobody wins every category, because no paddle does.
What "elongated" actually means, and when it is the wrong choice
A standard paddle is about 16 inches long and 8 inches wide. An elongated one stretches to roughly 16.5 inches and narrows to about 7.5, keeping the total surface area inside the USA Pickleball limit. Moving that area from wide to long does three things.
- You get reach. Half an inch sounds trivial until you are stretching for a wide dink or a low volley at the sideline. It is the ball you used to let go.
- You get leverage. More mass sits further from your hand, so the same swing puts more paddle into the ball. That is where the extra power on drives, serves and overheads comes from.
- You lose margin for error. A narrower face means a longer, thinner sweet spot. Contact toward the throat or the edge punishes you more than it would on a widebody, and the head takes fractionally longer to get moving in a hands battle.
So: elongated suits players who take a real swing at the ball, cover a lot of court, play singles, or run a two-handed backhand that likes a longer lever. It does not suit brand-new players, players whose game is built on soft resets and fast hands at the kitchen line, or anyone who mishits a lot and knows it. If that is you, a hybrid or widebody will win you more points, and there is no prize for buying the harder paddle. We measured one paddle in all three shapes in Pickleball paddle shapes: elongated, widebody or hybrid, and our best pickleball paddles guide covers the full range.
Two numbers to watch as you read. Swing weight is the closest thing to an honest measure of how heavy a paddle feels to swing, as opposed to how heavy it feels sitting in your hand. Higher means more plough through the ball and slower hands. Twist weight describes how much the head resists twisting on an off-centre hit; higher is more forgiving. Where a maker publishes these figures we quote theirs. Where it does not, we say so, or we name the independent lab the number came from.
Best all-round elongated: RPM Q2 Elongated, $357.50
The RPM Q2 Elongated is the one we hand to most people who have decided they want an elongated paddle and have not decided anything else. It is a full-foam EPP core with groove channels under a CarbonBite carbon face, and in 16mm it averages 7.8oz (about 221g) with a 114 swing weight. That makes it the lightest in the hand of the paddles here whose makers publish a weight, while still carrying real weight through the ball. It also comes in a 14mm build at the same price if you want a touch more pop and a little less dwell.
The spin is the signature. The face grabs, and the response on drives is lively without turning the reset game into a coin toss. Our RPM Q2 review has the longer take.
Who it is wrong for: a 6.1 twist weight is middle of the pack for an elongated paddle, not a forgiveness pick. If you mishit regularly, a wider shape will serve you better. And at $357.50 it is not the value pick and does not pretend to be.
Best value elongated: Friday Aura Elongated 16mm, $215
The Friday Aura Elongated is the paddle we recommend most often when someone tells us their budget and it starts with a two. Friday builds it on a quad-foam core under a T700 raw carbon face and publishes the numbers: 8.1oz average, 116 swing weight, 6.05 twist weight. At $215 that is a spec sheet that would have cost $350 not long ago.
It leans control and spin rather than raw power, which is unusual for an elongated paddle and is exactly why it suits club players. You get the reach without the paddle demanding a full swing to feel good.
Who it is wrong for: the 6.05 twist weight is the lowest of the six, so it rewards clean contact. And if you are a heavy hitter looking for maximum put-away weight, the Aura will feel polite. Step up to the Aura Pro Elongated at $275: a dual-foam core under T700 raw carbon, 8.0oz average, 116 swing weight and a 6.15 twist weight, so a firmer, more direct version of the same idea. The full Friday line is broken down in our Friday foam-core lineup guide.
Best foam-core feel under $300: Aireo Cyclone, from $275
The Aireo Cyclone is the brand on this list your club has probably not met yet: Pickld is Aireo's Australian distributor. It is a 16mm PulseFoam core, a microcellular polypropylene foam that fills the paddle rather than leaving a honeycomb chamber behind the face, under a raw carbon NanoGraph grit surface. Most colours are $275, down from $312; the Cherry Blossom and Dragon editions stay at $312. It also comes as a hybrid if the elongated head is not for you (we walk through that choice in Cyclone or Cyclone X Hybrid).
What it is best at on this list is feel. The filled foam core gives pop that comes back solid rather than hollow, and the grit face bites properly on rolls and topspin serves. Read the longer take in our Aireo Cyclone review.
Who it is wrong for, and this is a real caveat: Aireo does not publish a weight, swing weight or twist weight for the Cyclone on its own store. Most of the other makers here do. So you are buying on described feel rather than the maker's measured numbers, and that is a legitimate reason to buy the RPM or the Friday instead. If turning up with a paddle everyone recognises matters to you, factor that in too.
Best if budget is not the constraint: JOOLA Perseus Pro V 16mm, $469
The JOOLA Perseus Pro V is Ben Johns' paddle and the most complete elongated paddle we sell, and it is priced like it. JOOLA lists it at 16.5 inches long and 8.1oz, with a polypropylene core plus carbon fibre and EVA foam under a textured carbon face. JOOLA does not publish swing or twist weight, but the independent lab Pickleball Effect measured its test unit at a 117 swing weight and a 6.26 twist weight, which it rates as good forgiveness for an elongated paddle, and recorded some of the best spin it has seen from this platform.
That forgiveness on off-centre contact is the quiet reason it is here. It is what makes it playable for a wider range of players than its price band suggests.
Who it is wrong for: anyone for whom $469 is a stretch. The honest truth is that the gap between this paddle and the $215 Friday Aura is real, but it is not $254 worth of real for most club players. If you are a 3.0 to 3.5 player, spend the difference on court time. Our mid-tier versus pro-tier comparison works through exactly that maths. The full JOOLA line is in the JOOLA paddles collection.
Best cheap elongated: Luzz Cannon, $155
The Luzz Cannon is the entry point into an elongated 16mm paddle with a genuine power lean, and at $155 it is less than half the price of most of this list. Luzz builds it thermoformed, with an 8mm PP honeycomb and foam core inside a U-shaped carbon matrix under a T700 raw carbon friction face, and publishes 7.93oz, a 121 swing weight (plus or minus 3) and a 6.2 twist weight. It is USA Pickleball and UPA-A certified. If you want to find out whether the elongated shape suits you before committing $300-plus, this is the cheapest honest way to do it. More in our Luzz Cannon review.
Who it is wrong for: that 121 swing weight is the heaviest on this list, so it ploughs through drives but asks more of your hands at the kitchen. If quick hands are your game, it will feel slow. It also lacks the brand recognition and resale of the paddles above.
Side by side
| Paddle | Price | Avg weight | Swing wt | Twist wt | Core | Best at |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RPM Q2 Elongated 16mm | $357.50 | 7.8oz | 114 | 6.1 | EPP full foam | All-round, spin |
| Friday Aura Elongated 16mm | $215 | 8.1oz | 116 | 6.05 | Quad foam | Value, control |
| Friday Aura Pro Elongated 16mm | $275 | 8.0oz | 116 | 6.15 | Dual foam | Firmer, more direct |
| Aireo Cyclone | from $275 | Not published | Not published | Not published | 16mm PulseFoam | Foam feel, grit face |
| JOOLA Perseus Pro V 16mm | $469 | 8.1oz | 117 (lab) | 6.26 (lab) | PP + carbon + EVA foam | Forgiveness at the top end |
| Luzz Cannon | $155 | 7.93oz | 121 | 6.2 | PP honeycomb + foam | Cheapest way in, power |
Figures are the makers' own published numbers, except the two marked "lab", which come from Pickleball Effect's independent testing because JOOLA does not publish them. Different labs measure slightly differently, so treat a difference of one or two points as noise, not a verdict.
How to choose between them
- You want one paddle that does everything well and you can spend around $350: RPM Q2 Elongated.
- You want the shape without the price: Friday Aura Elongated at $215. Genuinely good, genuinely enough for most club players.
- You mishit more than you would like: the Perseus Pro V if the budget allows. Otherwise reconsider whether elongated is your shape at all.
- You want the foam-core feel and you like being early on a brand: Aireo Cyclone, with the spec-sheet caveat above understood.
- You are testing whether elongated suits you: Luzz Cannon at $155.
- You are still not sure elongated is right: read our Friday Aura hybrid versus elongated guide, the clearest same-paddle, two-shapes comparison we have written.
What this guide does not cover
Stock moves. Every paddle above had units on the shelf when we last checked, but we carry more elongated paddles than six, and several we rate are not ranked here because they are on pre-order or oversold right now, including the RPM Jade, the Spartus Spitfire and the Selkirk Omni Elongated. If one of those is the paddle you want, its product page tells you where it stands better than this article will. The whole range is in Pickleball Paddles.
We have also left out grip size, which matters more than most of the numbers above and is entirely personal, and weight tuning with lead tape, which changes swing weight far more than switching between two of these paddles would.
The Pickld bit
Everything here ships from our Sydney warehouse with free Australian shipping over $150, 30-day returns, and manufacturer warranty handled by us rather than by an overseas form. Pickup is available from our warehouse in Hornsby. Browse the brands in RPM, Friday, Aireo and Luzz.
Pickld carries every brand ranked here, which is exactly why the rankings say what each paddle is bad at as well as what it is good at. Picks are based on specs, stock and how the paddles play, not on margin. Tell us how you play and we will tell you which one we would put in your hand.
Chris
