The FX500 is Truly Special

2025 has been an amazing year for tennis racquets. Us racquetaholics have been treated to some truly special frames, the all-out performance of the TFIGHT 305S, the sheer fun-factor of the Gravity Tour 98 but now its Dunlop’s turn.

The Problem With Most 100’s

Most 100 square inch power racquets deliver on performance but lack soul. The EZONE 100, the Babolat Pure Drive and the Wilson Ultra are all great frames. They’ve got great power, solid stability, decent access to spin… they’ll help you hit a damn heavy ball… But do you really like using them?

Do these racquets really feel rewarding to use?

No.

They can feel a little too hollow, a little too muted and a little too disconnected for you to truly bond with the frame. That’s where the FX500 separates itself from the pack. But what makes a racquet special?

Feel

Of all the 100 square inch power frames, the FX500 is the only one that feels pure. Every other frame in the class puts a layer of protection between you and the ball. With the EZONE, it’s VDM and Minolon, dampening and softening materials designed specifically to separate you, the player, from the hitting experience. With the Ultra, it’s whatever they’ve done to make it feel exactly like a Clash, or in polite terms, a soggy sponge. With the Pure Drive, it’s actually not so bad, I quite like the Pure Drive but you get the sense that the racquet is hiding something from you. Every ball you hit feels the same. It feels good at first but almost too perfectly repeatable and you lose the variation between different types of shots.

Now the FX500 uses technology to dampen vibrations too, but something about their implementation feels way less rubbery and artificial than the competition. There’s a firm but unadulterated graphite feel, reminiscent of classic racquets from the 2000’s. You can feel the difference between on and off-centre shots. You can feel the difference between different types of spin.

The FX500 tells you exactly what’s going on with the string bed, delivering a level of communication that’s become all too rare in 2025.

Power and Stability

Usually, with great feel comes terrible performance. Some of the best feeling racquets of all time are falling out of popularity, being fully replaced by new molds or just straight up discontinued. Thankfully, with the Dunlop, we’ve got excellent performance.

The FX500 is kind of like the TFIGHT of the 100 square inch power class. It’s tremendously stable on off-centre contact and loads of put away power when you get things lined up. Much like the magic forgiveness of a racquet like the EZONE 100, the FX just puts balls back in play. There’s essentially zero twisting on mishits and zero drop-off in performance.

On court, the combination of a connected feel with this huge forgiveness is tremendously confidence inspiring. As long as I stayed in the rally, I felt like I had a chance to win. That age-old saying of “it’s never over until it’s over,” has never felt more relevant.

Control

At this point you are probably expecting me to say that control sucks. This has certainly been true for other racquets that offer a connected feel and high power, like my beloved Pure Aero Rafa or the Prince Ripcord. But here’s what’s interesting about the FX. While it is a 16x19 pattern, the crosses are quite densely spaced so the launch angle is surprisingly low. This is great for attacking shots because you can use the high power to penetrate the court and rely on the low launch angle to keep the ball between the lines.

Since the flex profile is quite stiff, there’s essentially zero hoop bending so the racquet face responds consistently and predictably on every shot. This is something I didn’t like with the Ultra 100, for example, despite its 67RA, you can feel the 45 weave allowing for vertical flex which leads to a variable response depending on your swing speed and angle. On the other hand, this FX500 flexes the same no matter how fast you swing, making it equally controllable on big baseline bashes and cute touch shots.

Spin

Spin is the one area where I have concerns with this frame. The raw spin potential is pretty high. Simon notes that I hit about as heavy of a ball with the FX as I do with my Rafa, but that’s what you should expect from a thick beamed 16x19 power frame. The issue comes with maneuverability, or lack thereof.

You’ve probably seen players like Sinner and Djokovic add weight to the sides of their racquet. The weight at 3 and 9 makes their racquets more torsionally stable, reducing twisting and increasing overall performance on off-centre shots. This is called twistweight, and most racquets land somewhere between 13 and 14 strung.

The Dunlop, however, has one of the highest twistweights in my collection, at 14.8, nearly a full point higher than the EZONE 100. While this is the key to the racquet’s insane stability, it does come with one major downside, maneuverability. Against bigger hitters, when I’m pressed for time, I struggle to let my wrist dip, so I can’t get under the ball to loop up some topspin, buying myself extra time and holding my opponent at bay.

It’s not that the racquet can’t produce spin, it’s that you have to be strong enough to unlock the spin.

String Setups and Customizations

This is one of the few racquets I’ve ever reviewed where I liked it best in stock form, or near stock form. Usually I’m the kind of person who slaps lead at 12 until I get a 330 swingweight and then I throw on a leather grip. Lately, I’ve been playing better tennis with a lower swingweight because I can find higher racquet head speeds. This is especially true with the FX500.

Part of my presence for a lower swingweight here is certainly due to the high twistweight. At the same swingweight, a higher twistweight frame will feel slower to swing. Thankfully the FX is powerful and stable enough to play well with a lower swingweight, even against very big hitters. So with this one, I’ve added 1g to 12 for a small bump in swingweight and 5g to the top of the handle to give me a little extra control over the racquet face.

When it comes to strings, I’d advise against stiffer options and higher tensions. This is a fairly raw, undampened, high RA frame, so you’ll definitely feel it if you choose something too stiff. For example, I usually love Grapplesnake Tour M8, but at 52lbs, that string was a little too firm.

Since my prototype video, I’ve tried a few extra string setups but O-Toro/Sync remained the best option.

Player Recommendations

Overall I’d recommend this most to aggressive baseliners looking for big power and stability, especially if you tend to hit a bit flatter. The FX loves to serve bombs and follow it up with a big ground game. After some initial struggles, it’s become one of my favourite racquet to serve with. Going after safer targets with heavy shots is the way to make the most of this frame.

If you are more of a crafty player, who relies on spin and accuracy to win, there are certainly better options. This might sound hilarious, but if comfort is a concern, the Pure Drive is definitely a better option.

If you’d like to see a full practice set on what this frame is like to use in a match setting, I’ve got one now for your basic membership tier, though most of the highlights for that set were included in the free video you are currently watching.

When it comes to my game personally, I love this frame. I could definitely use it in a tournament and it’s a racquet I could totally switch to. I’m still working on some kinks, my game really depends on finding more looping topspin balls so I can control the pace of the rally, but this might be my overall favourite 100 square inch racquet on the market.

I think it offers a lot of positives over my Pure Aero Rafa and it’s certainly easier to recommend to a wider range of players.