Fast vs. Floaty vs. Solid

My collection is small, the only yoyos I have experience playing with are the shutter, chief, genesis with hubstacks, and the yyf one (if you count that). Anyways, I got to go to the NY yoyo contest and while i was there I seized every chance I had to try out new yoyos. I have been a little confused about the feelings of “fast” and “floaty”, (i sometimes get the impression that these terms are antonyms). I hoped to establish a better conception of the differences between the two from my experience at he contest. I think I did to a certain degree. However, I still do not feel that I have a firm grasp on the subject. (I feel that i have a good understanding of “solid” but feel free to give your thoughts on the issue because other player like me may not know)

For example, at the contest I tried out a one drop cascade fresh out the box. My first impression of the yoyo was that it was super floaty. After looking up the highspeedyoyo review, it seemed like the general consensus on the yoyo was that it was more towards the fast end of things. Is this yoyo more fast, floaty, or in the middle? I may have been thrown off by a few other things when trying out the cascade though. The 10 ball bearing was much smoother than what I was used to using, the string was thinner, lighter, softer, and more bouncy, and the yoyo was smaller in diameter.

I’m asking that if you have a lot of experience with a wide variety if yoyos, please leave a reply with your opinion on the subject and whether you know if the yoyos I have are more fast or floaty (along with the cascade). If you can, please also list a few yoyos that are known to be either very fast or floaty, not in between or flexible between the two feelings. This will hopefully allow myself and anyone wondering the same thing to be able to recognize fast vs floaty and help them establish their preferences.
Thanks in advance!

Note
I’m the same person who posted the topic “rim weight vs center weight”. I’ve been yoyoing for about 10 months now and I think that many people in my boat are like me: I am an intermediate player who only has a few yoyos to draw experience from and I find a lot of conflicting opinions about yoyos. These opinions are about parts of yoyo play that I feel should be a little less subjective, like my rim weight vs center weight post. I feel that the knowledge of what the upsides of certain features in yoyo construction are should be more easily accessible to newer players. That’s why I’m posting these topics and will probably continue to in the future. If you have a “blank vs. blank” question/topic you have been wondering about, please post it to the forum where we can all discuss it openly. Also, I know that such debates can get heated at times, so let’s all try to remember that we are here for the fun of it.

Actualy a floaty yoyo is also a fast yoyo the antonym of floaty is solid

That’s a lot of words, i didn’t read them all, but plenty of yoyos are fast and floaty. But most terms are meaningless, that’s why it’s better to compare yoyos to other yoyos because at least then there’s a reference point for people to use when thinking of buying a new throw.

The speed that you yoyo is largely affected by string length if that helps

I posted a topic about this once. Fast and Floaty are usually brothers, while Solid is a distant removed passerby.

If I haven’t tried the yoyo at all, I can tell how it plays and feel more accurately by looking at the specs and pics rather than reading reviews. Reviews are good to know about build quality, finish, and vibe, but one does not simply accurately explain how a yoyo plays.

My preference personally, is small in diameter and width, but heavy. Is that what the question was? What is my preference? Dang you put a lot of words down that I didn’t read.

Kind of. I was basically looking for a clarification of the terms fast and floaty. Yeah it was a long post but It only takes like a minute and a half to read

Ain’t nobody got time fo dat…

It’s very hard to describe what these really are because they’re so subjective. Many people’s opinions differ on exactly what consititues ‘float’, as well as what yoyos should be considered fast or slow. For convenience sake I’m going to avoid addressing ‘float’ at the moment and just talk about fast/slow.

In my opinion, for the most part, a lighter yoyo will normally be a faster one and a heavier one, slower. I know that’s a massive generalisation and obviously there will be exceptions, but it can be illustrated briefly with 2 yoyos of the same shape but differing weights.

Example:

Yoyofactory Supernova Lite (63g)
Yoyofactory Supernova 7075 (68.1g)

The Supernova Lite, being only 63g plays light and fast without much effort, its easy to whip around at speed and light on the string.

By comparison, the heavier 7075 version plays slower and heavier. It’s more ‘solid’ and although it can be pushed fast, doesn’t lend itself to the natural speediness of its lighter counterpart.

For the most part I see ‘speed’ of a yoyo as how easily it can be pushed fast. Almost any yoyo can be played ridiculously fast in the right hands, but there are some which naturally lend themselves to a speedier pace without as much effort. A lighter yoyo takes less force to get it moving so these tend to feel faster in the smaller movements of combos.

As Nikolai pointed out, the speed of a yoyo is also dependent on the length of the string you use.

Shorter string = faster play
longer string = slower play

So generally, lighter = faster and heavier = slower. This is only a very rough guide though so it really all comes down to the individual design of the yoyo in question.

Really, my best advice would be not to get too hung up on other people’s definitions and just play as many yoyos as you can yourself. Once you’ve played enough you’ll get your own idea for which ones you feel are faster/slower etc, and since you’ll be the one playing them, what you think is all that matters really.

Float on the other hand… that’s a tough one to quantify by any standards.

It’s not even quite as subjective as Gambit is diplomatically stating. Lighter yoyos are faster. Period.

If your speed combos tend to carry momentum in the same direction (rather than having direction changes) a heavier yoyo could feel better once you’re up to speed (momentum for the win!) but that’s about the only outlier I can think of.

Also, for the most part floatiness seems to come down to the feeling of a yoyo spinning up (if it unwinds fast and hits the end of the string hard vs. spinning up slowly and coming to the end of the string gracefully) and then its … density… for lack of a better word. Not the density of the material itself, but of how that weight occupies the imaginary cylinder that encases the outside dimensions of the yoyo.

66g in an undersized yoyo… generally not floaty.
66g in a slightly oversized yoyo? generally pretty floaty

Stability and easy-to-catch characteristics (wide trapeze width) also contribute to floatiness because you just get into the zone of hopping your yoyo all around. Or at least I do.

In short, speed is pretty easy to define. Lighter=faster. So-called “float” is trickier. My h5xChief is big and heavy, but because of its rotational moment of inertia, it is graceful on the throw; then it is also exceptional for stability, is “light for its size” (though still heavy), and lends itself well to airborne tricks. But I’ll tell you what… after your brain gets used to the h5xChief and you’re not “surprised” by how graceful it is anymore… you start to recognize that it gets heavy during a session of play. Haha!

You cheeky fella’ you!

Gotta leave yourself a little wiggle room so you can talk your way out of it if someone produces contrary evidence. As ‘Q’ says in James Bond, “always have an escape plan”…

No one cares about speed any more nowadays yet this topic continues to pop up every lunar cycle. wat.
which is also exactly why no one bases the argument on the structure of actual tricks, as they either dont know or dont care or most likely both how these tricks work. Just by for example comparing a sleipnir and a krown side by side while keeping in mind Shinya’s playstyle can get people much less clueless. If you only stare at the cold specs of a single yoyo itself out of context then it is indeed difficult to realize that if weight distribution is an illusion then it cant be designed purposefully lol.
Also I have a L5 and a Triad, which you all know have exactly the same specs.
/gr8 b8

Weight distribution isn’t an illusion. It just has almost nothing to do with speed. If you hit the end of the string faster, you might carry that momentum through into your combo I guess. At least until the first direction change…

Speed’ is acceleration. And even if you cant legit speed combo you should still realize that the centrifugal force during a brain twister also reflects the yoyos accelerative capability. In this case light yoyos with less rotational moment of inertia is faster since to motion of the yoyo is largely circular and the force on your hand is continuous. Such yoyos require less centripetal force from your finger to be swung at constant high speed/ pulled to reverse its direction. A yoyo with large rotational moment is difficult to control (=accelerate/decelerate/keep in uniform circular motion). Shinya Kido pulls the yoyo in the radial direction to accelerate it instead of bouncing it on a string. This motivated the shift from the rim weighted sleipnir to the center weighted krown.
Acceleration by string hits is a different matter. The forces on your fingers change so fast that you could easily overreact with too great a force and kick the yoyo off the string framework. In this case a yoyo with medium high total weight and rotational inertia is ideal for fast play (!=fastest), where a slightly higher centripetal force lets you keep track of the yoyo and a solid weight gives you reliable feedback on your hand movements at subconscious speed. Mickey’s yoyos fall under this category as his tricks often employ string hits to change the yoyos direction.

It’s not about string hits, it’s about change of direction, period. Rotational moment of inertia in terms of the spin of the yoyo is NOT related to its moment of inertia as a mass at the end of a tether. People have a tendency to conflate these two things, but they are not the same.

Some of your argument I’ll buy, though-- a faster yoyo doesn’t make it easier to play “fast”. You need a certain amount of control that’s not available just by having the lightest weight. That doesn’t change the fact that the lightest yoyo (until it’s so light that air resistance becomes a factor) is the fastest in terms of pure calculation of physics.

/derp
Energy(and also momentum etc) is proportional to the square of linear speed/tangential speed/radius/any equivalent length unit lol. In the most simple case, 3 mass points at radius 1,2,3 traveling at the same angular speed has total energy 1+4+9=14, but only 12 if they all are at radius 2. The mass moment of inertia just represents kind of an integral of all the radii of all the mass points in the object.
/end derp

In the realistic context of yoyoing however, change of direction can be achieved by either a pull in the radial direction or a string hit in the tangential direction. These 2 kind of forces are perceived by the human hand in completely different ways. In the latter case especially, heavier is not necessarily slower.

You’re still conflating the rotation of the yoyo on its string around a pivot point, and the rotation of a yoyo’s mass around its axle.

Direction change is just that. A “pull in the radial direction” doesn’t sound like a direction change to me. And the tangential change is when the force keeping the yoyo rotating around the pivot point is released and the yoyo then travels along… well, its tangent. Neither of those are the same as abrupt direction changes.

Here’s your experiment: grab two Benchmarks of different shapes. Spin one up (doesn’t matter which) and don’t spin the other up. Hold them both at the same time with something that will allow simultaneous release. Release them to the ground. Which is going to accelerate to the ground faster?

You already know the answer to this one.

1.Energy is proportional to the square of speed for all non-quantum, non-relativistic motion, linear, spin, orbit, oscillating or derpic all alike. As such, it can never be added linearly with respect to speed, which in this case is proportional to the radius of the orbit. I thought my example above concerning 3 point masses should explain everything.
2.You can reverse the direction of a brain twister just by pulling the string backward, no need to hit the yoyo directly with another string segment. This is wat i meant by a radial force, maybe was not clear enough .
3. same, but this is irrelevant to the issue.

Id rather not see any more of these #wow such sirius much opinion# topics in the future. herp derp

P1, P2 and P3 are 3 points assumed to have the same mass. They are travelling around pivot O with the same angular frequency ω, which is just a normalized expression of rpm made so that you dont need any adjustment when multiplying it with radius to get speed.
Another assumption made is r2-r1=r3-r2 since yoyos are round.

If you dont want the extreme case of all 3 points having the same radius, r=1,3,5 can represent a yoyo with even greater rim weight further from the center than r=2,3,4.
The result remains the same: 1+9+25>4+9+16.