may have seen by now that brands have started to bring out previous generations of models to run alongside their current lineups and you may have also seen rick shields videos where he's been reviewing the cobra f9 and the tail made m4 drivers with the cobra f9s which is the newer model that is completely different to the previous one and the difference is pretty obvious with it missing the middle part of the face whereas with the m4 it's actually the identical club minus one little paint difference on the app i mean this isn't actually a new thing like tail made have been doing the m2 again for quite a few years now and that was brought out in 2017.
It's mainly been this f9 that has caught people's eyes because of the difference between the phase and cobra have actually done a speed zone s as well but that does have the milled face and that is an identical club to the previous speed zone like this m4 driver is and that's why i bought the m4 driver a couple of weeks ago and it did send me back a few quid so if you could kindly subscribe to the channel i would really appreciate that as soon as i'm making zero pound off the videos at the minute and i was quite surprised that saw rick review the driver rather than the irons because the irons are actually more like the f9 and they're missing the technology that the previous ones in 2018 had so there should be quite a bit of a difference there between them so the main thing that these new models are missing is the ribcor technology now this was massive at the time when they come out and it was the whole thing behind the m4 irons and with the use of the face slots as well they were meant to just stiffen up the hitting area to create faster ball speeds and create a bit more forgiveness which is basically the same thing that they tell us every year and another thing that they're missing is the fluted huzzle which is something that you don't really see or look at too much but that again was there to help with the ball speed and launch more than anything but they still come included with the speed pockets which you do see on a lot of tail made iron so if the performance of these two is pretty similar or the new model is a bit better than the previous one and it's not really looking too good for what tail may tell us year on year about the technology but before we find out for sure off the numbers i thought i'd just take them down to the drive range to begin with just to see if there's any differences by eye so if i was noticing any difference in the feel and if there's anything else i could pick up on and it's safe to say that because of storm units this was probably the windiest day that i could have picked and the seven iron must have been going probably about 100 yards but can honestly say though that the driver and the iron just felt a bit nicer than the previous one and even the forgiveness seemed to be a bit better coming off the two new ones i wouldn't say it was a massive difference but it was definitely noticeable and it just felt easier and better to use with the newer options having tested the stealth quite a bit recently myself as well i can safely say that this m4 didn't feel anywhere near quite as nice as the stealth but to be fair this m4 head is the more forgiving option from its time so if you remember they had the m3 that ran alongside it and that is basically like the stealth course option so you will always see better performance out of that other option but the main thing about these drivers is the forgiveness but frustratingly the forgiveness is something that's quite hard to measure and it's just hard to put into an exact number so after getting frostbite from storm units i decided to head back into the warmth and onto the monitor where i'd put these four up against each other and just see exactly how much difference there is between the numbers so start off with the drivers and i put the same shaft in both of these and set them to the same loft just to make it as fair as i could and to be fair i was seeing more difference between these two than i was expecting so the ball speed was up a lot with the new model with a bit of a higher launch and a much higher flight that combined with the highest spin and it was still traveling five yards extra on the carry on average and an extra four on the four and if you compared that to the stealth that i was using i know it was on a different day and it was a different swing etc but i was still managing to get nearly 320 out of that on the max so the main difference between these two m4 drivers was actually the dispersion on them and it just felt a lot easier to keep the newer model straighter and i just kept finding that with the previous one i was blocking a lot of shots out to the right and i just couldn't turn my hands over and square the face up like i normally would and you can see that with the shots when they're going all out to the right with the old one and it was averaging six yards further to the left with the newer model but anyway onto the ions now this is the one that i was looking forward to trying the most as you remember this is the one that's missing all the technology and so in theory really it shouldn't be performing anywhere near as well as the old [Music] [Music] now this was actually looking a lot closer than the driver was it was just one yard in distance between the two on average just a fraction bit of difference in the ball speed launch angle descent angle but funny enough they were all in favor of the newer model the only place where it went down slightly was with the backspin so we're talking very marginal difference in that but it was down a bit and that's probably the reason why it was going that extra yard further that is really interesting to see the numbers between them too and it doesn't really seem to make any sense at all i mean you can look at it as a positive or you can look at it as a negative thing i just don't really understand why tailmade would bring out a newer model with all the technology missing out of it they're gonna find that it's actually better than the previous one the good thing about this is that you're getting the pretty much the same set of irons for four hundred dollars less than they were previously and the bad thing about that is that it makes you wonder how much difference the technology that they were telling us actually makes anyway i put these two seven irons into my leaderboard which is basically an overall score that takes everything on the iron performance into account and you can see that these two on here match up pretty much the same the only difference is that the original was a bit better consistently on the dispersion and the older one just wasn't averaging as far to the left and that's the thing that let these scores down really is just how far they were averaging to the left now what i would say about these options is and this goes for all the other brands and their models as well so like your callaway xr options and your cobra speed zones and f9s and things like that all really good sets and options to go for at really good prices the only thing letting them down is the option to custom fit on them but they only come with the certain shaft option as long as you're an average sized person with an average swing speed maybe someone that's looking for a bit more forgiveness i think anyone who's a mid to high handicapper and fits into that category could really get along with these sets as always i definitely recommend trying these out first though just so you know for yourself but thanks for watching and don't forget to subscribe if you haven't subscribed already and i will see you in the next one