Gadgetory

hey guys this is Sean with The Verge and this is the Wilson X connected basketball Wilson X connected basketball is a smart basketball that knows whether or not you made or missed your shot without needing to add anything to the rim or to the net it connects via bluetooth to an app on your phone that can track a whole practice worth of shots and there even a couple games that you can play to help make yourself a little bit better in the clutch and we wanted to test this out for ourselves so we came over to Brooklyn to play some basketball I'm not very good at basketball haven't played in a long time so I brought my colleague Frank P out with me because he actually can make a few shots bottom line is this thing's a lot of fun to play with but there are some limitations first you have to have a net on your hoop second you have to shoot from outside seven feet this thing's not gonna attract layups or dunks even if that's not a problem for you the app also gives you constant feedback whether you've made or missed the shot but you need a Bluetooth speaker some Bluetooth headphones to be able to listen to that while you're playing setting your phone on the side of the course just isn't gonna cut it you're never gonna hear that feedback it's really simple to use to pair it all you have to do is flip the ball ten feet in the air and let it rotate it connects to the phone really fast there's no buttons no USB dongles no charging in fact Wilson says you could shoot this thing 300 times a day seven days a week 52 weeks a year before it would start to die but the biggest problem of this thing might be the accuracy Wilson says it's 97 percent accurate but it definitely didn't feel that way while we were out here on the court miss shots didn't register as miss made shots didn't register is made and the biggest problem is the lag even when it is working it takes a while for the Bluetooth to register all the way back to your phone and tell you that you've made or missed a shot that's fine in free throw modes but in the game modes can be really annoying all that brings us around to the price this thing is not cheap for a basketball 199 dollars gonna be out on the court shooting hundreds of times a day every day to make sure that you make the team maybe that's worth the investment but for that much money we'd expect a little bit more accuracy this basketball was one of the first of its kind and it's only gonna get better it's already better than some of the other ones that are out on the market Wilson's also gonna be bringing this tech to some of the other sports like tennis volleyball and baseball that is involved with but it's the kind of thing that could fundamentally change how we play sports and how we get better at them if your goal is to get better at basketball this can definitely help but it's not gonna do all the work for you