Red Dragon Golden Eye 22 gram Darts

Red Dragon strike again. Another sub $50 set of quality Tungsten darts. Like all darts that come from Red Dragon these show their quality grounding in their ornate design. If you’re looking for a set of darts that stand out from the crowd but don’t stand out on your bank statement these are really worth a second look, but may not be for everyone.

A combination of quality 85% tungsten alloy and some strategically places coatings and great machining combinations produces some impressive looking barrels. 

The darts arrive in the standard black Red Dragon packaging, in a foam tray. The barrels have the shafts fitted, and as per the warning on the web page they were supplied with black Red Dragon VRX shafts, an improvement on the black aluminium shafts shown online. The flights on the other hand are the Gold and Black dragon themed Hardcore flights just like those supplied with the Golden Jonny Clayton darts. 

The barrels themselves are just over 48mm long and parallel, and a mere 6.35mm in diameter. The nose is a simple radius, and without going over the top with too much detail the design is really a small black knurled section front and rear, surrounding a wave patterned centre, where the etched wave pattern is coloured with a gold coating the short portion after the rear black knurled is left smooth and is adorned with the RD logo.

The result is a really attractive design with highlights of black and gold predominantly on a silver back ground.

So, let’s look at the darts not for their looks but in terms of their practicality. Let’s just say that while they look great they will not be the set for everyone. 

In a nut shell there are only two areas of approximately 4mm each that will provide any kind of grip at all, the waves texture in the centre of the barrel provides virtually no grip at all. 

So, how do they perform?

If you’re looking for a dart that will provide a serious level of grip, then you need to look elsewhere even for front grippers the amount of grip surface prohibits more than a 4mm surface at the front of the dart. As I said the centre wave pattern is more suited as decoration rather than grip. Even a long grip provides little in terms of grip surface given that the knurled bands are narrow and well-spaced over the length of the barrel. That said, there will be those that like or even love the profile. The grip in my opinion would rate at 1 out of 5, if that’s where you want to be read on!

Overall these darts would rate at 3.5 out of 5. At the Oche, they are an easy to throw barrel and combined with the quality inclusions provided, really need little in the way of tuning, they’re easy to hold and throw and are far from slippery, they do need patience and focus to produce the goods.

This is a set that literally can be anything you want them to be.