Winmau Maverick 22 gram Steel Tip Darts

Let’s not mince words on this set of darts.

A lot of players will overlook them because preferences lean toward 90% or better tungsten content. This style of barrel is suited to the 80% content.

Straight out of the box they are an impressive looking set.

The dimensions are 48.3mm long and a touch over 7mm in diameter at the bulbous end of the barrel.

From the point end the barrel has a simple radius nose that starts at a touch over 3mm and opens the nose to the full dimension of 7.05 mm. The front and rear grip profiles are the same and separated by a plain band which, actually tapers from the 7mm to the smaller diameter to meet the shaft.

The grip itself is a simple design, but effective. It is comprised of a narrow raised ring followed by a groove that is roughly twice as wide as the raised ring. The barrels are fitted with standard 26mm long black points.

When these arrived the first thing that came to mind was that Tom Cruise didn’t play darts. Not because there was a war plane theme on the packing but as soon as I started fitting the flights the stars, chevrons and stripes made the mp3 player in my head play the song Danger Zone from the Top Gun sound track or even Dreams by Van Halen.

So there, the scene has been set; the darts are supplied in the standard style Winmau packaging with a red theme. The darts are in a round Winmau point protector, the shafts supplied are Winmau Pro-Force shafts and like I said the flights are 100micron Maverick themed. On the flights, I highly recommend that you take the time to open an reverse fold them making the centre as thin as possible to avoid the flights splitting when inserted, just one of my pet peeves.

So what are they like? 

At the Oche, it took a few walks to get used to the balance. Once I started to get into the groove they just were like I’d always throw them. The only issue I had was that I would fall back into the grip and throw I used with my 20g Euro 11, which made the nose drop, not hard to correct but annoying. The best grip is a forward compact grip using the bulbous section as the main push point. The shafts supplied are short, however they fly well with in between and medium length shafts.

I actually enjoyed playing with these, the grip rates about 2.5 out of 5, positive but not over the top.

Overall they rate at 3.75 out of 5, great value for money, fun to throw, but points off for the way the flights came apart during installation. I liked them!