Winmau Steve Beaton SE 22 gram Steel Tip Darts

This is a dart that in my opinion is a little out of left field.

It’s one of those designs where the Special Edition flies under the radar, compare it to the original blue and gold Steve Beaton offering, this isn’t a dart with colours that jump out; it’s just another black and gold dart that blends into the crowd.

To be honest if it weren’t for Jen at Deadeye I wouldn’t have given them a second glance!

Out of the packing the darts are supplied in the standard style Winmau packaging. Darts are packaged in a round Winmau point protector, flights and shafts in the foam tray with the darts.

The darts are supplied with medium length black Vecta shafts and black Prism Delta flights. The theme is black and the gold highlight breaks what could have ended up just another black dart.

Let’s look at the barrels; they are a touch over 43mm long and 7.35mm at their widest point. They have a round nose that makes up the first 6mm, followed by 16mm of forward grip, 8 rings each 0.5mm deep and about 1mm wide at the base chamfering slightly to the rear on the front face of the groove. The first section is gold in colour.

The next 5mm is in the form of a naturally silver plain ring, adorned with the Winmau logo.

The rear section of the barrel comprises 8 squares cut equally spaced rings divided by 6 grooves cut along the linear axis of the dart but only on this rear portion. The bottoms of the grooves are filled with a black coating. 

Fully assembled they’re about 116mm long without the points, and on the subject the points are silver, highly polished and around 26mm long.

First impressions are that they are really a bit long, for me at any rate, I ended up with the flight hitting my face because of my grip, aim and action, I did try to get used to the standard configuration, but in the end I gave in and ‘tuned’ them to suit my needs and wants.

What I found was that for my style of throwing they responded the best with a set of standard ‘short’ shafts nylon or titanium made little or no real difference. I tried them with Standard, No6, Kite and Ten-x flights and achieved the most consistent results with the standard flights.

Once I had these the way I liked them, they were so easy to play with. Being lighter and front loaded, even on a softer dart board the standard points work against you, so initially I lost a few darts on the floor, not bounce outs but drop outs. They would do better with more grippy points installed but, a prompt scuffing of the points stopped the race for the floor so to speak.

Being front loaded the rear of the barrel tapers from 7.35mm to 6.5mm over a distance of 16mm, doesn’t sound like a big difference but over such a short distance it’s a noticeable taper, but on a positive it does provide a great rear push point. 

At the Oche all I can say is that these are some of the easiest to throw darts I’ve had the pleasure of playing with. No matter where you hold these there is plenty of grip over the 43mm barrels to ensure there is no slip in throwing or release points. The grip would rate 2.5 out of 5 not extreme, but very positive and not at all distracting. 

As an overall package I’d rate this at 3.5 out of 5.Â