Several Days ago my darts practice rings finally arrived. When I first discovered their webpage in August, they had a trivia contest to win a free set of darts practice rings signed by eric bristow. I won the contest and they finally arrived many months late, but they were signed by the craftey cockney himself and will go on my mantle. In the mean time though I'd like to write a review.

Product:
Darts Practice Rings endorsed by Eric Bristow and "invented" by billards/snooker wiz Barry Barton. I use invented loosely because John Lowe sold a similar product in the eighties that were simply wire rings with which to practice.

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Description:
Darts Practice rings consist of several products which were intended to be sold together but were split up upon manufacturing issues. The first product is a 9.99 package that consists of green and orange neon rings in various sizes, and instruction booklet, several paper dart board segments with which to record your progress and several pins with which to affix the rings to the board.

The second product is similar to the first but has four sets of differently colored rings, a special holder for the paper record sheets to fit against the board, and a dvd by Eric Bristow featuring different exercises and games you can use to sharpen your skills.

Review of Concept
The idea of using rings to focus and encourage grouping is a great idea and it works. I have been using home made rings for some time and it has improved my game. The idea of using paper segments to measure your progress is also fairly creative, but not something worth paying for when you could print it off at home for no cost. Although I believe that their intent is to provide you with several sample templates with which to scan and print, even though they were originally supposed to be for sale separately(something that they are not at the present).

Review of Product:
Initially all of their various products were advertised in one package, unfortunately they sent me the smaller package, as a result I can not review the dvd, and the paper segments are fairly self explanatory so I will focus on the rings.

The plastic rings come in several sizes but are all essentially the same in design. They are a ring with one flat side to sit against the board. The side facing out is beveled just like the pyramid wire use for the spider. Each ring has a small pin hole at the top with which you affix it to the board.

The rings are made out of a hard plastic, which is their ultimate down fall. Even though the plastic is not hard enough to chip, it will peel away upon collisions with darts(something that will happen frequently if you truly need the rings). Secondly, the plastic is very weak at the point where the pin hole is located. With in less than one minute of using them, I nailed the pin hole and split the ring clean in half.

The pins they include are small sewing pins with spherical plastic heads. When I nailed the ring above, it also knocked the plastic pin head off. Trying to remove the pin from the board with out plyers or the pin head was extremely difficult and annoying.

Service

While I am not a true customer, because I won them, I feel that their service was lacking. They were plagued by manufacturing issues which delayed the delivery, and they did not want to answer emails inquiring about the delivery. I did get the occasional mass forward but that was all.

Conclusion

While I still totally am in favor of using ring targets, I can not endorse these at all. Although they look great, they are made of cheap materials which in no way justify the ten to twenty pounds they want. I use rings made out of wire wrapped in bright colored tape which cost be a grand total of free and they have not worn out after hundreds of hours of use.

That's what this forum is about, honest opinions. Thanks for your time and effort.

Nice review there Vallyr. +1 from me.

Good review.
Have to say though ive had mine a few months with no problems at all.

Thanks VallyR, I have not started using mine yet but will let you know if I encounter the same problem.

Great review! I was thinking if buy them or not, and I'm more convinced to make my own ones.

Why spend all thay money for these items when you don't have to. Just go to any dept. store ie,Walmart, target, Walgreens , dollar general etc. go to the hair products section and buy a small package of girls crunchie hair bands. You get 20+ for a dollar,they come in all neon colors and are usually made of rubber or elastic type material and come in various sizes from large to very small. Get a couple pins from your wife sewing basket. I use some small colored push pins (I try to match the pin head color with the band color I'm using) like you put in a wall map or bulletin bd. All total I have spent maybe $4.00 and have enough rings to use for a year or more.

Darts Practice Rings Here.

Hi Guys.

Vallyr: Thank you for your review. Valuable feedback like this is always helpful in the early days of any product launch. May I just clarify a coupe of points:

1) The Inventor is Bobby Barton (& Mark Stephenson), not Barry Barton.

2) Your comment: "Darts Practice Rings consist of several products which were intended to be sold together but were split up upon manufacturing issues." This statement is incorrect. The smaller Pro Target Pack was designed based on feedback from Harrows and Winmau who felt that 'some' of their Pro customers may only be interested in the Darts Practice Rings themselves, not the Pro Games Pack with the DVD or games or instructional booklet with tips, or the nice case they come in. (May I also say that independent testing from Harrows and Winmau did not reveal any of the issues that you have unfortunately encountered)

3) Your comment: "I believe that their intent is to provide you with several sample templates (of progress charts) with which to scan and print, even though they were originally supposed to be for sale separately(something that they are not at the present)" Again, this statement is incorrect. We will not be selling replacement Progress Charts. These are and will always remain as free downloadable replacements. We have had the Progress Chart template available to download for free from our website for 2 months. (Please visit the site [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and the template download link is in the footer of each page).

Regarding the issues that you have unfortunately encountered: Our testing did not reveal any broken rings or damaged pins We are 100% committed to customer service and will be replacing any broken rings / pins free of charge. Please email us your address and the colour / size of the broken ring and we will send you replacements straight away.

mattstan
Thank you for your reply. We have also had the rings used by many other players who have been enjoying using the Darts Practice Rings over the last few months with no problems what-so-ever.

I would like to point the readers of this post to another independent review by UK Darts Magazine [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

I would also like to show the readers of this forum a snippet (see image below) of our very latest twitter stream from players who are using Darts Practice Rings. Visit the live stream [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

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Thank you for reading this post.
Darts Practice Rings Customer Service

Very nice to see both the review an the reply on here and both gentlemen commented in a very respectful manner towards one another. Not at all like usual internet transactions were they are supposed to call each other horrible names and drag everyone else into a word war lol. Thank you very much and my kudos goes out to both of you... this is why I enjoy being a dart nutter because of quality and informative posts like these

Djrocs is right. Nice to see that here. And its great to hear that they will replace broken rings/pins. Great response Carldac! I'm still using the rings without any problems, really helping me out on my cricket numbers!

I hope to start using mine soon as I am going to start practising more, just been too busy with other things so I will add a review too, but will try them a few weeks first.

I did think what has happened with Vallyr may be a potential problem though, but if your going to give replacements for such a mishap thats good.

Top notch response from Carldac. I too have a set and will add to Grips review ( if he doesn't mind) just have to use them for awhile to give a honest opinion. Once again this forum and the members are just fantastic.

Thanks for the Replies. I and my apologizes for messing up the name! I have Marks AOL email, but had trouble getting replies in the oct-nov time frame so I didn't bother. Also, the manufacturing theory was a bit of conjecture based on the few forwards I had received.

Never the less here is a picture of the broken ring. Also I would email you my info for replacements but I've ordered them immediately after the one broke

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here is the broken pin issue. just popped another one in the board and tried to pull it out and this happened. So easy to replicate.
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I would recommend drywall nails instead of pins in future packages. i use these for my home made rings. Here is a pic of a dry wall nail with your rings.

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Thanks to djrocs88, USMC80, getagrip and Saber.

Vallyr, thank you for the pictures and recommendation ref heavy duty nail/pin.

Best Regards,

Carl.

Received my darts practice rings today. Cheers Getagrip.
I think they are a great practise aid. They really help you focus on grouping.
I’ve done a practice chart dated today and will do another in 3 weeks as suggested in the instructions and will hopefully see some improvement.
So they get the thumbs up from me so far, even though one of the pinheads came off straightaway .

Great review of the product. I use my daughter's pony tail holders for practice rings.

I wanted to give you a reputation point, but cannot see how to do it.....

aboji wrote:

Great review of the product. I use my daughter's pony tail holders for practice rings.

I wanted to give you a reputation point, but cannot see how to do it.....

on right hand side of the post, click the thumbs up

I can see the concept here but why would you need a Practice Ring to put over the treble 20 when you can aim between the wires of the treble 20!!! Am I missing something here or is someone making a lot of money from a product we don't really need. Surely if your focus is a bit off just put a chalk mark or a sticky dot where you want to aim. I am not convinced any of you need these at all to be honest. I also have to say they look rather large so can't see me investing in a set to be fair.

they come in a set of five sizes, smalles being size of the double bull i think

yep the smallest one the "pro ring" is the size of the double bull, then they have one the size of the single bull, one large enough to fit around the treble, and one large enough to fit around the entire double.

Re: Big Gun
As far as why one would need it? It just adds a more natural reference, sort of like looking through an second gun sight? Just one of those things. The paper progress sheets also are helpful.

Do they work? Guess the best way to find out would be to take two players of equal skill and have them regularly record their progress in groupings and have one practice with the rings and one with out other wise it would be hard to prove any practice aids or techniques

I just use a keyring, Pringles lid( middle cut out) and other bits and bobs :-)

Skyblueadam wrote:

I just use a keyring, Pringles lid( middle cut out) and other bits and bobs :-)

When we did our testing; colour and colour contrast - between the rings and the board - did make a huge difference. I'm not sure why this is.

Also, the size is important. For example: on the Pro Ring (No1) which is the same size as the bull. If you're a good player, (probably at pro level) and you can start regularly hitting that ring on any section of the board, it does 2 things:
1) Trains you to consistently hit that area of the board by visualising the bright coloured ring when it's not there (Sounds weird I know)
2) Makes you 10 x's better when you're going for the bull in normal game play

The competitive rivalry with this game is also very funny. When we were doing our testing, our amateur player was hitting the advanced ring (30mm) quite regularly, getting 3 darts in the one ring and Eric (Bristow) was struggling with that ring, so we moved him up to a bigger ring, the Improved Ring (45mm), the banter that pursued was hilarious! God knows what would have happened if we had to move him up to the Beginners Ring!

Guys, I hope the above helps.

Cheers,
Carl.
Darts Practice Rings Customer Service

True, the games when playing against a practice partner are a lot of fun

Its a tool like anything else. And having practiced just a bit with them they have help my concentration to be honest. Big your a pro- or very close lol so u use the smallest ring lol. Its fun I might add. Breaks the monotony IMO.

Also for beginners a good tool IMO- they can start out with the larger rings and get confidence up. Just my take

Big Gun wrote:

I can see the concept here but why would you need a Practice Ring to put over the treble 20 when you can aim between the wires of the treble 20!!! Am I missing something here or is someone making a lot of money from a product we don't really need. Surely if your focus is a bit off just put a chalk mark or a sticky dot where you want to aim. I am not convinced any of you need these at all to be honest. I also have to say they look rather large so can't see me investing in a set to be fair.

I completely agree with you Big Gun -I don't get it

Carl, I would love to hear that banter! I wonder if there are any videos of it? It would make my day heh

Saber wrote:

Also for beginners a good tool IMO- they can start out with the larger rings and get confidence up. Just my take

Yes very good point.

To add to this ref building confidence. Find someone who has very little experience throwing darts, preferably none. Get them to throw 21 darts at the 20 point. Monitor how all-over-the-place they are. Then, put up the Beginners ring so it covers the top section of the twenty. Give them another 21 throws and watch the result. Straight away they start getting the dart in the ring. It then becomes about the ring and not the 20. You will notice an immediate interest and confidence from that person which wasn't there before. We've experienced this with all non-players who've used the Darts Practice Rings.

Vallyr wrote:

Carl, I would love to hear that banter! I wonder if there are any videos of it? It would make my day heh

It was very funny Actually it was the day that we also filmed some of the promotional video. A DVD of darts banter out-takes me thinks lol.