RPM Jade: Is It Worth the Hype?

Eleven months ago, RPM did not exist. Today it is one of the largest paddle manufacturers in the sport, with a dedicated factory in China and a founder who left the PPA tour to run it. James Ignatowich started the company with co-founder Marwan Abaza, and by his own estimate RPM now sits somewhere in the third to fifth range for paddle volume worldwide, though we aren’t able to verify that claim. If even close to accurate, that is a remarkable climb for a brand whose first paddle shipped less than a year ago.

The Jade is their latest paddle launch, and whether it’s pure marketing prowess or true innovation led popularity, it’s selling like crazy. RPM claims somewhere north of ten thousand pre-orders, and this is before players have seen any influencer reviews or hit the paddle themselves.That’s a lot of people willing to spend $269, or a little under $250 with a code, on a paddle not many outside the company have played. Whatever else you think about the Jade or RPM, that is not a small number for a paddle at that price from a brand that did not exist last October.

So the question worth asking is simple, what’s actually in this paddle, and does what we know so far justify the hype around it? Let’s dive in.

What We Know

The Jade is a full foam power paddle built around an MPP floating core wrapped in soft EVA foam similar to a few other top performers on the market right now. That being said, most of the Gen 4 foam paddles on the market use EPP, which according to Ignatowich comes in hot out of the box and either holds that level or slowly declines over the life of the paddle. MPP behaves differently. It breaks in and gains a little power over time, the way the Loco Inferno and the 11SIX24 Power 2 do, though far more gradually than the old Gen 3 power curve anyone who played thermoformed paddles will remember.

There’s no way the Jade would bring this much hype without a durable spin texture, the hottest selling feature of paddles in 2026, and RPM claims to have developed a top performing option.  They are calling it SICmatrix, short for silicon carbide matrix, and the construction is exactly what the name suggests. Extremely fine silicon carbide particles are embedded directly into the epoxy before the face is pressed, rather than sprayed onto the peel ply afterward. The practical difference is that as the epoxy roughness wears away, it exposes the hard particles sitting underneath it instead of stripping the grit off the top. That is the same architecture behind every surface that has posted a tier one result this year, and it is the reason some of those paddles actually gain a little spin as they break in.

RPM says they tested SICmatrix extensively at their own factory before sending it out for independent third party testing, and John Kew's ball cannon confirmed it as tier one. Worth noting for anyone tracking these results closely: Kew has since raised his accelerated wear protocol from 100 shots to 200, and the Jade held its spin across the longer run. RPM also went out of their way to get that result before putting the paddle in anyone's hands, which is a different order of operations than most of the industry has followed lately.

Rounding out the build is what RPM calls an Axial Carbon Layup, with fibers aligned to maximize dwell time and ball pocketing across the face. Every Jade carries a limited lifetime warranty against manufacturing defects, good for one claim per paddle.

All four models are registered with USAP at a PBCoR of .43, and all four carry a 4.125″ grip circumference. UPA-A approval is still pending, and RPM has confirmed the units currently in production will ship with the USAP stamp regardless of when that approval lands, so anyone who needs UPA-A certification for local tournament play should factor that in. A flat top hybrid is planned but will not arrive until November or December.

Looking at specs, the number that jumps off that table is swing weight. At 112 in both elongated builds and as low as 104 in the 14mm widebody, the Jade is a light, fast paddle by current standards, several points under the 118 or so that has become typical for an elongated paddle. Twist weight follows the same pattern, with 6.0 and 6.2 on the elongated models sitting below what most players expect from that shape. Neither of those is a flaw, but together they suggest a paddle built for hand speed that a fair number of buyers will end up tuning with lead tape. If you like a stable, planted elongated out of the box, go in knowing that.

Pricing is $269 before code. RPM says shipping begins the first week of October.

On Court

This is hard info to come by, and the team at RPM has kept the Jade close to their chest so far. 

Ignatowich said plainly that RPM sent the paddle to John Kew for lab testing and to nobody else, not to reviewers and not to their own pros, because they wanted the tier one result confirmed before putting it in circulation. What impressions have surfaced describe the Jade as a very slightly toned down Q2 with a somewhat crisper feel, but those are secondhand and reportedly come from pre-production samples rather than the full production run. RPM has changed things between small batch and large batch production before. Treat everything in this section as provisional.

The most detailed account we have is from Ignatowich himself, which is worth taking for exactly what it is, but is also more specific than the usual founder talking points. He has switched to the Jade as his own gamer, off the 14mm V2 he had been playing. His reasoning is not about power or feel, it is about consistency. His complaint with the Q2 was that as the grit wore down he lost the ability to control his serve and his flicks, because a paddle with that much power and a fading surface stops holding the ball in the court. Spin, in his framing, is what lets you swing as hard as you want, because topspin brings the ball down. A surface that keeps its bite means the same swing produces the same result three weeks later.

That is the actual pitch for this paddle, and it is a narrower one than the marketing suggests. The Jade is not being sold as the most powerful paddle on the market or the most forgiving. It is being sold as a paddle that plays the same in month six as it does in week one.

On the MPP question, expect a little more volume at contact than an EPP core and a slow climb in power as it breaks in. How much of that thud versus crispness you actually get is genuinely hard to predict, because MPP varies substantially depending on which supplier a factory sources it from. Ignatowich has said RPM has seen paddles with identical cores, identical layups and identical components play noticeably differently for that reason alone, which is why the Jade may not feel much like the other MPP paddles you have hit.

What Comes Next

We will know a great deal more in the coming weeks. Production units land at the start of October, reviewers will finally have the paddle in hand, and the on-court picture will fill in quickly once people who did not build it start putting hours on it. The durability claim in particular deserves real court time rather than a single accelerated wear run, and that data will take months rather than weeks to arrive.

What we can say now is that the fundamentals are sound and the tier one claim is better supported than most. In a season where several brands have printed durability tiers on their packaging before anyone independently tested them, RPM held the paddle back until the result came in and then published it. That does not tell you whether you will like how it plays, but it does tell you the most important thing on the box likely holds up.

If you are already an RPM player, or if you have spent the last year cycling through paddles because the grit keeps dying on you, the Jade is aimed squarely at you. If you want to know how it feels before you spend $269, the answer is a few weeks away, and there is no shame in waiting for it.