The budget side of this is interesting, or rather how you look at it.

If you contrast it to how many times you play then £200 at playing once a week works out to roughly £4 a week over a year.

That isn't a bad shout when you consider a hobby.

Clothes = whatever you want

Shoes = £100 over 2 years is more than enough( i'm a big shoe fan)

Grips = really? at £1 a time it can't be a consideration.

Strings = unless you're a pro or really unlucky does this really count ?

Having played other sports all this is kinda cheap for me.

Obviously there are other costs to consider but relatively speaking that's under 2 pints of beer per week.

Everything is halved if you play twice a week, and if you consider the cost over 2 years it becomes pennies.

I like your thinking Simon, new Voltric for me too!

Unfortunately it's all the other costs that are the significant ones. I average £7-ish a week in match and/or club fees, (assume I play twice a week) and probably the same in petrol now as my main club is a fair few miles away, not to mention the far flung away matches.

If you take a season as being 25 weeks that's £375. Having said that it's much more fun than going to the gym and I'd say the social side of badminton is the most fun!

I've brought two Browning OxiLite 75Ti rackets for £55 including postage. Restrung and re-gripped both rackets myself and whey, two good light rackets for me to use. For me I had to save to get these rackets but it's worth it.

My advice on this topic is, what ever racket you do get, try and buy TWO at the same time. This way when one racket's strings break you can use the other racket which is identical to the one you were just using a minute ago! And also, means you can take your racket to a decent stringer and get it sorted rather than trying to sort it out ASAP as you have a match coming up.

Voltric did look nice (I saw it at AE), but can't justifiy the price tag. You clash rackets and it snaps, that won't be funny. Put it this way, in a few years time you'll get this racket for half the price it is at now and there will be some other “new” racket that's been resprayed!

If you see a racket that's old, doesn't mean it's not any good. Just means that said company have a new “toy” to advertise. Bit like when washing poweders say “now even WHITER”. Come on, you said that last time. It's all about balance, holding the racket first is best but there are many internet shops now that you can send racket back if you don't like it so works out the return postage to try a racket out?

Oh, and there is no such thing as THE best racket, as said on here before, depends on the person. If you just want to show to your mates that you got a fancy racket, just buy a fake one off E-Bay, they'll never know! (joking!)

There is no best racket so far but in playing badminton we must not depend on the racket that we have ,this things are just our accessories in playing the game , it adds some strenghts to us but we must cosider the fact the rackets doen't make us win its us…Buying a racket is a crucial stage for us players there are lot or thing to consider read this blog to know  more .. http://badmintonbats.blogspot……acket.html