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They look great, sound and feel great and the numbers are just as good as any other brand writes equipment editor James Savage
Our Cobra F8 irons review took place at the Golf Shack at Moor Allerton in Leeds.
We had also hit the F8 irons at Cobra’s launch event in London back in September.
For the main part of this review though we hit shots using a Foresight GC Quad launch monitor thanks to PGA professional James Whitaker.
When I saw these for the first time, I thought they just looked a little bit sleeker and stealthier than the F6 and F7 from previous years.
The design is toned down quite a bit with no bright colours which may please some people.
Then when you put them down in the address position they are a mid-sized head with reasonably thick top-line and a bit of off-set.
But I don’t think these irons are only going to appeal to high handicappers. They should have a really broad appeal because they are not stupidly chunky and have a really smart and sleek design.
Cobra are offering the F8 in variable and One Length again which is great to see as I believe there are loads of golfers who will benefit from going to single length – at least from 7-iron upwards.
Perhaps the coolest tech story with the F8 irons is the fact they come with the Cobra Connect system powered by Arccos in the grip.
So you can now buy a full set of irons – with the Cobra Connect built-in – and then get additional screw-in sensors for the rest of your bag – that’s basically £250 worth of kit you’re getting for free.
To the untrained eye the tweaks to the club heads compared to F7 may seem subtle but there’s plenty going on.
We’ve got an all-new thinner forged face which should add a bit more ball speed over a wider area.
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There’s new Carbon inserts that are strategically-positioned and new Carbon medallions behind the face dampen vibrations for improved sound and feel throughout the set.
We’ve still got the progressive cavity system – which Cobra call Tecflo – where we see a full hollow design on the 4-7 irons, a traditional cavity-back design on 8-PW.
The grooves are different too with reduced spin on the longer irons for more distance and more spin on the shorter irons for stopping power.
A speciality wedge design in the GW, SW and LW sees tighter-spaced wedge grooves to increase spin for more precision.
With the One Length – where all shafts are the length of a 7-iron – there are progressive hosel lengths and wider sole widths in the 4-6 irons to lower the CG.
The CG is raised in the scoring irons and wedges to promote lower, more controlled trajectories.
“Overall, I’d say the F7 One Length was a great surprise for us this year, surpassing all sales forecasts we had at the outset” said Tom Olsavsky, Cobra’s head of R&D.
“Now, as more players take note of the benefits provided by a One length set, we are excited to deliver the F8 line-up, with cutting-edge iron technologies that work in unison with the one length philosophy to make them even easier to hit and more consistent than before.
“And even better, with Cobra Connect, golfers don’t have to just take our word for it. They can clearly see just how much they’ve improved based on real data points. The numbers don’t lie.”
These results are very much on a ‘first hit’ basis rather than after any extensive on course testing – we will bring you this next year.
But it’s fair to say there is a hugely improved sound and feel on the F8 compared to the F7 and they look better in our opinion.
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Number-wise, they were doing exactly what we wanted them to do – all carrying around 150 yards with the 7-iron.
The numbers were pretty much the same as most other brands we have tested recently – Titleist 718 AP1, Ping G400, Mizuno JPX900 Hot Metal, TaylorMade M CGB and Callaway Steelhead XR.
The dispersion was also pretty tight which is the main thing to look at when it comes to irons.
[skylab_video id=”132072″]Cobra F8 driver YouTube[/skylab_video]
As an overall package the Cobra F8 irons offering is superb.
They look great, sound and feel great and the numbers are just as good as any other brand.
So on that basis they should really come into your consideration if you are in the market for a new set of irons.
But let’s throw in the fact that you can get a full Cobra Connect Arccos system worth £250 and you have the option of getting the F8 in One Length.
There is no other equipment company offering a package as good as that in our opinion.
The very least you can do is give them a try – and if more people did, more people would probably be playing Cobra clubs.
SRP: Variable/One Length 7-piece set: £649/£749 (steel/graphite)
Stock shafts: True Temper XP 90/ True Temper ONE Flighted/Aldila Rogue Pro 65
On sale: February 2, 2018
More information can be found on the Cobra website.
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