Bohrium Driver by Løft | The Future or a Flop?
If you haven’t seen them on Kickstarter, Løft Discs has been taking the disc golf world by storm. They first brought the Hydrogen putter to the market and are now back with the Bohrium driver which they are claiming to be “by far the fastest driver on the market” (from Kickstarter campaign). This is due to the design of the underside of the rim of the disc. Instead of being sharp like all the standard distance drivers on the market, the Bohrium offers a rounded rim that promises to decrease drag and therefore increase glide and speed. So the big question is if this design is the future of the sport or just a gimmick?
Feel
One of the most important parts of any disc is how it feels in your hand. The hand feel can increase confidence or take it all away before your run-up even begins. One of the big keys of feel in your hand is the plastic. This is a place where I feel like Løft is doing just fine. There is nothing crazy about their a-Solid premium plastic but it gets the job done. I found it to have a decent grip and give to make it comfortable in your hand and allow your fingers to dig in without giving too much. If I had to compare it to anything, I would say it is like a slightly slicker Star plastic or like ESP with a bit more give.
Now the biggest question mark surrounding the Bohrium is the actual feel in your hand. The rounded rim is something that definitely catches you off guard when you pick it up. I found that I personally noticed it less in my forehand grip than I did in my backhand grip. I was able to get a good grip on it and once I got used to it, didn’t have too much trouble with it slipping out even though it was in my head on a lot of throws. To be honest with you, I think the shallow feel of the rim messed with my confidence more than the actual roundness of the rim. Overall I would say it is noticeable and can get in your head, but feel wise it is just something that will take a bit to get used to.
Flight
This is the most important part of the disc. The feel takes an obvious hit because of the rounded rim, but if the flight is unique enough and game-changing then the feel is something that everyone could easily get used to. Unfortunately, the flight just wasn’t that game-changing and shocking to me. I was able to get decent distance out of it, but when thrown next to my Wraith and Destroyer they all were going about the same distance with the furthest being the Wraith out of the bunch for my arm speed. This would not have been a huge deal had I not expected some next-level speed coming into the review. When I hear speed, I am thinking speed of flight and how fast the disc gets from point a to point b. I think this lead to some unrealistic expectations. Now that I have thrown the disc and looked back at the Kickstarter, I think when they were talking about speed they were referring to the disc being able to maintain speed. Now where I didn’t notice a difference in speed, I did pick up a difference in the glide of the disc. I had a few throws come out a little low and the disc did not want to get to the ground. Over and over the Bohrium was able to get its full flight in before getting to the ground even when only flying 5 or 6 feet off the ground. This would definitely come in handy with low tunnel shots and unique scramble shots.
So now that you know the unique parts of the flight that I did or didn’t notice, let me walk through what the disc flew like stability-wise. I found it to have a decent bit of high-speed understability with a strong finish. This allowed hyzer shots to flip up and get a lot of forward progress before finishing pretty hard back to the ground. The hyzer-flip to flat shots were some of the furthest I threw which is pretty typical for my throw style. When thrown flat, I found it pretty easy to get a full flex line out of the disc. This is where that glide came in handy as the disc never wanted to turn and burn. On anhyzer, I struggled with the Bohrium a little bit. I think this is mainly due to user error and getting the disc a bit nose up which is something I struggle with on anhyzer shots. What I found was that as soon as the driver slowed up or if it did not get to speed it wanted to hyzer out. Again I believe this is due to the unique rim shape.
Final Thoughts
So now that I have had some time to test it out and get a feel for the disc, let me go through my final verdict. The flight of the disc is very nice. I really enjoyed the lines I was able to get out of it. With that being said, I personally did not find anything revolutionary about the flight. I have thrown a lot of discs and while I found the Bohrium to be a great flyer, I don’t think it has a ton that separates it from other drivers out there on the market. The feel of the disc you might remember me saying wouldn’t be an issue as long as the flight was incredible. Unfortunately, I just didn’t find that to be the case. This is the biggest issue I have with the disc. The flight on the course just doesn’t quite outweigh the feel in my hand. I really appreciate Løft thinking outside the box and trying something new and I do think that there is something to what they attempted here, but it just isn’t quite there yet. My final score for the disc is 6.9 / 10. It is 100% worth getting your hands on and testing out for yourself, but I think overall the disc was a bit overhyped for what was delivered.
2 Comments
i think that by the flight and all the other stuff from the video that im still always going to go for a zeus
Awesome content. I really appreciate the disc reviews, there are so many options and great companies launching new disc every year. I was wondering about the loft and this video told me everything I would need to know before buying this disc. I’m a big fan of MVP I would like to see Hunter review MVP’s new fission wave. Allegedly the fission plastic is supper light weight with micro bubbles in it. This puts even more weight distribution to the rim to maximize the GYRO TECH. The fission plastic is also Allegedly makes the disc more under stable than MVPs other plastics such as neutron or plasma plastics.