Trend Sports Crusher Mini Lite-Ball Pitching Machine With Bonus Steel Tripod

It’s good for kids but it’s not good as expected

First - it has 2 instruction sheets. We read the first one and panicked immediately as the product parts were different. Then we found the other sheet that says - use this! Why would you have 2 instruction sheets? Just take the other one which is not applicable, throw it to avoid confusion among your customers. Second - it took us longer to connect the black round part to the red casing. We discovered that the hole into which the bolt should connect to was partly covered with the red plastic casing. So we have to meticulously remove it because we do not want to loosen the "thread" to which the bolt connects to. Third, when we finally set-up the entire unit and plugged it in - took forever to adjust the direction and speed of the balls. There are no instructions as to which button would give you a higher or lower pitch which one is throw a faster ball, which one will you a curveball. No matter how hard we tried and tried, still cannot figure it out. End result - very time consuming with no productivity. Fourth - would not work well if you put all the balls in the red case - have to do it one at a time as the balls get stuck. When one gets stuck, you either push it with another ball - if two balls get stuck, you turn off the unit and get the balls yourself which takes a little hand and a load of patience and determination to do it. My husband's hand simply won't fit in. Fifth - when you turn off the the unit, while it stops feeding the ball the sounds won't stop. So everytime we turn it off, we literally have to unplug it also! And boy, it really is a loud machine. I don't think our next door neighbor will appreciate it. Sixth - not sure if I missed it, but the tripod is not adjustable so this may also be hte reason why we cannot adjust how high or low the balls should go depending on the height of the "batter" or the catcher (my son was hoping this could help him in his infield catching drills). My son is truly disappointed with this product. With the price - we honestly don't think it is worth it. We might have received a defective unit but with our experience, we do not even want a replacement. In conclusion, it you are really serious about improving your baseball skills with the help of training tools and equipment, this is not the equipment for you. One good thing though that came out of this purchase - my husband will stick to just manually throw and pitch to our son. While we are returning this product, we are definitely getting the small balls from the same vendor.

I was told this works with small wiffle balls and that is not true. The foam balls that do work from Heater Sports are very expensive. Needs to be a high density foam ball to work.

We bought this for my granddaughter and at first she was concerned with the small balls, but she caught on quickly. We use it for batting and catching. My grandson, 4 years old, who just started tee ball enjoyed it also. He likes the catching part the best.

This will take some getting used to as the balls are sticking for the moment. I assume that this tool will get better with use.