SKLZ Pro Grade Power Tee - Ultra Durable Baseball Tee

The Skilz Pro Grade Power Tee is a nice baseball batting tee. It seems durable and a reasonably heavy weight. The tube adjusts through a nice range of heights although as with most tees, it doesn't really go low enough for pitches at or below the knees especially for younger players.But at a list price of $100, it's completely overpriced and even after the substantial discount, there's no reason to recommend paying more for this than the equally durable, heavyweight, and adjustable Macgregor Batting Tee. The Macgregor actually remains my preference with the correct size plate instead of the undersized plate plus unusual front on the Skilz. And for a few dollars more, I'd probably go for the Jugs 5-Point Hitting Tee which is what our league uses. It's actually a lower list price but Amazon's currently discounting Skilz to a lower price.So while there's nothing wrong with the Skilz product, there's no reason to recommend it at such a high price over more reasonably priced equal tees.

To start with, I have bad rheumatoid arthritis including in my hands, so when I tried to put this together, I couldn't. So currently I'm stuck with one of the poles part way into the base as I also couldn't back it out. This is something an adult with strong hands will need to put together. I had been hoping that my adult son would have a baseball bat to try this out, but he didn't. So I will have to find someone that can finish putting it together for me and some baseball players to try it out. In the meantime I'm at a stand still with this piece of equipment. I did notice that it has only a 90 day warranty which is just barely the length of softball/baseball season. As usual with any thing that needs to be put together, you just get 'cartoon' drawings and generally no more than 4 of them no matter how difficult it may be to put together. I don't know why manufacturer's decided that no one could read or understand written directions and so eliminated them.

Here's my recent experience with batting tees, as a new tee-ball coach:1) The tees I get from the park for practices and games: heavy duty, durable, tee in the middle of the "home plate" shape.2) The inexpensive "portable"/"travel" tee I got from a local sporting goods store.3) This SKLZ tee.Let me tell you this, at least: if you want a batting tee, never shell out any money on tee #2, even though it seems like "a deal". What it is is a waste of time. It's designed to fall over, it's not easily adjustable, the tee part where you put the ball is way too small so the ball keeps falling off.The park's tees are like the McGregor or Franklin tees you see here at amazon, coming in at around $25/$35 or so.This SKLZ Pro Grade power tee appears to be just as solid, well-made and durable as the park's tees. The only way to have any perspective on this is to check back in here in 3 months after the season is over, because SKLZ Pro grade tee lists at $99 and claims "Ultra-durable construction to withstand thousands of swings from elite players", so it remains to be seen if the higher price is justified. My guess would be if you are going to coach tee ball for one or two seasons, this is probably too much tee for you. Unless you've got some seriously ELITE 6-year-olds.Minor struggles with assembling and disassembling, to be expected... it IS a big plus to be able to disassemble the tee, though.Here are the other two differences between this tee and the park's tees:-The park's tees appear to have heavy rubber bases, and the SKLZ tee claims a "Steel plate base", so one would think the SKLZ base is more durable.-The SKLZ tee is located out in front of the plate a few inches, vs the park's tee located right on the middle of the plate. The SKLZ tee's info doesn't mention this, or whether this is supposed to be better for your swing, or anything of the sort. I'm not sure yet whether this will mess up my young players as they learn the batting stance in relation to the plate at practices using the SKLZ tee vs games using the park's tee. Again, I'll check back in in 3 months with this info, IF YOU CAN STAND THE SUSPENSE!As of this writing Amazon is selling this tee for $59.39, which is roughly double what the typical rubber heavy-duty tees are selling for. The only thing that could possibly justify that cost is amazing durability; WE WILL SEE... Is this the JULIO FRANCO of batting tees... or the, um... SUPER JOE CHARBONEAU??

Great for batting practice. My son loves to play baseball. This has helped him perfect his swing. Bought it with a few other SKLZ products. All sent on time and packaged well.

I was not impressed with this tee. It would seem easy to put together looking at the instructions, but I really struggled trying to slide the tube through the base unit while the kids were waiting. I did not find the height adjustment that intuitive either and spent more time trying to get that figured out. The one nice thing about this tee is its weight. Its not too heavy to carry around but heavy enough that my excited little batters aren't tipping it over every time. What I was surprised at was the cost of this tee. Not sure that I could recommend this product and give it only 2 starts.