Brussels: New AI Coach For Tennis

Your Tennis Ball Machine Is Training You to Lose. This One Teaches You to Win. - Gadget Review
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Home / Personal Tech / Gadgets
Your Tennis Ball Machine Is Training You to Lose. This One Teaches You to Win.
Traditional ball machines drill repetition into you. The Pongbot Pace S Pro drills tennis into you.
Alex Barrientos
LinkedIn
With over five years in the web and tech space, I’ve developed a deep passion for PC hardware and peripherals. I’m a habitual researcher, always eager to learn more, which has expanded my knowledge beyond PCs and keyboards to include TVs, headphones, and even vacuum cleaners.
All Articles by Alex Barrientos
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By
Alex Barrientos
LinkedIn
With over five years in the web and tech space, I’ve developed a deep passion for PC hardware and peripherals. I’m a habitual researcher, always eager to learn more, which has expanded my knowledge beyond PCs and keyboards to include TVs, headphones, and even vacuum cleaners.
All Articles by
Alex Barrientos
→
Mar 11, 2026
·
5 min read
Image: Gadget Review
Key Takeaways
You’re on court , solo, working through your backhand. The machine fires a ball. You hit it. Same spot. Same speed. Same spin. Repeat for 45 minutes. You feel productive.
You are not.
Traditional ball machines train you for a game that does not exist. No reading the opponent. No recovering to position. No adjusting on the fly.
Real tennis is chaos, and a timer-based launcher trains you for a perfect, predictable version of it that you will never play.
So, How Do You Actually Fix That?
Image: Pongbot
The Pongbot Pace S Pro is the first tennis ball machine to use Ultra-Wideband tracking to follow your movement in real time, adapt its feeds to your position, and hold its fire until you are back in position. It knows where you are standing, aims where you are not, and waits until you are ready before launching the next ball. That is how a real training partner works — and it is something no traditional machine can do. Through April 11, it is also 45 percent off .
The Machine That Actually Watches You Move
Image: Pongbot
The Pace S Pro uses Ultra-Wideband (UWB) tracking technology — the same kind used in high-precision industrial settings — to follow your position on court in real time. You wear a small sensor, clip two more to the net posts, and the machine locks onto you with accuracy down to 10 centimeters. It samples your movement 100 times per second, which is more than three times faster than standard camera-based systems.
What that means in practice: the machine knows when you are ready. It will not fire the next ball until you have returned to your recovery zone. You hit a wide forehand, scramble back to the baseline, plant your feet, and then — and only then — the next ball comes. That is how a real training partner operates. And it is something no traditional ball machine can do.
There is also an adaptive rally mode where the machine actively aims away from where you are standing, just like an opponent would. Move to one corner, and it targets the other. Stay centered, and it goes wide. It does not let you cheat your footwork. Go ahead and try to park yourself and coast — the machine will absolutely call you on it.
100,000 Real Matches Worth of Training Data
Here is where the Pongbot starts to feel less like a gadget and more like an actual coach .
The AI powering the Pace S Pro was trained on over 100,000 real matches and player movement patterns. It knows what a 3.5-level rally looks like. It knows what a 5.0-level rally looks like. You set your NTRP level — from beginner to professional — and the machine calibrates its speed, spin, placement, and timing to match that skill tier. As your game improves, you nudge it up, and it gets harder. It is not trying to beat you. It is trying to make you better, which is a slightly different and more useful goal.
After each session, you get a performance report with scores and key highlights. Think of it as a coach who gives you feedback without the $120-per-hour rate or the passive-aggressive comments about your grip.
564 Drills. Or Just Make Your Own.
Image: Pongbot
The drill library is enormous. The Pace S Pro ships with 564 pre-programmed drills built by professional coaches, covering every skill level and shot type, from basic groundstrokes to the kind of pattern work that serious competitive players use to prepare for matches.
But the custom drill builder is where things get interesting. You can design sequences up to 45 balls long, controlling the speed, spin, height, placement, and depth of each individual shot. Want to recreate Djokovic’s baseline patterns? You can map that out. Want to build a drill that targets your specific weakness — say, high balls to your backhand after sprinting wide — you can build exactly that. Once you create it, you can upload it to the Pongbot community library for other players to use.
The machine switches spin types in 1.5 seconds, which keeps that rally rhythm feeling natural rather than mechanical. Topspin, backspin, flat — it handles all of it, at speeds up to 80 mph.
The Bottom Line on Price
Image: Pongbot
A quality traditional ball machine runs anywhere from $1,500 to $3,500 — and gives you none of this. No tracking. No AI. No adaptive drills. Just a glorified launcher that you still have to babysit with preset programs.
The Pace S Pro normally retails at $1,999. Right now, through April 11, Pongbot is running its Spring Sale with the Pace S Pro marked down to $1,199 — 40 percent off, saving you $800.
Alternatively, the Pace S – which has fewer bells and whistles – is just $999.99 (normally $1,699.99), a 40% savings.
That puts it in the same price range as a basic machine, except this one knows your name.
The sale also includes a few extras worth paying attention to. You can spin a Lucky Wheel for a shot at 50% off or a free order. You can choose a free bonus gift — options include the Serve-Trigger Sensor, a 50-pack of tennis balls, or a ball picker — auto-added to your cart at checkout.
Sign up for the newsletter, and you get a surprise coupon code. And there is a Wish Wall giveaway running through the sale where Pongbot picks three training wishes to fulfill.
It is a lot of promotion happening at once. The machine itself is the reason to buy.
Who This Is Actually For
Image: Pongbot
If you play tennis consistently and do not always have a hitting partner available, the Pace S Pro is a serious upgrade over everything else on the market. It is particularly strong for players in the 3.0 to 5.0 range who want to build real match instincts rather than just rallying consistency.
It weighs about 40 pounds, fits in most car trunks, runs for over eight hours on a charge, and works on hard court, clay, and grass. It is not cheap even on sale, but compared to what regular coaching costs — or what a passive ball machine costs without any of these features — the value argument holds up.
Traditional machines train your arm. The Pongbot trains your tennis brain.
That is the difference.
The Pongbot Spring Sale runs March 11 through April 11, 2026, at store.pongbotsports.com/pages/spring-sale .
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Alex Barrientos
With over five years in the web and tech space, I’ve developed a deep p…

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