Amazon’s new two-piece Basics Core Soft ball was never designed to dominate the tour. But when an ultra-budget ball promises “exceptional distance, straight flight and advanced cover and core technology,” golfers understandably get curious.
So we put it to the test.
We compared Core Soft to Titleist’s Pro V1, Tour Soft and Velocity using the Golf Laboratories swing robot at average-golfer swing speeds.
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Each ball was tested with a driver, 7-iron, 100-yard wedge shot and 40-yard wedge shot. (These are four very different price points; the goal is simply to see how the Core Soft stacks up.)
Driver
Titleist Pro V1: 11.7° (launch angle) | 2,562 RPM (spin) | 219 yards (carry) Titleist Tour Soft: 11.8° | 2,680 RPM | 218.8 yards Titleist Velocity: 12.1° | 2,261 RPM | 220.6 yards Amazon Basics Core Soft: 11.9° | 2,203 RPM | 207 yards
Off the tee, Amazon’s soft-compression design couldn’t keep pace — even at average swing speeds. It was roughly 11–13 yards shorter with a slightly lower launch and noticeably reduced spin, making it one of the shortest balls we’ve tested at 95 mph.
What’s interesting is how the ball loses its distance. On paper, a 11.9-degree launch at around 2,200 RPM looks similar to the Titleist models. The issue emerges as the ball climbs: the Basics reaches a significantly lower peak height and descends on a shallower angle. Low launch plus low spin simply isn’t a recipe for maximizing carry.
It’s also fair to assume the distance gap would widen for higher-speed players due to less-efficient energy transfer at impact.
Studies show players lose an estimated 0.1–0.3 strokes per round for every 10 yards of distance lost. That drop-off won’t matter to everyone — but it does leave you with a longer club on your next approach.
7-iron
Titleist Pro V1: 20.1° | 5,668 RPM | 170.5 yards Titleist Tour Soft: 19.1° | 6,601 RPM | 167 yards Titleist Velocity: 19.6° | 6,186 RPM | 168.5 yards Amazon Basics Core Soft: 20° | 5,757 RPM | 169.5 yards
Here’s where the story gets interesting. As speed becomes less critical in the mid irons — hopefully you’re not taking a driver-level rip with a 7-iron — the Amazon ball starts to track closely with the competition.
Launch, spin and carry numbers were almost identical across all four models, despite their drastically different constructions. If your game consisted of only mid-iron shots, you’d call this a win.
But the closer you get to the green, the more the peformance gap begins to show.
Wedge (100 yards) 
From 100 yards, reality hits hard. A two-piece, $1.50 ball can’t match a multi-piece urethane design — and the numbers show it. The Pro V1 produced nearly 5,000 more RPM and launched 7 degrees lower.
Depending on green firmness, that 5,000-RPM delta could be the difference between a shot checking and stopping versus hitting the green and rolling 18–30 feet past the target. Accounting for that much rollout is no small task.
The Tour Soft also out-spun the Amazon ball by nearly 1,400 RPM, while Velocity trailed the Amazon by about 900 RPM.
Wedge (40 yards) 
It was more of the same for Basics in the head-to-head battle with Pro V1: less spin and a higher launch. Surprisingly, the Core Soft actually generated about 500 more RPM than the Tour Soft inside 40 yards. Its soft compression can help on partial shots. What ultimately limits its short-game performance is the firmer, more durable cover, which prevents the grooves from fully gripping the ball at impact.
Against Velocity, the Basics posted more spin and a lower launch — expected results when comparing a very soft ball to one of the firmest distance offerings in the industry.
Verdict
Is Amazon Basics a Pro V1 killer? Absolutely not. But if you’re hunting for extreme value and don’t mind giving up yardage off the tee and spin from 100 yards and in, it’s worth consideration.
The ball performed surprisingly well in the mid irons and holds its own in the short game department against Tour Soft and Velocity. For the price, and construction, it does just enough to keep things interesting.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
