2016 Easton S500 Review

We hesitated for several months to even review the Easton S500 (and S500C) as we generally leave this blog to review bats in the performance realm. But we've been asked a dozen times and our site is searched often for our 2016 Easton S500 review---which we've yet to have until now. It is a wildly popular bat due to its price and brand name and a lot of parents, we are guessing, search to see if the bat has at least marginal enough reviews to pull the trigger. In reality, our review of any 7050 Aluminum alloy budget bat could have sounded exactly the same. The bats are mass-produced with a budget in mind and there is no particular benefit to the S500 over any of the other dozen or so 7050 single-piece alloy bats. You are simply buying a brand name and a paint job. We do like the Easton S500C and would suggest, for those in the budget range of the youth 2 1/4 little league bat market, to give it a whirl---the two piece design is a worthwhile addition to a budget bat.

We found Easton's 2016 S500C an interesting bat for sure. It's a light swinging hybrid bat (a composite handle and an aluminum barrel) made for the budget space. The bat uses the same aluminum alloy as the S500 which, at least compared to performance-based bats, lacks in performance through the entire length of the barrel. It also struggles to get to peak performance on lower impacts. However, on the bright side, the connection piece of the bat is the same CXN Easton uses on the MAKO brand of bats. And the composite handle is nothing to be disappointing in either. From a pure budget standpoint, we'd be very willing to recommend the Easton S500C for the youth barrel league in the drop 12. Brand new, last we checked, the bat was less than $80. And getting some hand sting dampening in a light swinging hybrid bat---despite it's barrels' lack of performance---for that price point makes it an interesting choice for sure.

The S500 is a simple single-piece aluminum bat made from 7050 aircraft aluminum. This is the same aluminum alloy used in several lower-end model bats that can be found for cheap prices just about anywhere. The handle feels thin compared to most other bats---a sort of softball bat quality to the stick which, we thought, added to the hand sting in a bad way. The barrel size is below average when compared to aluminum performance bats. But the paint job is nice.