Moyu Super Weilong

Reviewing new Moyu cubes is like a college homework assignment where you need to come up with 12 different ways of saying almost the same thing but with different words. They keep releasing new cubes that resemble the older ones, and I keep having to find synonyms for “buttery smooth” and “fast but controllable”. I’ll be running out of adjectives soon, but the holiday season is here so I might receive a thesaurus as a gift to put to good use for next year.

As for how the new Moyu WRM actually is, the WRM10 (sorry “Super Weilong”) is a light cube with a mellifluous feel, adjustable magnets, fast turning, forgiving auto-align and corner cutting, and likely one of those cubes you pick up and break 2 PBs within minutes of starting to use it.

The look is similar to the newer Moyu cohorts of cubes, but with slightly more squarish center-caps, and white internals that reduce the contrast you find in the purple and teal internals of the latest Moyu cubes, making it feel less distinct and less interesting. The plastic is much more translucent and crunchy, reminiscent of the Gan11 or to some extent the WRM19 more than any of its last 10 siblings.

Of the WRM19 it also shares the hollow solidity and floatiness that made it a cult cube for many, but with the perks of the last generation of cubes : an auto-align that allows to be very fast AND avoid big screwups, very light turning, great sound (reminiscent of the WRM19), and something that will never lock up on you. The adjustable magnets – a feature which had all but disappeared from Moyu releases since more than a year ago – are a very welcome re-addition, and are calibrated in a way to let click-oriented people get something similar to the WRM9, but also those with a more reasonable relationship with friction and noise to tune it down to something less tactile. I personally would have liked an even weaker setting, and as there’s 8 different levels to choose from right now, they could easily have stretched the range a bit more on the weaker side.

In terms of the way it feels, the adjustable magnets really do make a difference. You can truly change the feel from something closer to a WRM9 or (almost on the opposite end) to a WRM19, while retaining a lot of forgiveness and a ton of speed. And this to me is a clincher : What the highest-end flagship cubes from the two major brands bring us now are cubes that have stellar performance AND adjustability to get that extra 10% fit tailored just for you.

Which means that if the clickiness of the WRM v9 feels good to you, you won’t need this cube. If you’re rocking a Maglev WRM19 and feel good about it then you likely won’t need this cube. But if you want a cube that will allow you to play around and find the perfect balance for you, then this cube goes a big step beyond what all the other Moyu releases from the past 8 months have done, which was providing a single feel with no/little adjustability. The fact that you can buy all the other Moyu releases from the past 8 months together for the same price as this one cube is something of a peculiarity in a period that seems to be transitioning once again to higher prices.

Indeed, good cubes are going back to having prices in the 30-40$ rather than 12$ range. If you take a step back and ask yourself : if the best GAN cube costs 90-100$, is it surprising that the best Moyu one costs close to that amount? The answer is likely “not so much”. But Moyu might have done a disservice to the cubing community 3 years ago when they popped out of nothing a beast of a cube for less than 10$ that outperformed the flagships from half of the cube brands that were out at the time. Now the pendulum is swinging back and what we feel right now might simply be growing pains that will go away once the big flagships start all being in the 35-45$ range again. But also, you can bet that GAN’s product managers are very happy that they can continue selling very expensive cubes now that someone else is following along.

In terms of what you do get for that price, the packaging is slick. If you receive something like this for Christmas you’ll be a happy person as you open up this thing — much to the chagrin of cube stores that now have an oversized box that costs a ton to ship, gets delayed because it’s just big enough to not fit easily in any delivery crate and generates overhead costs that then have to be put on the customers. The actual CONTENT of the box itself is less awe inspiring. Besides the cube, you get pretty much the same thing you get in an 8$ cube box, with the exception of yet another demonstration that Chinese marketing teams might not quite have the finger on the pulse of western culture.

Let me stomp through the landmine-filled topic of cultural sensitivity, and simply state that there are some thing that typically come with a cube that don’t exactly resonate with the sensitivity of people coming from a number of different cultural moulds. A shiny credit card-sized piece of plastic with the name of the cube on it, a square collectible cardboard tile with the image of a smiling well-dressed stranger, a plastic triangle whose objective is ostensibly to prop up a cube at an angle. These are all things that most people have no use for, but feel like an unfortunate marketing effort from people who don’t cube. But here is where my cultural myopia might be coming into play. I can imagine a world in which people DO collect square cardboard tiles with the faces of strangers on them, in which they DO care about having a decorated plastic card with “GAN” written on it…  And maybe that world is a country that I know next to nothing about and has 1.4 billion people. If that’s the case, then good for you cube manufacturers marketing teams, I hope that there’s some returns on those investments.

But for the life of me, I’ll not imagine that a bloody bracelet to carry the cube as a watch will ever be something that anyone with a modicum of self-awareness would want to be found dead wearing. The RS3M v5 robot was cute and of little use, this thing isn’t even cute. And if this is what you decided to put in the box to appease people who wouldn’t like a 200% hike in cube prices, then you should reconsider what your interns are making you drink during those brainstorming sessions.

All in all, these are considerations that are somewhat unrelated to the cube and its performance. This is a fantastic cube that adds back some of the customisability that was par for the course until 2 years ago and had started to disappear of late from all but the most expensive cubes, and brings a great level of excellence on a very light and fast puzzle.

But Bas, should I buy it?

This is an expensive cube, but it’s not more expensive than the flagships of the other big brand. The packaging and frills make it a great gift for a niece or godson or close friend old enough to care about a quality package and not into cubing enough to know that there is a marginally different cube from the same brand for 1/5th the price. The frills and shining package do have value that goes beyond that of the cube itself, so if the person you’re giving this to (or yourself if you happen to be something of a collector) does appreciate the value, then this is a fantastic product to buy.

If you only care about performance then this is ALSO a fantastic product to buy.

If you are somewhat attentive to your economies, then this is not a sufficient step up from any of the 15-25$ Moyu alternatives that have come out in the past 4 months.

A note: this cube was generously provided by SpeedCubeShop.com, which is kind enough to send me cubes for testing as long as some of you use the code SCDB when purchasing from them. So if you’re buying a cube and you want to get it decently quickly, consider making your purchase using [This link]. That will send some love our way and let me keep doing this!