ArcSaber 7
Model ARC-7 · Saina Nehwal, Gao Ling
Price history
Chart: monthly median of verified pre-owned sales · USD · methodology
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ArcSaber 7: the first ArcSaber, and Saina Nehwal’s Commonwealth Games gold racquet
On court before it was on sale
The ArcSaber 7 won a title before anyone could buy one. Yonex Japan announced it in September 2007 for release in early October, and Yonex’s results from that month’s Yonex Open Japan list Gao Ling, already a two-time Olympic mixed doubles champion, on the “Arcsaber 7.” She and Zheng Bo, who played an Armortec 700, won the mixed doubles final over Nova Widianto and Liliyana Natsir. It was the first racquet of the ArcSaber line, which Yonex still makes. Looking back in 2022, Yonex wrote that the ArcSaber 7 arrived “at a time when repulsion-based racquets were the standard,” and its pitch ran the other way, toward a frame that holds the shuttle. Three years after that debut it was Saina Nehwal’s racquet as she won the 2010 Indonesia Open and Commonwealth Games gold.
Cup-stacked nanotubes and a new joint
Yonex Japan’s launch notice tied the racquet to rally-point scoring, adopted internationally the year before, which it said had sped the game up and asked racquets for power and control at once. Its solution was cup-stack carbon nanotube, multi-layer tubes shaped like stacked cups, set into the frame sides. In Yonex’s own 2007 hitting test the shuttle stayed on the strings longer and left them faster. A new built-in T-joint swapped aluminum alloy for a light plastic compound with epoxy and a foaming agent to reduce twisting, and a thinner frame cut air resistance by 3%. Yonex listed a high-modulus graphite frame with CS Carbon Nanotube and a graphite shaft, rated the flex medium, and made it in Japan in 3U and 2U for intermediate and advanced players, at ¥22,000 before tax. Its Japanese charts plot the balance at even. The “stiff top and bottom, flexible sides” structure sometimes attached to it is how Yonex described the 2022 ArcSaber 11, not this frame.
Gao Ling, Saina Nehwal and Liliyana Natsir
Yonex’s tournament reports show who took it up. Gao Ling stayed on it into 2008 and won the All England mixed doubles that March, 18–21, 21–14, 21–9 over Widianto and Natsir, with Zheng Bo by then on the new ArcSaber 10. Wei Yili and Zhang Yawen won the 2007 French Open women’s doubles with it, and Vita Marissa won the mixed. China’s move to Li-Ning in April 2009 took its players out of Yonex’s records, and the racquet found new hands. Yonex’s English page listed it for Saina Nehwal from its earliest archived capture, in September 2009, to January 2012, and Yonex Japan named it for her 2010 Indonesia Open final win over Sayaka Sato and her Commonwealth Games gold in Delhi, 19–21, 23–21, 21–13 over Wong Mew Choo. Yonex Japan also lists Natsir on it from July 2010, and with Tontowi Ahmad for their 2011 India Open, Malaysia Grand Prix Gold and Singapore Open titles, while her English page still showed an Armortec. Malaysia’s Goh Liu Ying was listed on it at the 2012 Yonex Open Japan.
Yellow, then Shine Silver
Yonex kept one item code, ARC7, through two colorways. Yonex Japan’s product page shows the launch yellow as late as January 2011 and Shine Silver by March 2011, with the same materials, sizes and specification, and Yonex’s global pages from 2011 to 2015 show only the silver. A dealer listing of December 2010 describes an ArcSaber 100 Limited (ARC100LTD) “designed based on the ArcSaber 7” and decorated for the 100th All England, with 500 made for US distribution, and owners on BadmintonCentral call it a recolored ArcSaber 7; no Yonex listing for it is documented. The ArcSaber 10 took the top of the line within months: Yonex’s global ArcSaber page still carried the 7 alone in February 2008, but its All England report that March already lists Zheng Bo on the 10. The ArcSaber 7 then sat below the 10, the 2009 Z-Slash and, from 2013, the ArcSaber 11, and it was still on Yonex Japan’s list in 2015. The name returned in August 2022 on the ArcSaber 7 Pro, Tour and Play. They are new designs, each with its own page.
Eight years on sale
The verified sales in the price panel above are pre-owned examples of the original ArcSaber 7 from the Asian resale market; the 2022 ArcSaber 7 Pro, Tour and Play each have their own page. The original’s history should frame them. It was a regular-production model that Yonex Japan sold for about eight years, from October 2007 to the end of 2015, and it was made for club players as well as used on tour, so played examples are the normal form. Colorway is the quickest guide to age: yellow is the 2007–2011 finish and Shine Silver the 2011–2015 one. Yonex’s match reports name the model, never the color, so no colorway can be tied to a particular title, and Yonex published no production figures for either. A listing that says only “ArcSaber 7” may also be one of the 2022 racquets.
Fakes and mistaken identity
No counterfeit specific to the ArcSaber 7 has been documented. It sold through years when copies of Yonex racquets were common enough for Yonex to publish its own guide to spotting them, and coach Paul Stewart warned of many fake ArcSaber 10s for sale online, so the usual checks apply. Mistaken identity is the likelier trap. Since 2022 three newer racquets have shared the ArcSaber 7 name, and they are different frames: Yonex lists all three only in 4U, a weight it never listed for the original. A frame sold as an original should match one of the two documented colorways and be marked Made in Japan.
Where the ArcSaber line began
Yonex’s own account of the series starts here: in 2022 it described the ArcSaber line as built on shuttle hold and dated it to the ArcSaber 7 in 2007. The flagship honors went to other frames. Yonex Japan’s 25th-anniversary timeline of landmark racquets includes the Z-Slash but not the 7, and the ArcSaber 10 carried the line’s best-known names. The 7’s case rests on what it started and on who played it. Stewart gave it four stars and liked the extra whip its medium-flex shaft added to clears, drives and smashes without slowing his net game, the main difference he felt from the stiffer ArcSaber 10. A 2011 review on the Badminton Research blog called it beginner-friendly and a front-court player’s racquet. For Saina Nehwal it came before the Nanoray 700RP, which she took up in late 2011: Yonex says she reached the December 2011 Superseries Finals final “just after she started to use it,” though its staff page listed the 700RP for her only from March 2012.
Yonex’s item code is ARC7, and the frame should be marked Made in Japan. Yonex’s global page listed 3U (85.0–89.9 g) with grip 4 or 5 and 2U (90.0–94.9 g) with grip 3, 4 or 5; Yonex Japan sold 3U and 2U in grips 4 and 5. No Yonex listing offers a 4U original. The documented colorways are yellow (2007–2011) and Shine Silver (2011–2015), and Yonex Japan marked the model 10 mm longer than standard. Yonex rated the flex medium. The 2022 ArcSaber 7 Pro (ARC7-P), Tour (ARC7-T) and Play (ARC7-PL) are different racquets, all 4U only. Yonex’s own checks: the production code on the cap above the handle is laser-engraved, the hologram sticker resists peeling, the O in YONEX is not wide and round, and the butt cap is Yonex’s green.
For a collector, the ArcSaber 7 is the start of a line Yonex still makes, and the yellow launch finish is the version closest to its 2007 debut. Buy on condition and identity: ask for photographs of the colorway, the Made in Japan marking and the cone code, and confirm the racquet is not one of the 2022 ArcSaber 7 models. Treat any claim that a frame was used by Saina Nehwal, Liliyana Natsir or Gao Ling as unproven without documentation.
Verified prices last updated Sep 2026. All data based on tracked secondary market transactions.