Back in May, Mission held their 2022 Spring launch, releasing new barrels onto the market. The Mission Pheon is a new dart that is a shorter straight barrel dart with fantastic grip and excellent design.
The dart from afar looks quite simple, a ring grip dart with some coatings in the grooves but when looking closer, the fine details and machining of the dart really come to life. The stepped grooves offer great grip and offer something different with the bronze and black coatings. Another great feature to the barrel is the machining on the rings in an almost zig-zag style pattern. These once again add texture and therefore grip to the dart however don't feel uncomfortable or unnatural. Over time these cuts may wear down and feel less grippy but as with all darts that will be a factor especially over a few years of use. Product Information
22g Steel Tip - 90% Tungsten (Also available in 24g, 26g Steel Tip and 20g Soft Tip) • Length: 48mm • Width: 6.5mm
• Supplied with short Mission Grip Lock shafts and Standard Pheon Flights • Price (As of 26/07/2022): £54.95
Grip and Balance
The grip on these barrels is something that can't truly be judged without testing out the barrels first. On the surface the darts look like they will provide an aggressive grip however upon using them I realised this wasn't the case. Although I do still think the grip rating itself is on the higher end, the actual aggressiveness of the dart isn't quite there like some barrels such as the Mission Pandaman Xiaochen Zong barrels. The darts don't "stick" to your fingers and feel like an aggressive dart that has actually been used and worn slightly straight out of the box which will please a lot of people. Grip Rating: 4/5
The dart, as with most straight barrels, are balanced ever so slightly in front of the barrels actual center point without any stems or flights. When adding stems and flights they move the balance slightly behind the center point. As always the longer the stem, the further back the balance point is.
Darts Performance
For me personally, these darts are very similar to my own match darts. The only difference being that these darts are one gram lighter and are also slightly wider at 6.5mm compared to my barrels 6.4mm width. That means that the darts performed well for me and I scored quite heavily with them, especially when using my preferred medium stem and standard flight setup. In the air the barrels really glided and for me felt lighter than 22g but being a short and narrow but straight barrel, this will often be the case. The darts also felt thinner than they were in the hand so if you are a user of perhaps a narrower dart thats 6.0-6.2mm these don't feel too far away from that. My comparison being the Red Dragon Dragonfly 3 which are 48mm x 6.2mm in 22g. These darts were very similar. For further detail please see the video review of the darts in action on my channel.
Overall Summary These darts for me were my favourite from the launch to play with, likely because of the similarities to my own match darts. What I will say is that they're definitely worth trying out at a local shop if you haven't ever used a straight barrel dart under 52mm. If you use for example a Gary Anderson Phase 3/5 dart you'll find these very similar in terms of feel but may get better performance with the reduced length. Something not many players think of is the length of the barrel but a few mm can make a lot of difference, so its worth trying! These darts can be picked up from dartscorner and other darts shops that stock Mission Darts products. Thank you to Mission for sending me these darts to review. Written by Kurt Bevan of MatadorDarts.com
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