Part of the new Callaway family for 2024 are the Paradym Ai Smoke irons. Attempting to sit amongst the best distance irons and also the most forgiving irons, I put these irons through their paces to see what they had to offer.
Out of the box, I was immediately impressed with the looks of this iron set. Sometimes I can find the aesthetic in this category a little over the top and even patronising to the user, with overly flashy graphics and garish designs, but the Ai Smoke irons carry some refinement and sophistication. The chrome finish gives a premium look and the small carbon effect banner strip on the back that houses the Ai Smoke logo enhances, rather than detracts from the looks.
My only slight disappointment in terms of the visual (and believe me this is minor!), is the continued use of shorter ferrules in the ‘game improvement’ iron category from Callaway. The Apex CB irons, for example, feature a ferrule nearly double the length and I have always found this elongated neck to be a more premium and traditional look. As I said, this is a very minor gripe but one I would love to see addressed one day.
From a technology standpoint, Callaway says that the all-new Ai Smart Face optimizes iron performance using swing data from thousands of real golfers. This ‘Swing Code’, consists of swing speed, club delivery, and face orientation just prior to impact. It's something that appears across the new Callaway Paradym Ai Smoke range. The result is a face that is designed to promote maximum distance with tight dispersion into the green.
Callaway has also looked at shaft length a little differently to squeeze out every ounce of available speed from the golfer. Traditionally, from 9 iron up, most manufacturers increase length of shaft in consistent 0.5 inch increments. Callaway has changed this up a a bit with the Ai Smoke iron by increasing length by 0.625 inches after the 9 iron. This might seem like a very minor change - and it is from club to club - but the cumulative effect of these additional increases make the Ai Smoke 4 iron 0.625 inches longer than the Titleist T100 4 iron for example. As Callaway acknowledges, going up in length can often be at the expense of control, but coupling this with its new Ai face, Callaway believes there is no compromise.
Performance results were interesting. I found the sound and feel highly sophisticated for irons in this category, which was very much a plus. No real sense of clickiness that can sometimes cheapen the feel of distance irons, just a solid contact that produced an extremely strong ball flight and very impressive distance numbers.
This impressive distance was evident on strikes all across the face and really took me by surprise, to the point where I was actively trying to mishit shots as much as possible to get the speed dropping! Whilst obviously the centre of the face yielded the fastest speeds, drop offs were minimal and more importantly were very consistent whether missing the middle by 2mm or 20mm! This was a real standout feature of the Ai Smoke irons versus competitors and one that I believe will definitely save strokes for players over the course of a season.
With a 7 iron at 28 degrees of loft, a penetrating ball flight came as no real surprise. For context, a Titleist T100 7 iron is 34 degrees which shows you the comparative strength here. That said, it is not really competing with the T100 and Titleist are not immune to excessive loft strengthening with their T350 7 iron coming in at 29 degrees.
The launch out of such a strong base loft is still reasonable, though, which - coupled with excellent ball speed - provides a decent peak height. My testing has been conducted in soft winter conditions in the UK so I didn’t really have much trouble stopping the ball on the green, but make no mistake these irons don’t generate a lot of backspin so this will need to be weighed up against the strong distance numbers. For those looking for more launch and stopping power, you may want to look at the lighter, longer and weaker lofted Ai Smoke HL iron from the same family.
The absence of excessive offset makes the Ai Smoke iron very workable compared to many of the best distance irons. Opening and closing the face to alter flights felt a lot easier with these than some of the other irons in this category which, as someone who likes to move the ball around, was welcome.
Of all of the distance irons I have tested so far this season, the Ai Smoke leads the way in a number of categories, including feel and sophistication of looks. If you are after some distance-enhancing irons that will really look the part in your golf bag and feel softer than most game improvement irons, then this may well be the set for you.
