SKLZ Lightning Bolt Baseball Pitching Machine: Perfect for Improving Your Pitching Performance

Pawsforthought: Cheap, poor quality and noisy device. It’s difficult to position on grass and it spits mini foam balls out at random distances and direction. Hard to use it for practice when the pitches are so inconsistent. The tube pieces are cheap and don’t seem to fit together straight. The cord for the adapter for this outdoor item is about 3 feet long. This is a toy rather than a piece of sports equipment. I really don’t understand how this product gets so many stars.

United States on Oct 06, 2023

Bsmith: The media could not be loaded.  My kid plays high level 10U baseball. I was looking for something that he could use indoors, all year long. I found it! I love the fact that you get a variety of pitches. This is especially true because I added some foam practice golf balls to the hopper. There’s more movement with these. I’ve also noticed it gets quiet a bit faster after you’ve run several cycles. Not sure why that is. I was a little disappointed at first with the speed but I’m very happy now and would say 30mph is accurate. Overall, much cheaper than spending $30 at the batting cage every time.

United States on Jul 03, 2023

Christopher BeanChristopher Bean: Ordered this product, price was discounted as it was advertised as a opened product packaging. No mention about damage to the item inside. Box exterior was also damaged.

Product’s Plastic tube was cracked and won’t hold the foam balls as designed, effecting the performance of the product. Luckily there were other tubes, damage effects overall capacity capability. It’s is also very loud. The balls shoot out very fast! Using it for hockey catch glove training. Balls bounce out often.

United States on May 27, 2023

Daulton DennyDaulton Denny: I would’ve given this review a 5 star because it is a pretty good product but since I’ve received this product with a broken tube, I’m gonna have to give it a 3.

Canada on Apr 25, 2023

Sarah Adams: The balls are small and light and therefore they are coming at the batter fast. My son is 11 and normally pretty accurate with the bat and he struggled a lot when he first set it up. Once he finally got the hang of the timing, he was still hitting less than half of them. It’s not super consistent on the height but neither are 11U pitchers. We use this in our basement for extra practice between team practices. It was a Prime Day deal and we ordered an extra set of balls which I recommend because the tube still isn’t completely full. Would I recommend it? Yes.

United States on Sep 25, 2022

Dad of One: We will figure out how to make it better but out of the box it’s light, cheap (not worth the price paid), and inconsistent. Each ball it spits out the toy slides/moves not helping the consistency. If it had simple rubber feet it would have helped that, but we will add something to prevent movement. The first ball each tube seems to be a dud, and each time one comes out it seems to get stronger. While the varied ball placement is more realistic to train on, no two balls out of the eleven (yeah it came short one ball) are even close to similar meaning setting it up to find the strike zone for more than 10% of the balls has so far been impossible. Maybe we have a bad motor (then it’s back to cheap) but the whir of the motor varies as much as the pitch location does.

As a pitching machine it’s not good, unless your player needs work going from an outside and low pitch to learning to dodge one at his head.

As a practice fielding machine it’s ok. The small quick balls, some safety glasses and bare hands are helping with quick reactions and soft hands to catch. The balls don’t hurt in any way, caught or missed and hitting your body.

United States on Jun 08, 2022

Mike F.: Great tool for practicing hitting indoors. Can be a little inconsistent and not good outside as balls are light and very affected by wind but hey, strikes aren't always directly over the plate so able to work on many locations.

Canada on Dec 24, 2021

Dee E: We bought this to go along with the power stick and lightning balls. Overall a decent pitching machine for the price especially when you consider how much other pitching machines cost. This of course is smaller and intended for the small foam balls but still I think the price is very reasonable.

The balls don’t come out super fast and it does take a bit to figure out the right distance and proper angle to set the machine at but overall, it is a fairly decent machine!

Canada on Aug 31, 2020

Todd: Set this up indoors (basement) for our 7 year old to practice hitting. Works as advertised. Balls come out with enough velocity and they're not always going to be straight line strikes, which is good, teaches him to lay off the ones out of the strike zone. Bought the extra 12pack of balls so the hitting session lasts longer.

Canada on Jan 03, 2020

Matthew Fries: This thing is pretty great in my garage. I am getting my timing down. Great for softball players. I use a broomstick though. The balls come out all loopy. You never know what knuckling sort of curve ball is going to come out of that machine. It is a pretty great little device for small areas.

However, the damn thing sounds like a spaceship taking off. I swear from the second I turned it on I thought it was broken. The motor in it must be the cheapest thing in existence.

I've had it for two weeks now though, and it still works. So ... maybe sound isn't everything. If this thing lasts me the season I will be happy. If it lasts me two seasons or more I will be ecstatic and say five stars all the way. If it breaks tomorrow though I will not be surprised.

Buy it if it is onsale.

O yeah, order the extra balls with it. The amount of balls they send you is ridiculous. Like 12 balls. I lost six of them in the first hour of using it.

Canada on Apr 16, 2014