Comments about Hireko I3308:Acer XF HT Iron - Clubhead:

I recently built an iron set consisting of the XF HT for 5-7, regular XF for 8-PW, and XC for Gw/Sw/Lw. 5-PW used Apollo Shadow Steel and the wedges used Apollo Standard Steel.

The XF HT is an excellent wide-sole iron. The top-line is thicker than normal, but not as thick as others in the wide-sole "shovel" category. The wide sole really helps keep the CG low and helps minimize tops, skulls, and other mishist caused by not hitting high enough on the club face. The undercut cavity and weight distribution also makes these one of the most forgiving mid-irons I've ever hit.

I did some range testing with the 5i vs. a Ping G5, Ping Zing 2, and Snake Eyes Viper HT and the XF HT was by far had the most consistantly straight ball flight and clean contact. Mishits lost distance depending on the severity, but still came off with good trajectory and stayed straight.

Casting quality and hard finish (chrome, sand-blasting, logo insers, etc) are all top notch. My only complaint with these (as well as the XF and XC) is the paint fill. There are several paint lines that transition directly to chrome without a cast feature to define the transition... I'm not crazy about this technique to begin with, but it's made far worse by uncrisp masked paintlines, build-up at the masking areas, jagges lines, and general poor quality of the masking. I would pass this off as a QC problem if it were just one or two heads, but all of the heads I received had some of these paint problems. This makes me think the paint masking process needs to be refined, not just the QC.

That said, these paint problems will likely wear smooth and/or wear off completely with play and won't prevent me from thoroughly enjoying the results I've seen so far. These are, all-in-all, and EXCELLENT club that just need a bit more attention paid to paint details to make them a 5 star item... still a solid 4 star with the only complaint being a mild aesthetic one.