What Cube Color is best

 I hear people talk a lot about cube colors and what is best.  Now there are crazy colored cubes you can get, but most people are just referring to black, white, and primary (which is undyed plastic).  Some people claim the plastic feels different while others claim that some are better for recognition during solves.  I decided to test this.

Before I go forward I want to thank SpeedCubeShop.com for helping make this video possible.  Stop by their store and use discount code “CubeReview” for 15% off of your order.

I have here a Black, White and Primary Cong’s Design MeiYing.  When I took them out of the packaging the white felt a bit scratchier than the black cube, and the primary cube felt very scratchy.  I could easily tell them apart without looking, but I also felt that they had different amounts of lube on them.  I decided to set them up the same, and I also wanted to include my stickerless MeiYing.  I wiped them clean, tensioned them the same, lubed the core with Lubix, and the pieces with weight 25 silicone lube.  Now they feel exactly the same.  I tried to tell one from the other and there was no difference between them.  The stickerless was obviously different because you could feel that there were no stickers on it.

As far as how they feel I will say that there is no difference, and if one feels different than the other it is because they are set up differently.

I wanted to test what is best to solve with.  Now this is not a super scientific method and in no way is the final word.  I used what method worked best for me.  My current best single average of 5 and average of 12 are about 10, 13, and 15 seconds.  I would consider myself an intermediate solver with those times and take that how you want with how it relates to you.  First I did 600 solves and mixed up which cube I used every 5 to 25 solves.  After 600 solves I felt pretty equal in how my recognition was on each.  Following that I did an average of 50 on each.  Here are my results.

At the start of the 600 solves the white cube represented with the blue line was the slowest and I feel the issue was that I often mistook seeing white stickers because of the white plastic.  The Primary plastic and Black plastic represented by the yellow and black line were very similar in times.  The red line is the stickerless cube and was my main before this project started and was most comfortable with that.  

The final fifty of each cube were very close.  The black and primary cubes were the slowest with an average of around 17.9 seconds, the White had an average of 17.7 seconds and the stickerless at 17.6 seconds.  Now again, this is not the most scientific method and I’m sure an average of a thousand of each would give an even more accurate result, but again that will put more variables between each cube and each solve.

In my mind there is really no difference in cube color.  The issue I had before with confusing white stickers with the white plastic went away but replacing the white sticker with another color like grey or black might resolve that.  I will be sticking with the stickerless cube because I do feel like my look-ahead is a bit easier with that cube.  The three of the fastest times out of the final 800 solves were with the stickerless around 12 and a half seconds.  Even with that the difference between the four cubes in the final test was within half a second and I do not feel that the color of a cube should be a reason to blame for either a cube feeling a certain way or causing solve times that you are unhappy with.