Winmau Lakeside World Championship Edition Darts Set Review

I've always wanted to learn to play Darts but I've never managed to get around to it.  Today I had an urge to give it a try so I had a quick look online to see what shops on the 'High Street' sold them so I could pick one up today (before I changed my mind) after searching around I found that Argos was pretty much the best place to shop.

After looking at all the options I narrowed it down to either the Winmau Blade 4 or the Unicorn Eclipse dart boards, but which one is best?  What a minefield that is!  After reading reviews on the internet I found that for every person saying the Blade 4 is the best there was another saying the Eclipse was the best - so at least I had picked the two most popular ones at least.

I decided to look at the different accessories that you can get with them as I wanted to hang it on the wall and as a beginner I'm more than likely to miss at some point so I need some sort of surround etc. to minimise damage to my wallpaper.  After looking at all the different options I decided that the Winmau Lakeside Word Championship Edition Darts Set was the right one for me as it includes the Winmau Blade 4 dartboard, two sets of darts and a deluxe cabinet to hang it on the wall with.

After reserving it online I popped down to my local Argos store and purchased the set and brought it home where I spent the next 20 minutes hanging drilling holes and hanging it on the wall.

I have to say though, first impressions are that the finish of both the dartboard and the so called 'luxury cabinet' are pretty poor.

As you can see the finish on the luxury black ash veneer effect cabinet is not exactly top quality as it's title suggests.  There are several nicks around the edge and as you can see on the photo on the right, they even spotted some of them at the factory and have tried to cover them up with completely different paint so it sticks out like a sore thumb.

The finish on the dartboard itself is sadly just the same as the cabinet as you can see from the photo below:

As you can see the black ink/paint is splattered all over the dartboards spider so clearly quality control is not a priority at Winmau.

I could understand if this was marketed as a budget dartboard set but when words like 'luxury' are used to describe a product, you expect it to be a lot better than this.

Once I had hung the cabinet and dartboard on to the wall it was time to give it a go...

Quite surprisingly I managed to hit the dartboard with each throw of the darts and it wasn't long before I was trying to get a dart in 1, 2, 3 and 4 etc. until I ended up (spending several hours) aiming for the bullseye!

It might sound a bit odd, but each dart that landed on the dartboard makes a satisfying thud just like you hear on TV and added to my enjoyment of this product and I soon forgot about the poor finishes.

Although I am disappointed with the marks on the cabinet and the dartboards spider, I am very pleased overall with this product and would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to give playing darts a go.