X3M

cubes

ABOUT

This is the best destination to get information and to buy the world’s top professional 3x3 speed-cubes. The finest selection of the top brands and manufacturers that really make the difference. Our philosophy is to approach each customer with the intention of helping him to find the right product he’s looking for and not of selling only. We don’t try to find customers for our products, but we find best products for our customers, giving the best customer service.

Far Eastern Companies have a reputation for merely producing copies – and often inferior ones – of high quality, patented products originally developed in the West. It is rare that such companies develop products over the years that end up being of superior quality than the original ones they use to copy. Yet, this is what has happened in the field of competition cubes – today, it is no longer the “original” brand that offers the best products, but a dozen other companies and brands, often far less well-known, who compete for this “supremacy.” However, this cannot be said for all brands on the market, or for all their products. Often, even well-established brands turn to external manufacturers to produce items at extremely low industrial prices, with poor quality standards and small profit margins for the manufacturer. In parallel, there is a significant quantity of traders who buy entire counterfeit productions to resell them online at very low prices, without any legal control. For these reasons, in recent years, the direct online purchase of cubes – especially via platforms on the Far East market – has become a jungle, particularly due to the quantity of brands and sub-brands created by some Asian companies, often with “creative” yet confusing names. These such companies market cubes either with a total lack of descriptions and characteristics of the products, or by including descriptions that are misleading or full of translation errors. Worse of all, they tend to generate confusion between “toy” cubes and “professional” cubes. Our goal is not to discourage cube enthusiasts from trying to find genuine product bargains online, but rather to invite people to pay close attention: after ordering a product and waiting many weeks for it to arrive, there is a serious risk of receiving a cube that is entirely different from the one that was ordered – either low quality, or, worse, seemingly good quality but actually counterfeit. Finally, we must consider that, to the prices that we see displayed on websites, we must add transport costs, VAT and customs costs, all of which for a single cube can reach upwards of €30. With the exception of the few sites on the international scene that operate professionally, in most cases the pricing policy and unclear information regarding the quality of the product and its origins make the purchase process extremely complex and confusing for the final consumer. The desire to create this site as an accessible alternative and a reliable reference point for everyone was born while we, as frustrated consumers, were experiencing firsthand the uncertainties of this often confusing and uncertain way of approaching the online purchase of cubes. We are avid fans of a game that was conceived in 1975 with the production of the first example of the Rubik® cube, and which now boasts millions of admirers and enthusiasts around the world. Our aim is to offer a new service, currently unavailable in Western markets today, which the large online sales sites do not seem to be interested in, or able to, guarantee: a clear platform, where one can find precise information and a complete range of select brands and products, with product and sales guarantees and rapid, professional customer service.

With our name X3M® (EXTREME), we assert that our site deals exclusively with professional-grade cubes, made with cutting-edge technologies and materials and characterized by high quality internal mechanisms, which render these products no longer a mere “toy,” but an advanced competition device. The number “3,” which recalls the mathematical expression “cubed,” also references our decision to handle exclusively 3×3 models, those most often utilized in international competitions and a direct evolution of the original Rubik® cube. Our selection of brands, sub-brands and related models is a long, involved process. Our research is a constant endeavor in which we invest time, energy and money to:

  • identify and catalog all distributors, producers (even those on behalf of third parties, who often work for more than one brand) and their factories;
  • get in direct contact with their engineers and designers to obtain first-hand information on the quality and technology of the product;
  • purchase an example of each model examined, excluding the commercial lines and focusing exclusively on high-end products;
  • test the different online sales platforms to verify their efficiency, delivery times and, above all, customer service;
  • have each cube tested by both experienced and less experienced cubers (obscuring the logos, to ensure an impartial evaluation);
  • analyze reviews made by non-sponsored amateurs and speed-cubers.

The result is our selection of only the top models of the best international brands that you will find on our site, whose performances clearly exceed expectations and distinguish them from the remaining mass of mediocre, low level products and simple plastic toys for non-professional use. The section dedicated to our selection of products contains a brief presentation of each brand, as well as its history and that of the people who worked to develop the high quality products that we appreciate today. It is the testimony of a continuous search for improvement, started by Ernő Rubik and then continued, with passion and at the cost of large investments, by many enthusiasts who wanted to take up the torch. It is for this ideal and to this goal that we wanted to offer our contribution, by asking select brands to make some changes and improvements to their top models, based on our indications and specifications. In particular, we wished to intervene, for the models on our site, regarding aspects such as the reduction of friction in rotation, the increase in the tolerance of the contact surface, and a higher quality of the stickers (on the black models), with the resulting cubes significantly superior to the initial models. As a further guarantee of the quality of our products, we supervise the final stages of the quality control process before packing the products for exportation. Once in our warehouses, the cubes are then reopened, checked, tested one by one, cleaned, sterilized and repackaged with correctly translated instructions and information sheets. Furthermore, in addition to inspecting the production environments to ensure that the working conditions and the treatment of personnel comply with regulations, we request that the producers we collaborate with (not the traders) provide us with complete certifications as to the quality and safety of the final products as well as the raw materials used for production.