Picks
The Best Soft-Tip Darts for an Electronic Board
Soft tip has one hard constraint steel tip does not: the board sets the maximum dart weight. Start there, then worry about grip.
How these picks were made: from published manufacturer specifications, governing-body standards and the room arithmetic - not from first-hand use. We have not played on these tables. Read the method.
Soft-tip darts look like a lighter version of the steel-tip problem, and they are not. Steel tip has one meaningful constraint - what your hand likes - and everything else is preference. Soft tip adds a second constraint that is not a preference at all: the board has a maximum dart weight, and going over it damages the thing you just paid for.
That single fact reorders the whole decision. Weight is not where you start experimenting; it is a ceiling you work underneath. What is left to choose is tungsten content, grip, and how many spare tips you keep in the drawer.
The weight ceiling, and why it exists
An electronic board scores by registering a tip pushing into one of thousands of small plastic holes. A heavier dart hits harder, and harder impacts crack segments and shear tips off inside the holes. Board makers therefore publish a maximum dart weight. The modern figure is 20 grams - Arachnid raised its own machine limit from 18 to 20 grams in January 2016, and Viper rates boards such as the 850 for soft-tip darts up to 20 grams.
| Barrel weight | What it is | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| 16 g | The common house-set weight | Light and forgiving; fine for family play |
| 18 g | The band almost every tungsten set is sold in | The default. Buy here unless you have a reason not to |
| 20 g | The usual ceiling on modern electronic boards | Allowed on most boards, but check yours first |
| Over 20 g | Steel-tip territory | Do not put it in an electronic board |
Quick picks
| # | Product | Best for | Barrel | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Viper Sinister 95% Tungsten Soft-Tip Darts | The set most people should buy | 95% tungsten, 18 g | |
| 2 |  Target Scope 90% Tungsten Soft-Tip Darts | Grip you can actually feel | 90% tungsten, 18 g barrel | |
| 3 |  Winmau MvG Exact Soft-Tip Darts | A known name you can replace | Tungsten, 18 g barrel | |
| 4 | Viper The Freak Soft-Tip Darts | Hands that slip | Deep-cut barrel, 18 g | |
| 5 | Viper Astro 80% Tungsten Soft-Tip Darts | Your first tungsten set | 80% tungsten, 18 g | |
| 6 |  Viper Sure Grip Soft-Tip Darts | A house set for everyone else | Nickel silver, 16 g / 18 g | |
| 7 |  Viper Tufflex Tips II 2BA Soft-Tip Points | The thing you will actually keep rebuying | 2BA, 100 / 500 pack |
The sets
Seven picks, ordered by who each one is for - including the spare tips, because you will need them.
#1 · The set most people should buy
Viper Sinister 95% Tungsten Soft-Tip Darts
A 95% tungsten barrel with a smooth contoured profile, listed at 18 grams - the slimmest barrel in this list at a weight an electronic board is happy with.
A 95% tungsten barrel with a smooth contoured profile at 18 grams. That combination is the whole point: soft tip caps you at a light weight, and 95% tungsten is how you get a light dart that is still slim instead of fat. A fat 18 gram barrel and a slim 18 gram barrel throw the same and group completely differently.
- What works
- 95% tungsten is the slimmest barrel you can buy at this weight
- 18 grams sits inside every modern electronic board's weight limit
- Smooth contoured grip is the forgiving option, which is the right default
- What does not
- A smooth barrel is the wrong call if your fingers sweat or the dart slips early
- Plain looking next to the signature sets it sits beside
Skip it if: You already know you need an aggressive grip. Buy for your hand, not for the tungsten number.
#2 · Grip you can actually feel
Target Scope 90% Tungsten Soft-Tip Darts
A 90% tungsten straight barrel with milled radial grooves at the front and finer grooves behind, finished in black PVD and shipped on pixel soft tips.
A 90% tungsten straight barrel with milled radial grooves toward the front and finer grooves behind, finished in black PVD and shipped on pixel soft tips. The two-zone grip is the useful part: it gives you a defined front grip without covering the whole barrel in bite, so the dart still releases cleanly.
- What works
- Two grip zones rather than one uniform texture, so the release stays clean
- PVD coating holds its finish better than a plain milled barrel
- Ships on the maker's own soft tips rather than generic ones
- What does not
- A straight barrel is less forgiving of an inconsistent grip point than a contoured one
- Costs more than the Viper sets for a difference you may not feel in year one
#3 · A known name you can replace
Winmau MvG Exact Soft-Tip Darts
Winmau's signature soft-tip set, sold as an 18 gram barrel with flights and stems in the box. A known quantity rather than a bargain.
Winmau's long-running Michael van Gerwen signature line in its soft-tip trim, sold as an 18 gram barrel with flights and stems in the box. You are paying something for the name. What you get back is a line the manufacturer keeps in the catalog, which on a dart set is the most useful property there is: lose one dart in two years and you can buy one dart, not three.
- What works
- A line that stays stocked, so replacements remain orderable
- Flights and stems included, matched to the barrel
- Widely sold, so there is always a listing to compare against
- What does not
- Signature pricing - part of the cost is the name on the box
- One weight in the soft-tip trim, so there is no ladder to experiment along
Skip it if: You want the most barrel for the money. The Viper sets give you more tungsten per dollar.
#4 · Hands that slip
Viper The Freak Soft-Tip Darts
A deeply cut barrel in an extended-band version at 18 grams. The most aggressive grip here, which is both the appeal and the risk.
The most aggressive grip on this page, in an extended-band version at 18 grams. Deep machined cuts hold the dart until your fingers genuinely let go, which is exactly what you want if your darts leave early and slide low. It is also a real failure mode in the other direction: a grip this coarse will hold a late release a fraction too long and send the dart high.
- What works
- Grips reliably in a warm room and with damp hands
- The extended band spreads the grip zone, so your grip point is less fussy
- Priced below the signature sets with more texture than any of them
- What does not
- Too much grip for a smooth release - this is not a theoretical problem
- Deep cuts are hard on fingertips over a long session
Skip it if: You have never thrown soft tip. Start smoother and work toward this if you need it.
#5 · Your first tungsten set
Viper Astro 80% Tungsten Soft-Tip Darts
An 80% tungsten set at 18 grams that ships in a storage and travel case. The cheapest step in this list that is still a real tungsten barrel.
An 80% tungsten set at 18 grams that ships in a storage and travel case. This is the cheapest step on this page that is still a real tungsten barrel, and the step that matters most: the jump from a nickel-silver house dart to any tungsten dart is far bigger than the jump from 80% to 95%.
- What works
- Real tungsten at the bottom of the tungsten price band
- Case included, which is how a set survives a game room
- A sensible second set to leave at the board for guests
- What does not
- 80% means a visibly fatter barrel than the 95% set above at the same weight
- Stock flights and stems are ordinary - treat them as starters
#6 · A house set for everyone else
Viper Sure Grip Soft-Tip Darts
Not tungsten: a nickel-silver-plated barrel under a rubberized grip sleeve, sold in bright colors with an accessory kit of flights, stems and spare tips.
Not tungsten, and the listing does not pretend otherwise: a nickel-silver-plated barrel under a rubberized grip sleeve, sold in bright colors with an accessory kit of flights, stems and spare tips. Bought as your own set it is a compromise. Bought as the four color-coded sets that live in the drawer so guests stop borrowing yours, it is the right product.
- What works
- Color coding genuinely solves the whose-darts-are-these problem
- Accessory kit means spare tips and flights are already in the house
- Cheap enough that a lost dart is not an event
- What does not
- Nickel silver is bulky for its weight, so three darts will not group tightly
- The rubber sleeve is a wear part and will eventually loosen
Skip it if: This is your only set and you intend to get better. Buy tungsten.
#7 · The thing you will actually keep rebuying
Viper Tufflex Tips II 2BA Soft-Tip Points
Replacement 2BA soft tips in 100 and 500 packs, with a reinforced cone the maker rates for a 20 gram dart. The consumable every electronic board eats.
Replacement 2BA soft tips in 100 and 500 packs, with a reinforced cone the maker rates for a 20 gram dart. Soft tips are consumable by design - that is how the board survives - and the first time you run out mid-game you will wish you had bought the 500 pack. They fit any 2BA barrel, so they are not tied to the sets above.
- What works
- Fits any 2BA thread, which is nearly every soft-tip barrel sold
- Reinforced cone rated for the 20 gram ceiling most boards specify
- The 500 pack is the version that stops you thinking about it for a year
- What does not
- Tips are a consumable with no upgrade path - these are a supply, not a purchase
- Broken tips still have to be dug out of the board's segments by hand
How these were chosen
We have not thrown these sets, and this site publishes no scores, ratings or review counts for that reason. What follows is a selection made on published, checkable facts, and on one commercial criterion that gets ignored and should not.
- Sold at a weight an electronic board accepts. Every set here is listed at 18 grams or lighter, which keeps it under the 20 gram ceiling modern boards specify.
- The barrel material is stated. Tungsten percentage where it is tungsten, nickel silver where it is not. A set that will not say is a set we left out.
- The grip is described, not implied. Smooth, two-zone, deep-cut - these are different things with different failure modes, and the listings here say which they are.
- 2BA thread. The near-universal soft-tip thread, which means tips, stems and flights are interchangeable across everything on this page.
- Currently sold. Every entry was checked as a live, orderable listing while this page was written.
What tungsten percentage buys in soft tip
Exactly one thing: a slimmer barrel at the same weight. Tungsten is far denser than the nickel-silver alloy used in cheap darts, so a higher percentage packs the same grams into less barrel. There is no durability benefit, no flight benefit and no accuracy benefit attached to the number itself.
Slim matters more in soft tip than most buyers expect, and for a slightly different reason than in steel tip. A soft-tip board's scoring segments are divided by plastic webs, and a fat barrel pushes the second dart off the segment you were aiming at. At the 16 to 18 gram weights soft tip lives at, a nickel-silver barrel is genuinely bulky - which is why the single most valuable upgrade on this page is the one from a house set to any tungsten set, not the one from 80% to 95%.
Soft tip and steel tip are not interchangeable
Steel points into an electronic board's plastic segments will damage the board. Soft tips into sisal will merely bounce out and annoy you. If both board types live in the same house, a conversion set - one tungsten barrel with both point types in the case - is the product that exists for exactly that, and it is covered on the steel-tip darts roundup alongside the sets that only do one job. Steel tip vs soft tip is the page to read if you have not chosen a board yet.
The throw line is not the same either
The bullseye height is identical for both games - 5 feet 8 inches from the floor to the center of the bull. The throw line is not. Steel-tip play is thrown from 7 feet 9.25 inches measured horizontally from the board face; soft-tip play in the United States is thrown from 8 feet, measured along the floor from the plane of the board.
That extra 2.75 inches is small and it is not nothing, and it is the reason a steel-tip thrower's first evening on an electronic board feels slightly low. The height and distance page has both measurements with the diagonal check, and the small-room throw line page covers what to do when the floor run is short. Measure the board before you blame the darts - a board hung an inch low makes every set on this page throw an inch low.
Tips, flights and stems are the running cost
Soft tips break. That is their job: the tip is engineered to be the part that fails so the board's segments are not. A moderate player will go through tips steadily, and the failure is always at the worst moment, usually with the point still buried in a segment.
- Keep a bulk pack of 2BA tips in the drawer. The 500 pack is cheaper per tip and removes the problem for a year.
- Buy a dart tool. Two dollars, and it extracts a sheared tip from a segment without you reaching for pliers and making a hole bigger.
- Flights are consumables too. Darts hit each other; flights split. Standard flights and medium stems are the default because they work.
- Change one thing at a time. New flights and a new barrel in the same week tells you nothing about either.
Where the darts fit in the whole board purchase
If you have not bought the board yet, that decision comes first and it is covered on the electronic dart boards roundup - the scoring, the game list and the cabinet are what you are really choosing between. If the board is already on the wall, the two upgrades worth more than another dart set are light and wall protection: a dart board light kills the shadow your own hand throws across the board, and a surround or backboard saves the drywall from the throws that miss.
Darts sit in the same small category as table tennis rackets and shuffleboard wax: the consumable changes the game more than another increment of hardware does. Forty dollars of tips, flights, stems and a second barrel weight is the best money in the room.
What we have not done
We have not thrown these sets side by side, counted bounce-outs or measured grouping, and we are not going to say we have. The weights, barrel materials and grip types above come from each manufacturer's published listing, and the board weight limits come from the board makers' own published figures. The judgments about who each set suits come from how soft-tip darts work. Prices move constantly, so every button here goes to the live listing rather than a number we typed last month.
