The Motiv Octane Carbon, the third ball released under the Octane name, uses a different core design than the previous two releases. The Carbon’s new Injector core offers similar specs to the Quadfire core used before, but with a slightly higher RG (2.56″) and a very slightly lower differential (0.042″). The Agitator MXR (MaXimum energy Retention) Pearl coverstock is new to the Motiv family and it certainly lives up to its name. Thanks in part to this polished pearl cover, the Octane Carbon achieves a lot of length, even with minimal effort to make it do so on the part of the bowler. This ball is easily the longest of everything in the Motiv line besides the Freestyle, but with a much stronger recovery than that ball when it gets to the dry. The long and strong motion of this ball helped us get to the pocket easily on both our medium and dry test patterns.

Starting on our medium pattern, all three testers were closer together with their feet and targets than they typically are with most other bowling balls. Stroker was laying his ball down around the 12 board, Tweener was near 15, and Cranker was ...