glow disc golf plastic and uv lights
Product Review

Glow Disc Golf

Daylight has long since faded and the evenings are short prompting many of us to pull out our glow disc golf discs.   You may be wondering if glow disc golf discs are worth while and if glow disc golf plastic works and which is the best glow plastic.  We had those same questions and recently tested out a few glow discs, glow plastics, and even a few lights for charging the glow plastic.  Here’s what we learned.

Does glow disc golf plastic work?

The value of glow plastic depends on what you want it for.  We found that on a dark night, all of the glow discs we tested were still visible on the ground after 5 minutes.  Most we not incredibly bright, but were bright enough that we had no difficulty finding them in short grass.  On an open course or a field this should be sufficient.  Of  course, a glow disc will still be very difficult to find in brush or under leaves since most don’t give off large amounts of light.  They are also difficult to find during dusk when there is still some sunlight.  In these situations, a set of Nite-Ize Flashflight night golf discs will be much easier to find since they have built in bright LED lights.

You can read our article on Flashflight here: https://dgputtheads.com/nite-ize-flashlight-led-disc-golf-review

The main advantage to glow disc golf discs is that you can throw your normal mold, whereas the Flashflight molds are limited and you may not like the feel.  If you carry a few of your main molds in glow plastic along with a portable UV light, then you’ll be covered if the sun goes down before you’ve finished your round.  This is the main reason I carry a few glow molds.  We have heard that many glow molds are more overstable than other plastics, but I have not noticed much difference with the molds that I throw.

When we go out after sunset specifically for night golf, we use the Flashflight set since those discs are brighter and multi-colored.

What is the best glow disc golf plastic?

Not surprisingly, different types of glow plastic from different disc golf manufacturers had differing propensities to glow.  In general, we found that the solid plastics glow brighter than the translucent plastics.  For example, Rodney’s McPro Glow Roc3 glowed the brightest of all the discs we tested (although lost its glow more quickly), and the Moonshine had the weakest glow.

We also noticed that the duration of glow varied between discs.  My Kastaplast K1 Glow Reko glowed far longer than any other disc we tested.  Kastaplast K1 was still glowing after 10 minutes, most of the others were still visible in an open field at about 5 minutes.  This should give you sufficient time to locate a glow plastic disc if you’ve hit the fairway.  Here are the specific results of our test.

Brightest Disc Golf Glow Plastics

  1. Innova McPro Glow
  2. Kastaplast K1 Glow
  3. Innova Glow Champion
  4. Discraft Glo
  5. Lightning Glow
  6. Dynamic Discs Moonshine

Longest Glowing Disc Golf Glow Plastics

  1. Kastaplast K1 Glow
  2. Innova Glow Champion
  3. Discraft Glo
  4. Innova McPro
  5. Dynamic Discs Moonshine
  6. Lightning Glow

Overall, Kastaplast K1 Glow was our favorite glow plastic with Innova Glow Champion second and Discraft Z Glo a close third.  There are a few more glow disc golf plastics that we haven’t tried, so hopefully we can get our hands on them and update this article.

Keep in mind that all of these plastics glow well enough to find in a field so throwing a mold you’re familiar with will probably help you the most in not losing a disc.  So we recommend choosing glow discs primarily based on the mold itself rather than the glow of the plastic alone.  For example, the Discraft Z Glo Stalker is my main glow driver and being able to control my throw was the best method for finding my shot since most of the plastics are sufficient.

One factor that we were not able to test is the age and use of the plastic.  My Discraft Glo Stalker glowed brighter and longer than my Discraft Glo Comet.  The plastic was the same but the Comet had been used for a few years.  I don’t know if it’s because of the age of the plastic, the density of the mold, or even a different run of plastic.  We also have not tried any of the colored glow plastics.

The image below shows a set of glow disc golf discs immediately after charging with a UV light then 30 seconds later.  There was actually very little change in this short amount of time, but you can see that some discs started out more brightly than others but faded more quickly.

disc golf glow disc plastic

It’s also worth noting that we have a disc golf glow mini that Tribaloid gave us a few years back (Tribaloid is the software company that makes those awesome mobile disc golf games).  Glow minis are not necessary, but are certainly fun.

What are the best glow disc golf lights?

We tested four different lights to charge up the glow plastic discs.  The first was a high lumen LED flashlight (not a UV light).  This charged the discs enough for a glow, but didn’t work nearly as well as UV lights. 

The UV lights we tested were:

glow disc golf UV lights

The first thing we noticed was that the strength of the UV light made little difference in the strength of the glow.  The DemoGrid light was by far the strongest and had the most LEDs, but the resulting glow was about the same for all flashlights.  Even with the Glow Cone made specifically for discs, the discs only glowed slightly brighter and not for any noticeable time longer.

We did find that the extra width of both the Vansky and especially the DemoGrid light was nice to cover more area of the disc.  However, the additional bulk makes them less convenient to carry, especially when your bag is already close to full.  Because of this, the smaller UV flashlights are much more practical to carry during a normal evening round and we might recommend the Demo Grid light specifically for a round of glow disc golf because it comes with a white flashlight on the end which is better for lighting your way than a black light.

The third aspect we tested was durability.  Again, the extra bulk of the Demo Grid light made it the most durable followed by the Vansky light, but the MVP light was good quality you shouldn’t have any trouble with it holding up unless you drop it on pavement.  The generic LE light is more cheaply made, like what you may find at a department store near the checkout registers.  You’ll get what you pay for here, and we recommend paying a few extra dollars for a better black light.

Our recommendation is to go with the MVP light, or at least another well made light at a similar size.  The durability, strength, and size made the MVP Eclipse UV flashlight the best option of the glow disc golf lights that we tested.  This picture shows the result of running both the Vansky and MVP lights down my K1 Glow Reko.

glow disc golf UV light

If you have disc golf buddies who need to learn about the best disc golf glow plastics and disc golf UV lights, please share this with them!  We’ve seen many forums on glow disc golf but very few provide valuable insights on the plastic types and best disc golf black lights.

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Disclaimer:

We are affiliated with Infinitediscs.com but we will still provide our honest opinion and will never recommend an item unless we have tested it and believe in its quality.  We also fully support Infinite Discs and the customer service that they provide and would do so even without any affiliation.

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