Callaway were founded on the basis of hot faced titanium drivers and the Callaway X Hot driver takes us back to these glory days. The advance in manufacturing techniques has enabled Callaway to use a new titanium casting process to create a cast head with very thin walls.
This means a lighter head for more ball speeds and the whole club comes in at just under 300 grams, which is impressive for an adjustable driver. The excellent Project X Velocity shaft is less than 60 grams despite being 46 inches long as standard.
One of the reasons for going back to an all titanium driver is that is sounds better and the X Hot driver does sound very good. You can feel the hotter face at impact as the ball effortlessly takes off on a solid penetrating trajectory.
The flight was a bit higher than the Callaway RAZR Fit Extreme driver due to the different weight structure of the club. The X Hot was also very forgiving right across the face so this driver will suit most abilities of players.
If you still have a few directional issues there is the adjustable hosel that will open the face by 2.5 degrees to de-loft it or close it by 1.5 degrees to increase loft. There are only these two options which seems a little limiting, but they do the job if you need to change the ball flight.
The X Hot uses the same hosel as the Extreme driver, but there are no moveable weights so the changes in loft are all you have. We feel the adjustable feature is a bit of a 'nice to have' as the club is very forgiving as it is and the face angle changes are quite large.
At address the club sat nicely behind the ball with a large silver head with some slightly familiar graphics that help to visually scale the clubhead down. Overall the X Hot is a very good driver and one that should see Callaway back on the front foot.