Strength: Deceptively strong for its flexibility, it maintains a good shape with spines attached, but is still flexible with a significant bounce to it. I held it around my waist, hands either side and bounced it up and down - there was a lot of movement and flex there, but it felt safe and it sprung back into shape immediately.

Floppiness when hot: as per usual with firehoops, their flex increases when hot and I wouldn't recommend doing more than 3 burns in a row (but then this is true with any firehoop) - because the increased flexibility of the material changes the way it responds to my input - tricks and manipulations become a lot less controlled and therefore more dangerous.

Ease of mantling/dismantling: spines are super easy to attach and detach, the hoop can be assembled or dissembled in about 5 mins. Assembly problems I encountered - the spines need to be tightened for every use, as they start to unwind themselves in the course of one burn. I don't see this as dangerous (due to the length of the skrew thread), but attention must be paid before each use. One other issue - one of the spines was stiff from about halfway along the skrew thread to the end - it was difficult to skrew all the way in, and release again (not sure if the problem was a spine or the hole). All the others were fine.

Grip: one line of grip tape along the inside - this favours on-the-body spinning. Off-the-body manipulations feel less secure. Having trained moves with a fully taped hoop, I needed to adjust a lot of my movements for the slippery surface. Sometimes the hoop slipped from my hands and there were certain moves I felt I couldn't try. This is simply a case of relearning things for me! But a more beginner model might be better with candy stripes or full grip.
Overall I do prefer the single inside grip, because less tape means less weight! The adjustments I need to make are small, and it wont take much training to be fully comfortable with it.

Spine durability: So far the spines seem great, but I wont be able to fully judge them until they have lasted a year! But they certainly seem more durable than the thinner spines we originally used. The fact that they are shorter seems to make no great difference.