Costway 137cm Foosball Table Review
What “full size” actually means at 137 cm
Costway sells this table under a name that does most of the arguing for it: 137cm Full Size Foosball Table. “Full size” is a marketing phrase with no single owner, so the only useful response is to put the numbers side by side.
The table measures 137 x 72 x 85 cm overall, and that 137 cm is the cabinet. The playing field inside it is 117 x 68 cm. Net weight is 34 kg.
The tournament reference point is a playfield of 120 x 68 cm sitting in a cabinet around 152 x 76 x 91 cm. So the Costway matches the competition width exactly, comes up three centimetres short on playfield length, and saves roughly fifteen centimetres of cabinet by carrying much less structure around the outside.
That is a genuinely respectable result, and it is worth being specific about why. The dimension that changes how the game feels is the pitch, not the furniture. Three centimetres over 120 is a 2.5 per cent difference in the distance between rods, which is inside the range you would not notice without a tape measure. The fifteen centimetres you save is cabinet wall and end panel, which affects your room and not your shots.
Where the gap shows up is the height. At 85 cm this sits six centimetres below the tournament figure of 91 cm. Anyone tall enough to find kitchen counters low will be stooping slightly. That is the one measurement worth holding a tape up to before ordering.
What you actually get in the box
Two balls, 26 player figures in white and black, the table, and a user guide. That is the whole manifest.
Twenty-six figures is the standard full-size arrangement: a goalkeeper, two defenders, five midfielders and three forwards per side, spread across eight rods. It is worth confirming because the small tabletop foosball sets that trade under similar names often run fewer rods and fewer figures, and the count is the quickest way to tell them apart in a listing.
Two things are built into the cabinet rather than shipped loose. The first is a pair of foldable cup holders, 7 cm across, which tuck away when you are not using them. The second is the scoring: bead scorers running to ten at each end, the abacus arrangement every pub table has used for decades.
Note what is not in the box. There are no spare balls beyond the two, no lubricant, no cover, and no levelling shims beyond the adjustable feet already on the legs. None of that is unusual at this price, but a second pair of balls is the cheapest upgrade you will ever buy for a foosball table, because balls disappear under furniture and the two you have will not both survive the year.
Build and materials
The cabinet is MDF with metal and PVC components, finished in what Costway calls natural: a light wood-tone laminate on the legs and frame rather than the black or dark walnut most budget tables default to.
MDF is the honest answer for a table in this bracket and it is not a criticism by itself. What matters with MDF is thickness and how the panels are joined, because the failure mode is not the material giving way, it is the joints working loose under lateral load until the whole cabinet develops a sway. Costway addresses that with reinforced metal crossbars between the legs, which is the right place to put the reinforcement.
The legs are 9.5 cm wide with adjustable foot pads. Those pads matter more than they sound. A foosball table on an uneven floor does not simply look crooked, it feeds the ball toward one goal on every dead stop, and players correctly conclude the table is cheating. Being able to dial out a couple of millimetres of floor variation is the difference between a table people trust and a table people complain about.
The playing surface itself is a smooth printed field. There is no glass, no laminated overlay and no sublimated finish of the kind you find two price brackets up, so treat it as a wear surface: it will show scuffs where the ball repeatedly lands after a hard shot.
Rods, handles and the counterweight question
The rods are 1.6 cm metal. That is the standard diameter for a table of this class and it is thick enough that warping under normal play is not a realistic concern.
The important detail is that Costway lists the 26 figures as counter-weighted and balanced. This is the specification most often missing at this price, and it is the one that changes how the table plays.
On a table without counterweights, a rod you let go of swings so the player hangs straight down. That sounds harmless until you realise it means an unattended rod is permanently in the way: the ball rolls into the hanging figure and stops dead, and you spend the game hoisting rods out of the path of your own passes. Counterweighted figures settle upright instead, so the ball travels under them and the game keeps moving. If you have played on a cheap table and found the ball constantly stalling in midfield for no reason, this is why.
The handles are described as ergonomic with an anti-slip surface. That is the least verifiable claim on the sheet and the one most dependent on your hands, so treat it as a shrug rather than a selling point. Handles are also the easiest part of a table to replace later if you decide you want something grippier.
Assembly is not optional and not quick
This ships flat and you build it. The one published user note on the B&Q listing flags that it takes time, and specifically that getting the rods in the right order matters.
That is worth expanding, because it is the single mistake that costs people an evening. The eight rods are not interchangeable: each carries a different number of figures at different spacings, and they have to go into the correct slots in the correct order or the formation is wrong. Working out that you have the three-bar and the five-bar transposed after everything is bolted down means undoing most of the build.
Lay all eight rods out in order before any of them go in, count the figures on each, and check them against the diagram twice. Everything else about the assembly is ordinary flat-pack work: legs, crossbars, cabinet, rods, feet.
Budget an hour and a half if you are careful, and do the final tightening with the table standing on its feet rather than upside down on the floor, so the frame settles into the position it will actually live in.
Scoring, ball return and cup holders
The scoring is manual bead counters running to ten, one at each end. There is no electronic scorer, no display and no automatic tally. Two people who both forget to slide a bead will have an argument, and that is a feature of every table that has ever used this system.
The ball return is the standard hole-and-channel arrangement: goals drop through and the ball comes back out at the side. The table also has kick-off holes, so a ball can be dropped into the centre of the pitch to restart rather than reached in by hand.
The cup holders are the small quality-of-life item that people either love or ignore entirely. At 7 cm they fit a standard can or a normal glass, and folding them away means they are not permanently protruding into the walkway around the table.
How it compares in the market
Against genuinely small tabletop foosball sets, this is a different category of object: eight rods, 26 figures, a 117 cm pitch and 34 kg of standing furniture rather than something you put on a dining table.
Against a tournament table, the gap is not the pitch, which is very close, but everything supporting it. Competition tables carry heavier cabinets, better bearings, sublimated or glass playing surfaces, and rods that are usually telescopic so they do not project into the room. Those are the things you pay several times the price for, and they matter enormously if you play seriously and not at all if you play at parties.
The honest position for the Costway is: a real full-size playing experience on a cabinet that is built to a price. B&Q listed it at £169.95 at the time of writing, and at that figure the pitch dimensions and the counterweighted figures are more than you would normally expect.
Care, and keeping the wobble out
Everything that goes wrong with a table in this bracket goes wrong slowly, and almost all of it is bolts.
Re-check every bolt and crossbar after the first two or three sessions, when the joints have taken their first real load, then every few months. A wobble that appears gradually is a bolt that has backed off, not a cabinet that has failed, and catching it early is what prevents the failure that follows.
Wipe the rods down after heavy play. Skin oil and dust combine into a film that makes rods sticky, and sticky rods are the second most common complaint about home foosball tables after wobble. Silicone lubricant fixes it, but use it sparingly: over-lubricated rods slide so freely that shot control gets worse, not better.
Keep the surface clean with a dry or barely damp microfibre cloth and stay away from solvents, which will lift a printed laminate. Dust on the pitch does not just slow the ball, it makes the roll unpredictable, which is far more annoying than slow.
A rug or mat underneath is worth considering on hard floors. It cuts the noise of the ball and the rod stops travelling through the room, and it protects the floor from the feet.
Who it is for, and who should skip it
This suits a household that wants a proper foosball table as a fixture: a game room, a converted garage, a large living space where 137 x 72 cm of floor can be permanently committed. It is not a table you put away between uses, and 34 kg makes moving it a two-person job, so the space question needs answering before the buying question.
It suits families and casual play particularly well. Counterweighted figures and a full-size pitch mean the game plays the way people expect from a bar table, which is the whole point, and the manual scorers are simple enough for kids.
Skip it if you play competitively, where the cabinet rigidity and bearing quality will limit you before your skill does, or if you are tall enough that an 85 cm playing height means playing bent over. Skip it too if the space is genuinely tight, because a table you cannot walk around is a table nobody plays on.
Verdict
Seven out of ten, and the score is about the cabinet rather than the game.
The playing field is the part that matters and Costway got it right: 117 x 68 cm is close enough to tournament dimensions that the game feels correct, and the counterweighted figures fix the single most annoying failure of budget tables. Two balls, 26 figures, adjustable feet and reinforced crossbars are a sensible specification at this price.
What holds it back is what MDF and a price point always hold back: a printed surface that will wear, joints that will need re-tightening, and a build that rewards care during assembly and punishes rushing it. Those are the trade-offs of the bracket, not defects of this table.
If the football itch is more digital than physical, the FC 25 review covers the other direction entirely. The full specification for this table, including the playfield measurement quoted throughout, is on the B&Q product listing.
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