Kima vs Dr. Dish: App Coaching or Shooting Machine?.
Dr. Dish is a shooting machine that rebounds and passes so you can take far more shots per hour. Kima is a phone app that analyses your shooting mechanics and tells you what to fix within about two seconds of each release. One solves volume, the other solves quality. If you have access to a machine, using both together is better than choosing between them.
They are not really competitors.
This comparison comes up because both appear in searches for basketball shooting technology, but they sit at opposite ends of the training problem.
A shooting machine removes the rebounding. That is a genuine constraint on solo training: chasing your own ball can halve your shot count in a session. Dr. Dish returns the ball, logs makes and attempts, and lets a player take several hundred shots in the time they would otherwise take a hundred and fifty.
What a machine does not do is tell you that your elbow flared on rep 212. Volume with a broken mechanic reinforces the broken mechanic, faster.
Kima addresses that side. It builds a baseline from your first 10 makes and compares every subsequent shot against your own makes across 14+ biomechanical checkpoints, speaking the correction while you are still in rhythm.
Head to head.
| Kima | Dr. Dish | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Phone app | Shooting machine plus software |
| Solves | Shot quality and mechanics | Shot volume and rebounding |
| Feedback | Spoken, per shot, under 2 seconds | Shot charts, makes and attempts, drill programmes |
| Setup | Phone on a tripod, headphones | Machine installed on the court |
| Cost profile | Free to download; Kima Pro 14.99 EUR/month or 129.99 EUR/year | Significant hardware investment |
| Portability | Any court, anywhere | Wherever the machine lives |
| Best for | Players fixing or maintaining form | Programmes and gyms maximising reps |
Where each one wins.
Dr. Dish wins on volume and on programme use. A high school or college programme running players through structured shooting blocks gets enormous value from a machine. Nothing else compresses that many quality-position reps into a session.
Kima wins on access and on diagnosis. Most players do not have a shooting machine. They have a phone, a ball, and a court. Kima works in that setting, and it answers the question a machine cannot: what changed on the shots you missed.
Cost is the honest differentiator. A machine is a capital purchase, typically at programme or serious-facility level. An app subscription is not comparable in scale. For an individual player weighing the two, that alone usually settles it.
Using them together.
If you do have machine access, the combination is strong. The machine handles the ball so you keep the pace up, and Kima watches the mechanics so the extra reps are building the right pattern rather than grooving a fault. Position the phone side-on to the shooter as usual; the machine's presence does not interfere with the camera view of your body.
A practical structure: mechanics block with Kima at moderate pace to establish the correction, then a volume block on the machine holding that correction, then a short check block to confirm it survived the fatigue.
What is coming for Kima.
Conversational coaching is in development: talking to your coach, with that conversation shaping which drills you get and the context the coach carries about you between sessions. It is not available yet, but it is the direction of the product.
FAQ.
Is a shooting machine worth it for an individual player?
For most individuals, no, because of the cost and the space required. Machines make sense at programme, academy, or facility level where many players share the investment.
Can Kima work alongside a shooting machine?
Yes. The phone still sees your body from the side, so mechanics analysis works normally while the machine handles the rebounding and passing.
Does Dr. Dish analyse shooting form?
Its strength is shot tracking, location data, and structured drill programmes rather than joint-level biomechanical analysis. Form analysis is the gap that phone-based pose estimation tools fill.
What if I have neither?
A phone and a ball is enough to start. Filming yourself side-on and reviewing later is free; a real-time tool removes the delay between the rep and the correction, which is the main limitation of self-filming.
How much does Kima cost?
Kima is free to download with a free trial. Kima Pro is 14.99 EUR per month or 129.99 EUR per year, roughly 10.83 EUR per month.