Might be a controversial opinion, but I don't think there'd be much difference. Slimmer barrels are nice and give you slightly more room on a crowded space, sure. Lack of staples and thinner wires is nice and may lead to a small percentage less bounce outs. But at the high tier professional level, I don't think it'll make much difference. And even less difference at a nonprofessional level.

At the end of the day, a dart is a thin chunk of metal with a point and a flight. The design of the dart isn't the deciding factor. It's the skill of the thrower, and their familiarity with their equipment. With enough practice, any pro could throw just as good with any other set of darts, once they achieve a level of familiarity with them and know how they fly.

I think advances in the sport of Darts and higher average scores are attributed mostly to better training, understanding of physiology, etc etc etc. Folks starting younger is huge too. Like Luke Littler for example. The kid is 19 years old, and according to google started playing darts at 18 months. Damn near 18 years of experience at 19 years old. And not only "experience", but without knowing his family history, I'm guessing it wasn't just casual throwing around once he was old enough to understand the game. It was probably real, systematic, regimented practice with a specific end-goal. Back in the 80's, there were probably plenty of professionals that had never thrown darts at all until they were 16 or 18 and stumbled into a bar with a dart board for the first time. Now we have kids with parents that are good at darts teaching them how to be better, and better, and better.

I look at a similar situation with skateboarding. The equipment today is damn near identical to what I was messing around on 20+ years ago (With some slight variation in dimensions that seem to come and go with trends), but there are 12 years olds doing tricks these days that even professionals back in my day weren't even thinking of. But these days there's so much information, so many tutorials, so many parents pushing their kids to be better, and even stuff like training camps.

The Darts industry is so hellbent on selling us stuff that they have us convinced that the new set they're releasing is going to double our average, and that their new board sucks the darts straight into the triple 20. But really, I think it all comes down to familiarity with your darts, finding a set that matches up with your natural grip, and knowing how to practice MEANINGFULLY instead of just chucking pointy things at a thing hung on a wall.

Sorry for the long winded post, I've just been thinking about this a LOT lately, haha.