Last week, I received the new QiYi 8x8x8 and I was instantly very impressed, it gave me a desire to practice a bit and push the limits of 8x8 solving. The previous National Record was 4:39, set by Mark Ostrom in 2022, Mark Ostrom was well known in the UK for big cubes and was also one of the best in the world for solving them one handed, his record was set on the DianSheng 8x8 which was a revolutionary 8x8, it was the first factory magnetic 8x8 to be released and instantly performed better than all other 8x8s at the time, back then I gave it a few attempts but couldn't quite get down to his solve times and got distracted by other things such as smaller cubes, university work and running this store!

However, with the release of the QiYi magnetic 8x8, I had a desire to practice once more and go for this record, it did not take me many attempts to beat it by a fraction of a second but I wanted a significant drop so I kept doing solves until I got a 4:20, this was 19 seconds lower than the previous national record and I felt that was something worth uploading.

It is of course worth mentioning that 8x8 is not an official event so this record is unofficial, I suspect many cubers don't bother practicing 8x8 for that reason, what is the point in claiming a record if it isn't official, but I am happy for someone to challenge this record if they want, all they need is a QiYi magnetic 8x8 and good big cube skills!