Speedbird_666

Except for that poor bugger with the TSI Tavor unboxing video. You could practically hear his heart breaking when he was trying to review it. Otherwise, you're quite right.

Negative doesn't really review guns - he fixes them as a full-time tech. When he says a gun is Wank, it's generally because he's had quite a few on his bench to fix. Both Pheas and BigBird pay for their own guns/gear, and are fairly honest about their impressions from what I've seen. It's the bigger reviewers that have stuff sent to them for free that I treat with some skepticism. As for ASG, they don't publish a list (that I know of) unfortunately. When you've been around long enough staring at various guns from various manufacturers - you start to recognise the same components being used - enough to put two and two together. Sometimes retailers will say something like 'ASG (made by Lonex)' in their product description. Some guns still have the OEM's name stamped on them (Classic Army M4s). Some guns you won't recognise until the gearbox gets opened and you look at the components e.g. ASG CZ 805 Bren (King Arms). Cyma makes pretty decent stuff these days, but I would stick to their over-£100 offerings. I have both an AK and M4 derivative (SR47) and both are decent, although I've yet to skirmish the SR47.

And potentially expensive. It seems like CYMA have an issue with their mag catches:

As Sterling Archer would say: 🤣

The most boring thing to arrive in the post ever - packs of shims: I found a place that sells 0.1mm shims in packs of 50 - I'm fed up with dicking around with different thicknesses (like the airsoft packs you get) - I much prefer just using 0.1s exclusively when shimming my guns.

I thought only Speedsofters and IPSC airsoft shooters need to short-stroke their guns? 😉 Personally, I'd prefer to keep the slide lock.

Is that the technical term for it? 😜

Ooooh...Salty.....🤣

Shortens the cycle time by restricting the rearward slide movement, allows the trigger to reset faster in semi and ups the ROF overall. A lot SS kits preclude the use of the slide lock as the slide cannot cycle far enough back to engage it.

This one?

So why do you need our opinion? Generally people ask before buying...

Only one week 'til payday. I think I need one of these in my gear bag.

A bin bag? 😜 (Just kidding)

Some manufacturers are pretty well supported in the UK - for example ICS with Fire-Support. There are a lot of TM spares and upgrades also knocking around with specialist retailers such as Eagle6. You can approach G&G directly for obscure parts, I've heard they will deal direct with customers when they have no joy with local distributors. Chinasoft guns however are a bit trickier and most of the time you will need to look abroad for proprietary parts that cannot be replaced with generic upgrade items. Otherwise, you will have to lookout for other dead guns that you can buy cheap and raid the parts from.

It's a pretty saturated market these days in the Sub-£150 price bracket. I wish I had that amount of choice when I started playing. Back in those days, it was pretty much TM, Classic Army or ICS. And they cost a lot more than £150. Even with the cheap guns from Poland pretty much no longer a 'thing' post-brexit, it's still a great time for newcomers to Airsoft with the sheer variety of guns available.

Problem is, how many 'bad batch' QC Edge V1 guns are still sitting on retailers shelves/walls waiting to be bought by an unwitting new player? I genuinely hope it's not many. Most of the QC issues are easily fixed if you are confident to tech your own guns. But most new players will not be. Apparently Edge 2.0 has sorted the QC issues. If that's the case, great! The 'upgraded' Edge 2.0s are just hitting UK shores (ignoring the rubbish HK416ish Edge 2.0 guns that briefly arrived last year with triggers that didn't work with the Asters) so hopefully we will get some updated reports. Personally, I'm tempted to give the basic (plastic hand guard) £210 model a go, because it's worth it for the parts alone.

Well, the one down my shed for starters. It's been well known that the Edge series has had some serious QC issues. Even their Brand Ambassadors have said so. There are quite few videos on Youtube - both Negative Airsoft and Bigbird Airsoft have covered it. Just because you got a 'good' one.....🙄

That's fair enough. But it seems the days of cheap guns from Poland have gone. I've been buying guns in the various sales over the last year from UK stores, there were many bargains to be had. Not TaiwanGun cheap, but still significantly better than normal UK retail. May I ask, how much was your order total? I'm trying to wrap my head around the 'Government Charges' bit and see if roughly correlates with Import Duty and VAT.

G&G captured the low-end market for some time, no doubt about it. But then they started jacking up their prices (even announcing a worldwide 10% price hike on their website). Problem is, the other manufacturers have caught up and often undercut G&G in terms of cost for comparable features, or exceed G&G's feature set for comparable cost. A basic CM16 (no rails, standard plastic hand guard front end) will set you back £125. A Specna CORE can be had for cheaper (£110-£120), with a much better feature set (a choice of rails/lengths, Quick change spring, tightbore barrel, rotary HOP). There is now no compelling reason to buy a G&G Raider (£140) because for a few quid more you can buy significantly better guns. Other and new manufacturers are also entering the game (e.g. Evolution and Saigo Defense) saturating the sub-£150 market even further. Yet G&G are still churning out the same old stuff, hoping their name alone is a worthy selling point.

Indeed. I've been playing for 15 years now. My first ever overseas Airsoft order was placed only 12 months ago - funnily enough with TaiwanGun. The rest of my guns/gear were bought from UK suppliers anyway. New players will get sucked into the sales pitch from shop staff - not realising that they can buy cheaper from elsewhere. Spend 20min in the Zero One* showroom on a Saturday morning and you'll see plenty of punters paying over the odds for their first shooter. *Not dissing Z1. They have staff to pay, family to feed, Mercedes to buy etc, so if people are willing to pay their prices, then fair enough.

It's a fair price for what it is. Very niche, but I'm sure there's someone out there who will want it.

Not a lot. UK Airsoft will be fine. I would wager that most new players get their kit from UK vendors, especially those that live close to a bricks and mortar store/showroom. It's the more experienced hands that will be hit hardest with this.

ASG only manufactures one gun - the Scorpion Evo. Everything else is OEM'd by (in no particular order) Classic Army (most recent Armalite Series), Lonex (Proline LMTs and older Armalites), G&P (Other older LMTs), VFC (Spectre Series YHM M4), JG (G36s).....etc etc etc. So there's no simple answer. G&G Combat Machines were the go-to starter gun for many years. But they've now out-priced themselves and you get don't very much for your money. CYMA - The VFC style metal AKs are excellent and relatively cheap (the CM.045 is great), their M4s are much better with the newer internals. Specna - Each of their product lines has a different OEM manufacturer. The 'One' and 'Core' series offer decent, if unremarkable performance but good value. On paper the 'Edge' series should be a killer deal, but are plagued with QC issues. *EDIT* @Skara posted literally the same thing as me at the same time, but in more detail. 🙂

That's funny, my BF-888s were definitely not legal on the pre-programmed channels. The radios came with high-powered mode set as default, which can't be changed without the programming cable. I'm not even sure the low powered setting is actually below the limit either. Then there's the small issue of removable aerials. PMR446 units cannot have them (so as to not increase their range buy adding a larger one), so even if the power is within the legal PMR446 limits, they are illegal anyway. So, it comes down to the classic 'pick two out of three' scenario. - Cheap - Legal - Good Pick any two, but you can't have the third. So: Cheap and Legal - Binatone and other low-end guff. Unlikely to be good though. Cheap and Good - Baofeng, but it won't be legal. Legal and Good - Motorola and equivalents, but it won't be cheap. Just my 2p.