My ratings, generally speaking. Might I also suggest someone alphabetise the list?
King arms - 6 - I hear mixed things about them, mostly good. But my mate had a carbine FAL that was DIRE.
G&G armaments - 9/10 - I've had 2 guns by them which are both exceptionally good. They generally have a fantastic reputation, QC is good, prices are spot on, one of the best brands out there imo.
Jing Gong - 7 - For the price you really can't go wrong.
I.C.S - 8 - My "Other G&G" company. Very good guns. Excellent build quality on their metal guns, good out of the box performance, get shipped with 2 hi-caps in some cases. Only thing that lets them down is the plastics on the sportslines feel a bit... breaky, imo.
A.P.S - 6 - Generally see them as bad. But my mate did have an AK that I sorted out for him, disabled the blowback and cleaned the g'box out and it was spectacularly good after that. Stock parts and the range and accuracy were mental for only 310fps.
V.F.C - 8 - Top tier manufacturer, external quality is probably the highest out there with only few exceptions but when I had a go with the 417 I didn't think the performance was worth the price tag. It was good, but I'd expected "more" for that much money.
Ares - 5 at best - Externals are generally faultless. Internals... In my opinion, Ares ought to just sell gun shells, for you to put the internals into.
G&P - 9 - Great all round, but can be a bit on the expensive side. I'm thinking LMGs and their SR25 URX...
Galaxy - No experience whatsoever.
Well - 5 - Snipers seem really worth their salt if you understand that they require upgrades, but the external quality is questionable and I've heard nothing but bad reviews about their MP7.
AGM - No real experience again, but their famous GBB M4 is allegedly terrible. AEGs seem pretty good though, full metal M4 with RIS for £200, built with mental US fps limits in mind, so they come shooting 400fps. Downgrading for UK legality is only going to prolong the life of the internals. Based on what I've heard - 7
CYMA - 8 - The king of metal AKs. No need to say anymore I don't think.
D-BOYS - No experience.
JLS - No experience.
WE TECH - 8 - Their reputation is ever increasing, they're opening a branch in the UK, so we ought to see spares readily available and for a low cost. Even if their guns break fixing them isn't hard and they have the best range of GBBRs by a country mile.
[SIZE=11.818181991577148px]Classic Army - 8 - Run of the mill stuff. Competitive all rounders. [/SIZE]
LCT - Nice kits, good rep. But not all what they're cracked up to be going by what Ian_Gere's said in his review. However - No personal experience and I've not heard enough about them to make my own deductions.
Real Sword - 9 - Has anyone ever heard a single bad thing said against RS? Their new AR range look immaculate as well. A proper heavy bolt in an AEG M4? Omnomnom. I might have to get another AR.
Tokyo Marui - 7 - People bum the living shit about them, but my experience of them has been generally bad. The range is only good for CQB, I don't care what anyone says. Pit my L85 against as it came from the box against anything TM have ever made - bar an upgraded VSR - and it'll blow the TM away. I'd bet money on it.
SRC - 7/8 - Personally not impressed. My site use the Gen3 G36s as hire guns, they're not really something I'd be happy with if I had to hire. But they have seen absolute hell and they do generally get a good rep.
Systema - No personal experience, but they supposedly need even more money spending on them to be any good in terms of reliability, and for the cost, that's just wrong. They deserve a score of sub 5 for that. But, having fired a mate's M16 with the burst function, I feel like giving them a 10 because it was like being presented with a supermodel that's got a thing for you. Amazing. 8 if you can afford to pay the silly premium to get one.
WA - No experience whatsoever, only ever touched two and they were both pistols. Generally seem to feel and perform as TM do. Wouldn't mind having a go with their GBBR line, but they don't seem to exist in the UK.
Stark arms (vfc subrand) - Never even heard of these before today.
HK3 - As above, only known about them for about 2 days.
A&K - 6/7 - Heard good stuff about their LMGs and I'd be tempted to get their SR25 from what I've heard about it. But their springer SVDs just sound crap and I get the impression they're nothing to sing about.
Both elephant - No experience. But I've picked up the impression that they're about one rung along the ladder from the 150fps AEGs you used to be able to buy from "the dodgy dealer" as we called him, down the city centre pre-VCRA.
KWA - No personal experience, but based on what I've heard - 8.
KSC - What's the deal with KWA and KSC? KSC make a Sig P226 that's stupidly expensive, at least £40 more than the KWA NS2 one, but I've heard that it's bad. But I've always thought that KSC were a KWA rebrand or something.
KJW - 7 - Based on personal experience. I had a Sig P226 and loved it for the weight and feel. They fall down on performance though, their pistols are terrible - magazine especially, but their GBB M4 is outstanding from what I've seen, the Ruger 1022 thing is good too.
[SIZE=11.818181991577148px]Inokatsu - No experience, unsurprisingly... We're generally led to believe they're the best there is in the GBB world, but I've stumbled across a few threads that suggest despite their flawlessly realistic externals, their internals and performance are woeful. So I'd have to give them a 5 for false pretences. [/SIZE]
G&D - No personal experience, but their PTW clones are supposedly very good indeed and around £1k cheaper than the proper thing.
Celcius - Cheaper version of Systema with comparable performance. Unsure of the need to upgrade from the box though. No actual experience.
Dytac - Not even heard of them prior to this list.
Army armament - Only know anything at all about their clone of G&G's L85 and most of that is bad. But due to having no clue about their other stuff I'm going to skip the score based on lack of experience.
Madbull - Only have experience with their accessories, which are generally very good, bar the trades. My RIS would be a lot nicer if it didn't have "for airsoft only" written on it...
Tanaka - Good from what I've heard and seen, but no experience.
Double eagle - Lol no. 4. The actual dodgy dealer guns.
HFC - Had some springers made by HFC back in the day. They left a lot to be desired. I can't imagine their GBB pistols being spectacular, but I'm inclined to group them with KJW in the pistol category.
GHK - No experience.
I didn't want to just rate things with a number because there are too many different things you can rate a company for. Internal quality, external quality, performance out of the box, reputation etc etc. Coming up with a figure that can account for all that and be comparable against other brands is just exceptionally difficult.
We might need to rethink how we're going to do this.
I also think there needs to be a proper scale.
Here I've struggled to really rate anything to show that much difference between things. I would say that 0 = The guns don't even work and 10 = They're so good in every regard that there's literally nothing bad to say about them.
5 - 7 is about average, 8/9 are exceptional and anything less than 5 is more worthy of binning than anyone's attention.
