So... Just got back from Trojan's Purge CQB night, where I teamed up with fellow forumite Jangalak (who is a very nice bloke by the way, and a bloody good shot from what I could gather), and looky what had been delivered to my rainy doorstep...
Yup, that's right, bet you'd never thought you'd read this on the forum... full marks go to www.bbguns4less.co.uk for service, because I ordered it Tuesday morning, and it arrived Wednesday teatime, that's a little over 24 hours from placing the order to delivery, and that was with the free postage option as well! They also texted me twice with status updates for the order, plus tracking data for my package, as well as sending me three emails on the status of my order whilst it was being picked and packed. Those BB gun sites sometimes get a bad rap, not always undeservedly to be honest, but the fact is that that is really awesome delivery service.
Anyway... It's late now, so this ain't my review - I'll do that on Friday - but here's just some initial impressions of the thing...
In the well-packed for transit plain cardboard box with a Black Viper sticker on it, you get: the rifle held in your regulation polystyrene box inner, a printed sheet with some basic instructions, a couple of hundred fairly crappy yellow BBs (straight in the bin), an unbelievably long unjamming rod, a charger, an 8.4v 700 milliamp battery, a cheap and nasty two point sling (also going in the bin), and a black plastic high cap windy-wheel mag (which I believe is about 350 round capacity). The battery goes in the stock by means of the buttplate sliding up, the stock itself also has a release button which enables it to completely slide off, so if you changed it to be front wired (and there is room to do that internally), then you could run the gun with no rear stock for a bit of CQB fun, but as it stands, when you slide the stock on it makes electrical contact with two connectors on the rear of the receiver, so it will be a full stock for a while at least. There is plenty of room inside the stock for a bigger battery, even though that would probably over-stress the current gearbox internals.
The gun itself is a combination of ABS plastic and metal, the metal bits are: the outer barrel, the gas tube (although the large flash hider at the tip of the barrel is plastic (which is a shame, as that's the bit you always ding into walls in CQB), the trigger, mag release switch and the rear sight (typical AK type) are also metal, as is the ramrod under the barrel, which can be removed with some persuading, and there are metal bayonet mounts under the barrel too. The upper and lower receiver and body up to the front grip are all molded transparent ABS plastic, although this is split in two halves longitudinally, and secured with black crosshead screws on the right side, which means you definitely can take it apart easily and could drop in a decent metal-geared V3 gearbox. It also means that you could spray the inside of the body black, and not have the paint wear off. The detail on the molded body, is also faithful to the real AK12 in terms of contour and surface detail, so it is certainly a good lookalike for the real AK12. Unlike the real AK12 however, which has a split rail along the top to facilitate the hinging of the upper receiver cover plate, this AK12 does not have a hinged cover, even though the rails are correctly split and it at least
looks like the thing would hinge.
Similarly, the stock might
look like it is collapsible, but it is not, being fixed in the extended position, nor is the stock foldable (on the real AK12, you can fold the stock either way, because parts can be swapped over to make the real AK12 left or right-handed, with it able to eject shells either left or right). Similarly, the fire selector switch, whilst an accurate visual representation of the real improved AK12's fire selector switch (i.e. you can reach the AK12's fire selector with your thumb whilst keeping your finger on the trigger), is only present on the right hand side (the real AK12 has an ambidextrous fire selector switch, present on both sides). Also, the real AK has the ability to fire a three round burst, whereas this airsoft AK12 only has safe, semi, and full auto, so more like a traditional AK, although frankly, I tend to triple tap on semi anyway, so who cares lol. The selector switch is quite stiff, which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned, because the fire selector switch on M16s/M4s is a pain in the ass for accidentally going onto full auto when it rubs against your webbing, whereas there's no chance of that happening on this AK12.
It's pretty light - only weighs 3.19 lbs - and despite it having a metal barrel, it's not in the least bit nose-heavy, in fact it is actually very well balanced. It comes up to your shoulder nicely and feels like it would be good for quite long-range aiming, this is helped by the fact that the rear sight is - unlike on traditional AKs - at the back of the upper receiver, which is a definite aiming improvement over traditional AKs. Looks-wise, although it seems a lot longer than a normal AK, this is merely an optical illusion caused by the acres of rail space it has along the top (this thing has more rails than Crewe Junction, it's a gadget fiends's wet dream), however, in spite of it appearing longer than a normal AK, I put it up against my CYMA AK47, and it was only about two inches longer than the AK47, and most of that appeared to be because of the fecking massive flash hider it has, which on the real AK12, ports gas out to control the recoil. The rails incidentally, are all plastic, but it is decently tough plastic and they are on there good and tight, secured by hefty crossheads screws, so I would have no qualms about sticking gear all over the thing and not have it move around at all, which is more than can be said for the rails on the sides of my D-Boys M4. Moreover, with it being so light, it would still be easy to haul around even with craploads of things added to it, which is just as well because this is finally an AK which actually won't look stupid with a modern optic on it.
The black plastic pistol grip is contoured, and it is actually quite nice, with a sort of grippy, rubberised feel to it in spite of it being merely the surface molding which gives it that feel. It is quite a hefty sized pistol grip, certainly bigger than an AK47s, in fact, it feels a lot like the grip on my Thompson sub machine gun, which is a good thing, although I think anyone with small hands might find that pistol grip is bordering on the large side.
Overall, for seventy quid, I think it could potentially be a bit of a bargain if you throw a decent gearbox into the thing (since that would only take it up to about 110 quid in total), which I probably will end up doing, although I'm gonna paint it up and take it to a skirmish with the stock internals, just to see how it fairs.
Look out for a proper vid review shortly.
h34r: 
