A&K one is not bad. Overall it feels solidly built and is all metal with nicely finished internals (but boy do you know it is full metal when you pick it up, however, the weight of it is pretty close to the real SVD, i.e. it's very heavy). I found that it was a pain in the ass to get my replica PSO-1 onto its rail, but it did eventually go on there after a bit of persuasion with a rubber headed mallet and a softwood drift. The foregrip furniture is a bit cheap in feel, you know the type, i.e. it does some nasty creaking when you squeeze it, but it can be replaced of course, although not all replacement furniture is compatible with the A&K Dragunov, so choose carefully if you do decide to change it, I've actually kept the stock foregrip on mine, but may replace it at some point. The rear stock is good however, but the leather cheekpad which attaches to it is a bit cheap looking. It does function okay, but you might want to get a genuine replacement for that at some point. The cocking handle on new ones is unbelievably hard to pull back, but you sort of get used to how to cock it after a while, which helps, although if you are serious about using it regularly, then the extended cocking handle would be worth having, especially in cold weather.
The A&K SVD can actually be upgraded with a kit to make it a semi-automatic gas blowback, which it should be, since the real SVD is semi-automatic, because it was designed as a squad level DMR to be deployed in large numbers rather than a dedicated sniper rifle. That semi-auto upgrade and many other upgrades for the thing mean it is a popular modding rifle and there are many forums dedicated to that. Nevertheless, for about 140 quid, it's actually a pretty usable rifle straight out of the box, being that it does about 480fps, and you can get by with it not being semi-auto, although of course it has only iron sights as it comes, but these are accurate, being properly marked with the range ticks that an SVD has, rather than A&K simply having thrown a bog standard AK47 rear sight on there (which has different calibration to the SVD's rear sight).
But of course, no SVD is complete without a PSO-1 telescopic sight, with its iconic curved line rangefinding reticule. You can find copies of that, specifically for airsoft versions on amazon and ebay, which make them usable at the sort of range you'd be sniping from. They are invariably from China, but surprisingly well made and authentic looking, which is not bad considering they can be had for about 60 quid (think I might have paid about 55 quid for mine if I recall correctly), and it does work well, even having a switchable illuminated (red) reticule which works off a little watch type battery in the thing.
So with that in mind, you might find that even if you kept the thing fairly standard, you'd still be looking at about 200 quid if you bought the rifle and the PSO-1 scope, which you pretty much have to do with an SVD, since the PSO-1 sight was actually designed for the SVD and it rarely looks nice with any other sort of scope on it. You should bear in mind that if you do have one, then you'd be well advised to get something like a AKS74U or an MP5K for back up, because there is no way you could fight at close range with the SVD on your own, you'd get absolutely raped, it's just too long a weapon to fight close in with, and even with practice, your rate of fire would still be painfully slow, although with how much it weighs, you certainly could beat someone to death with it :lol:
