Okay, those are just my personal biased opinions about certain brands, based on my personal experience with some of the gear of the certain manufacturers.
What i was hoping to achieve, is sort of a brainstorm, for example i say that brand X is good because of something, and You disagree because of something else, and somebody can make an opinion out of it.
And about "plenty of reviews". What i've noticed over the years, that very few people actually does their research. On every airsoft forum You'll see thousands of threads like "is X gun any good?" or "should i buy X or Y gun?", because people want to hear opinions from different sources.
I get the impression that You're an experienced player, so why won't You share some opinions with us, instead of having an argument? Let's help each other, and make something good. That's what this community should be about.
You are definitely right, very few people actually do their research. However your original post in the thread rather comes across as being written by someone who's maybe not done their research to my mind personally, given how brief and in some parts, mis-informed, it is. Which is why I pointed out the disagreements I had with some of the things you said.
I've given advice, info, direct links and buying guidance to more new players than I could possibly count over the years on both this forum, multiple other forums, various social media and in person. Believe me I'm
very much interested in ensuring that new guys coming in to airsoft spend their money well. However, to write any sort of all-encompassing 'guide' to explain every single choice regarding tactical kit or apparel as a resource for new players based on everything I've bought in the last decade+ would take far more time than I could ever devote to such an epic task. To truly do that sort of thing justice and do it properly would be an enormous under-taking and that's before even taking to account the fact that brands have peaks and troughs in quality of manufacture, not to mention quality differences from batch to batch or even item to item; so it's simply not possible to generally 'sum up' a given brand and all their offerings in a concise manner.
For brand new players coming in to airsoft in the UK, the advice I've given time and again has remained really quite simple over the years, so this would be my best concise guide to brands that have always been good and will work.
1. Eye pro, hit up sales from the quality gear stores or look for military issue stuff on eBay that's still new. If it's something like ESS, Smith Optics, Oakley or Revision it'll be easily and cheaply available with some searching and guaranteed to stop actual frag and 12 bore birdshot if not buckshot, so a BB will be just fine.
2. Go to Flecktarn.co.uk to get some BULLE load bearing kit or UKTactical for some Warrior stuff if budget permits. Both have an incredibly consistent reputation for quality while maintaining very low prices and compared to the other budget brands like Condor, Flyye, Viper and Highlander etc (all of which I'm constantly hearing about or seeing fail in some way or another) every single piece I've seen from BULLE/WAS has been extremely bloody good; quality above the asking prices. Of course checking ebay and the regular sales at the gear shops is a great way to bag some stuff by top end manufacturers for
frequently less money than airsoft stores ask for Viper/Mil-Tec knock-offs.
Exactly which type of rig and/or pouches to buy is of course dependant on budget, the number and type of mags they have, type of games they'll be playing and aesthetic preferences.
3. Clothing; if the player wants more than their 'old clothes' or hiking kit, old standard issue CS95 is better on the quality front than the current PCS (MTP) overall and there's still
tons of it floating around surplus. Even well used 'grade 2' stuff will last many, many airsoft games and even the lesser used stuff can be picked up for less money than some of the branded crap while being much better stitched together.
Budget boots I really don't know about so I'll not comment on as the brands change pretty frequently and they're not needed for CQB games anyway; and since this is a gear thread I'll leave guns out, but the good choices in terms of RIFs for the new player have been more than well covered on this very forum numerous times.
I think your being a bit of a dick about this, some one comes a long with honest intentions and you come out with this^^^^^^^^^^
Last time I checked Blackhawk still made great holsters, and the molle leg rig I have from them seems well made, and his comment about 600D Cordura is valid.
You're welcome to your opinion based on your personal interpretation of how you think I'm 'speaking' as it were. Of course when you choose to resort to the personal insults as well which I think says more about you than it does me, but hey I'm welcome to my opinion too as it happens. None of it means my intentions aren't also honest.
If you like the SERPAs that's fine, they're alright for airsoft, as long as you keep them clean. 'Great' is comparative and compared to other brands they have some serious downfalls which are well publicised if you'd like to do some research, but Blackhawk as a brand is not, overall, anything like 'top end' these days. Again it's always comparative, but the original statement was 'favoured by military operators' and that is simply incorrect and demonstrably so. You do not see military 'operators' (taken to mean SF colloquially) wearing blackhawk anymore, you simply don't. Crye, LBT, BFG, Salomon, Ops-Core, FirstSpear, C2R, Safariland and Eagle (to name a few); yes, but Blackhawk is most definitely conspicuous by its' absence from the loadouts of guys who demand top quality gear and that was the entire basis for my retort about them. They
were great back in the day, not anymore and you often can't tell when the product you purchase has been manufactured.
The knock-off 600D cordura point doesn't really follow, because it's not actually cordura in the first place, it's just some cheap crappy fabric that's been mis-labeled. Genuine DuPont 600D (not that anyone really makes anything in 600D amongst the truly quality brands) would be fully up to real combat and more than up to the job of airsoft. If it's not real cordura though and it's just being called that by an unscrupulous company, then that's an entirely different matter and players need to look for specific reviews on the exact products that claim to be using said material in order to ascertain whether it'll fall apart on them after half a skirmish. 'ACM' is far too broad a term as I mentioned, you'll find so-called ACM products on the market which use good materials and some under the same name which don't, hence only differentiating by brand name rather than specific product would be very counter-productive decision for new players.
