WE Glock 17 3rd Generation.

[Airsoft-Ed]

Make: WE
Model: Glock 17 Gen 3
FPS: Circa 300 with .20s
Materials: Metal slide, outer barrel and internal components, with a rigid, high quality plastic lower frame.
Mags: Hold 25 shots and can happily accept propane and green gas. CO2 mags are also allegedly available, or soon will be, as for whether or not you'll have to upgrade certain components to avoid damaging the gun, only time will tell.

Price and bought from: I managed to pick mine up for a very cheeky £85 haggle from 'UK Airsoft', but they usually sell them for £95 which is more or less the standard retail price, ZeroOne are currently selling them for £89.95 I believe, just as a point of reference - it's currently 2013 - so I'd very much say this is at the "budget" end of the pistol spectrum, it's a cheap pistol! So with that in mind, this is a absolute STEAL! Get one whilst they're hot!

So I was recently asked about my Glock 17 by someone who was looking to buy one, so I thought I'd make my response public in case anyone else was wondering what I thought, or thinking of getting one.

So starting with the most important point first:

Gas efficiency is amazing. I've been nothing short of impressed with it since I got it, I've managed to get 70 shots out of one gas fill, per mag, on multiple occasions. So I can load up each mag almost 3 times before needing to re-gas it, so long as the ambient temperature is high and I don't blot through all the ammo in a matter of seconds. Which is fantastic if you think about it, 'cos I always top up my mags with gas if I've fired them during a game anyway, so you can pretty much spam the hell out of it as much as you want. Even if the temperature is low so the gas pressure drops there's enough gas in the mag to make up for any loss in pressure.

I've skirmished it once on a colder day (sub 10°C) where it failed to unload and lock on the last shot with one of my 4 mags, but I think that was more down to me maintaining it poorly than anything else. I've not had any times where it's let me down since then, though I've only owned it around 2 months so far and it's never been used in true "Winter" conditions, so I'll have to keep updating this as the seasons change. Usually I wouldn't post my review for anything up unless it was exceptionally bad from the off, as with my sniper review, or if like this, someone asked me and I write them a review as a response.

Just be sure to get some silicone spray with it and you're good to go, at the start and end of every day you want to empty the mags of gas (avoid just pressing the release valve and venting it all in one go as that'll freeze the seals and ruin them, do it in a lot of very short jets with a few second intervals between) then once they're empty, hold the gas valve down and squirt a load of silicone oil inside the top port where the gas comes out. As you do it, press the release valve in and out to be sure the seals are getting their fair share of it, then shake it about before gassing it back up for storage. I tend to leave them with around 3 seconds of gas in them.

So the mags are great, not had a single one start leaking on me yet either, which is very unlike my luck with gas guns.

The range and accuracy are utterly ridiculous, all stock I could hit human sized targets at 40m+ with .25s, which is just stupid for a pistol, it rapes the hell out of every TM I've ever seen, even the legendary 5-7 which I've done a side by side comparison with, I thought the 5-7 was utterly shite next to this. I had roughly 3 times the effective range. It even outshoots my mate's KWA P226, which were made with real steel training in mind, so I thought that would be far better.

It's just a monumentally epic pistol.

With a carbine kit fitted in order to get the most out of the accuracy by shouldering it and giving it a bit more point-ability, you could use it as a main weapon quite happily, especially in CQB.

There are three drawbacks that I've encountered so far, the first one I found incredibly annoying; it doesn't fit into Blackhawk Serpa holsters, the slide is too broad for it to fit properly. I spent over £100 on a leg drop holster, only to find this out upon trying to get it in... You can make it fit by using certain drill bits on a dremmel tool and being very careful, I spent about 3 hours taking off plastic from the inside of the holster, as well as dipping it in boiling water and warping it to shape, so I managed to make it fit eventually, but I'd rather have avoided butchering a £100+ holster...

The second thing, is that after about 2500 shots, you run the risk of the outer barrel breaking. My mum's boyfriend's son came around for a BBQ one evening and he just used it constantly for about 4 hours. He didn't mean it to be, but if a shop had done the same, they'd have called it a torture test.

It lasted.

Never gave up on him. Pistol with 4 mags, used solidly for around 4 hours. Must've blatted about 3000 shots through it.

So that's testament to how good the pistol is, I'd wager most people wouldn't fire that much through their pistols in a year or more. Or would you? I certainly wouldn't.

Once I took it back to a skirmish though, at the end of the day when we were all shooting the shit out of some people doing a charity run in stupid costumes, the barrel just exploded out of the gun. It snapped at the ejection port seam.

To prevent it happening again, I bought a Guarder made, steel TM Glock 17 outer barrel as a replacement and at first it was an incredibly tight fit, I had to rack the slide a good 1000 or so times before it started moving more smoothly. The hop unit was a tight fit inside the ejection port cover section of the outer barrel as well. In fact, I didn't think it was going to fit together properly at first, but it does, you just have to angle it right to get it in and give it a good ram.

The last issue, is that the under barrel rail, which one would assume to be 20mm is actually slightly wider than 20mm. I bought a cheap "Quick detach" tac-light on eBay which was only about £20 including postage, it's not a branded tac-light, it's just a generic 200lumen thing on a QD bracket, but it is designed specifically for Glocks.
It didn't fit, QD became SD. I needed a third hand and a crowbar to get it off, even after gouging another 1mm or so out of the pistol's rail at either side.

Now, this ill-accessory-fitment could be down to the light itself being cheap and crap, and not the pistol itself, but since it doesn't fit in Serpa holsters either, I think it probably is WE making it too wide across the board, not just the slide, but the whole thing, rail, frame, slide, everything.

Take from that what you will, just be wary of it when buying under barrel attachments.

As a very minor forth issue, the paint isn't spectacularly hard wearing, as you'll see in the photos below, there are areas where you can clearly see it coming off, and I've hardly owned it for the longest of times. For me this is more of a pro than a con because I like my guns to look naturally weathered through use, so I just thought I'd throw this in as an additional point.

To summarise, it's the best pistol I've owned so far and for reference, I've had a KJW and a very old, worn and used TM Sig P226, and a KJW CO2 M1911 MEU.

The MEU kicked like a mule but the mags were shite, and the others were just woefully unreliable, even in quite warm weather, I used to contemplate whether or not to draw them on people in CQB because I never knew if they'd actually work, or fail on me. So to avoid taking the risk, I'd often not even use any of them. They were all just pointless to own.

This thing on the other hand, I've used as my main on numerous occasions in CQB just for the fun factor, running into the fort with no rig on and stuff and it's not like it hasn't seen heavy use, that stress test that it was unduly presented with, it dealt with like a boss.

It's amazing, can't recommend it enough.

So that pretty much sums up my opinions and experiences so far, I've also fitted it with a PDI 6.01mm tight bore barrel, and modded the hop using a piece of McDonalds straw because with the tightbore fitted the hop lost the ability to lift .25s for some reason, so if anyone has any similar issues after upgrading the barrel, or just want some more lift, lemme know and I'll detail the straw mod.

If you have any questions feel free to ask and I'll get back to you, or I'll update the review to include them.

Some piccy-tures I had saved on my harddrive, they were just quick Facebook snaps. Since I wasn't planning on doing a review just yet I've not got any artsy, angled shots, but I may upload more in the future if the review sees a lot of traffic.

[Kaza66]

Déjà vu ?

[Airsoft-Ed]

I did make a few changes lol.

[Kaza66]

Might follow your lead and do a review of the WE G18C once I have skirmished it.

 

Speaking of which, going to pick it up in an hour or so, feeling excited

[SuicidalBarrelRoll]

I heard the gen 4 was better? I is confuzed