"I bought this gun as a beginner tech project gun, as it was relatively affordable and I was looking for something with a full metal body with RIS.
OUT OF THE BOX:
The Box - It was packaged decently, arrived in a nice APS cardboard box with a plastic handle, so if you don't own a gun bag yet, you can still take it to the field while not carrying it around in the open.
First Impressions - It felt solid from the barrel down to the buffer tube. The crane stock wobbles and does not have the capability to house a crane-stock-type (nunchuck) battery, if you plan to wire to the rear. I was, however, impressed with how solid the RIS rails were. Zero Wobble on my gun. The delta-ring is an actual star type delta-ring, so I recomend getting a delta-ring wrench, if you intend to do any maintaining involving its removal. The listing says that the outer barrel muzzle thread is 14mm pos (+), but mine came in 14mm neg (-). I don't know if APS does both to some guns or not.
The Rails - Sturdily mounted, they exhibit no wobble, which made for a nice mounting option for my m203, as opposed to barrel mounting it. Since this gun is front wired, you have to mount your battery up front. I tried getting my Matrix Butterfly-Type 9.6v 1600mah NiHm battery to fit inside the rails, but no considerable luck. I soon bought a large mock PEQ-box to house my batteries.
The Bolt Catch - I had never owned an airsoft aeg with a functional bolt catch, and I was suprised to see it featured on this aeg. However, it is a bit jenky, and you have to manually pull the bolt catch lever from the top (while you pull the charging handle) to engage the lever into the bolt catch notch on the immitation bolt.
The FPS - When I first chrono'd it (using a 9.6v Butterfly-Type Batt), it was shooting a consistent 399-400FPS (field reg is 350FPS). Luckily, this gearbox has a quick change spring (qcs) feature!
Electric Blowback - is cool, and sounds awesome, extra friction and pressure on the piston is not, so APS have made the immitation bolt easy to disable, or remove. If you remove the imitation bolt, your charging handle will wobble/possibly fall out.
The 370mm Stainless Steel Inner Barrel - is crowned well, and the polished finish was immaculate. It came with 2 o-rings on the end to help reduce barrel wobble. A nice touch. The Hop-up is decent, and impressed me, as I seldom ever had to touch it after adjusting it the first time.
INSIDE THE GEARBOX:
The QCS - feature makes gearbox assembly/disassembly much less of a hastle, as opposed to a non-qcs gearbox.
The Cylinder - is polished well, and the stock Piston provides a decent airseal, helping to provide that consistent 399-400FPS. Although, the stock Piston does not have full-metal teeth.
The Gears - didn't really come shimmed well but, this is an easy fix if, you put the time into it. I didn't have the stock Gears installed for very long, so I couldn't tell you if they were relible enough to take an 11.1v Lipo with the stock Spring for very long or not.
The Gearbox Shell - is a little cluttered with gear walls and such, but does have wire clearance for 16AWG wire, if you plan to rewire. It does not come radius'ed or anything. The polishing is OK, but it could be made much better, if you put the time, money, tools, and effort into it. The grease that was applied from the factory is pretty gross, but that's a typical thing to see. Cleaning the shell and regreasing with Silocone grease is a simple remedy.
The Motor - was lackluster, in my opinion. The magnets were not as strong as I would've liked, and it provided an OK stock rof out of the box. I'd say TPA in the 14-16 range, if I had to guess.
The Cylinder Head Nozzle - were well sealed. The Cylinder Head is polymer, with what looked like a 3/8in (maybe thinner) layer of ringed sorbo-pad, to reduce piston damage.
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