USP - ArniesAirsoft - Review Archive

Author

R22Master

Dionysus

Registered: September 2004
Location: Static in the UK, but wishing I was motorbiking around the world - UK > Europe > Russia > Alaska > USA > UK.
Posts: 3,372

Review Date: 15/8/05

Would you recommend the product? No | Price you paid?: �40.00 | Rating: 2

Positive aspects of the product (pros):	Metal top-slide
Cons:	Leaky magazines, regular feed-jams, BBs ejecting out of the ejection port, no trade marks at all, gun tends to field-strip itself during firing.

Now, I really don't want to slate this gun, but my review of it isn't going to be good for various reasons.

Firstly, the top-slide on this gun is metal which is good. But the lack of trade marks of any description does make it look a little bare. It does however make quite a nice metal 'clacking' sound when the slide is pulled back and released.

The weight of this gun is not particularly impressive considering the metal slide, but it does feel a little better when the magazine is inserted.

The problems start though when firing the gun. Here's a short-list of my shooting experiences...

The gun is not particularly accurate
It is difficult to get this gun to shoot straight. The BBs just seem to fly off in random directions and never actually hit what you are aiming at. It should be fine in close range skirmishing situations, but for target shooting or long range skirmishing, it's not the best gun out there by any standards.
The gun regularly jams
Several times per magazine, this gun tries to take two or more BBs out of the magazine and jams occur. You have to manually stop firing and rack back the slide while holding the gun upside down to clear it. This also means you are a few shots down after each jam.
BBs eject out of the ejection port
At first I thought this was pretty cool. About half of the shots you take will see a BB fire out of the barrel and a second BB fly sideways out of the ejection port. It gave me a giggle the first few times it happened, but after a while you realise it is just loosing you several shots per magazine. The end result of this and the frequent jams is that you may only get 7 or 8 successful shots from a fully loaded magazine.
The gun self-strips during firing
About once every couple of magazines, the slide-latch flies off the side of the gun and the slide shoots off the front while firing. This is a BIG downside as I have spent ages hunting for the slide-latch in the long grass after seeing my slide shoot off the front of the gun in the middle of a skirmish. Not good.
The leaky magazines
The mags leak. I have two magazines for this gun and they both leak. I have fixed them several times, but if you leave the gun alone for a few weeks, the mags are leaky again when you come to use them. This means an evening is required to get the magazines back in full working order before you can use the gun again.

I would like to put some more up-sides in this review to balance out the down-sides, but I really can't think of any. I suppose the cheap price is an up-side, but considering this gun is practically unusable, it's not really an up-side after all.

This gun happily takes Green Gas without modification (as long as the mags aren't leaking), but I wouldn't recommend this pistol to anyone - sorry.

I give this gun an unsatisfying 2 out of 10 because it isn't really good for anything but playing with the slide.

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New and inspiring signature coming to an R22 post near you SOON...

slick22

Registered: August 2005
Posts: 91

Review Date: 1/9/05

Would you recommend the product? No | Price you paid?: None indicated | Rating: 4

Positive aspects of the product (pros):	cheap and a good copy of the real steel
Cons:	those bloody leakey mags

yes, i have the tac model of this and have the same problem with the mags. if you soak the o rings in silicone im told it helps with this problem. you will need a valve key to remove the valve and get access to the o ring. I personaly cant be bothered, so i have it as a non firing prop. so sad.

DJSMITH

Registered: May 2005
Location: Norfolk, MA
Posts: 263

Review Date: 5/9/05

Would you recommend the product? No | Price you paid?: None indicated | Rating: 3

Positive aspects of the product (pros):	None
Cons:	Leaky Mags, Faulty Trigger

R22 also forgot to mention the Trigger breaks, if anyone wants a link to a website that sells the real-steel trigger, PM me

I've never had the gun self strip on me before, that's a strange one R22 :D

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(That Image is clickable)

Hissing_Sid

This dog knows more about Airsoft than you.

Registered: September 2004
Location: Somewhere else
Posts: 4,979

Review Date: 26/9/05

Would you recommend the product? No | Price you paid?: �30.00 | Rating: 3

Positive aspects of the product (pros):	The only way to go if you want a metal USP
Cons:	A defeat snatched from the jaws of victory

I'm writing this in defence of the KJW USP. Unfortunately, I can't really think of much to say in defence of it.

I bought mine 2nd-hand, purely as a knee-jerk reaction because they are impossible to find new in the UK.

Right out of the box the gun just doesn't look terribly impressive. It doesn't even build up your hopes only to crush them. As soon as you see it you just think "Oh? Is that it?"

The gun has no HK or USP marking (though I beleive newer versions now do) but it does have some "9x19mm" markings and some fake proof-house stamps.

The sight are both removeable. the front sight can be adjusted for aim. The rear is fixed in place by the screws which hold the GBB mechanism in place.

The frame is rather plasticky but I honestly don't find this unattractive. A bit of silicon polish on it and it looks ok.

The controls comprise the slide-release, the mag-release, the safety catch and the trigger.
The former 3 controls are made of some kind of hardened iron/steel metal but the trigger, for some reason, is made of soft alloy which leads to well-known problems with breakage.

The safety has the dinky feature of decocking the gun if you press it down past the "safe" position. This is fun to do for about 30 seconds but then you start to wonder if you're straining something so you stop doing it.

The magazine is heavy any solidly put together. It has one of those WA style flaps on the back of the mag which covers the valve when the gun is empty. I'm still waiting for somebody to explain why this feature exists.
Thje mag is VERY roughly cast. It's the poorest looking mag I've seen anywhere, ever. It has the observation port on the side and is double stacked which makes loading the mag accurately a challenge. The mag does, however, fit fairly well into the gun with few rattles.

In general, it's worth mentioning that the casting of metal parts is quite "soft" with shapes and edges poorly defined and just not particularly sharp.
Some guns, such as the WE HiCapa, manage to hide the fact that they are cheaply made. The KJW USP can't manage that trick. It looks cheap.

So, how's it shoot?
In short, it's awful.
Loading BBs into the mag is a PITA. Loading gas into the mag will probably bring forth the hissing of gas venting out from a multitude of locations.
The irony is that the actual transfer port of the USP is a clever angled design which should have been better than most other guns. I guess we probably have Tanaka (who KJW copied with this gun) to thank for that design feature.

So, you've loaded BBs and gas into the mag and stuck it in the gun before the gas all vents out.
Next step is to rack the slide. This is when you get your next disappointment.
One of the benefits of metal guns is the noise they make when you cock them.
Unfortunately, rather than the rather purposeful "Ker-Chink" you get from something like the HFC M190, or even the "Clink-Clack" you get from something like a Glock 19, you just get a rather poor sort of "Clunk-scrape-clatter-rattle" noise. It just sounds totally underwhelming.

Shooting the gun is, as R22 said, a bit of a lottery. The BBs go roughly where you point the gun for about 15ft and then veer off randomly after that.

There's nothing actually holding the slide-release in place and, if you tilt the gun to the left, there's always a chance that it will fall out completely or, at least, partially.
If ever you needed a gun to get you into the habit of keeping your left thumb (assuming you're right handed) on the slide-release then this is it.

Then there's the trigger.
The trigger is made of pot-metal and is rather fragile. It will break if you give it half a chance.
The most likely scenario is that you'll cock the gun, put the safety on then, in a moment of forgetfulness, aim the gun and pull the trigger.
At this point you'll get the sinking feeling as the trigger bends and then stays back even though you've released the pressure on the trigger. Oh dear.
To be honest, I think myself lucky that the safety catch seems to have stopped working on mine. When you decock the hammer or safe the gun the hammer is supposed to go right the way forward where the firing mechanism won't pick it up and allow it to fire. On mine the hammer doesn't go forward like it should and this means it'll ALWAYS fire, safety on or not.
I honestly look at this as a benefit cos it's helping the trigger survive.

There's a groove in the inner-barrel to fit an O-ring but KJW don't fit one. Find one and fit it ASAP and it'll help accuracy.
Also, the inner barrel spins in the hop-up housing which causes the hop-up to rotate as well. If you dismantle the hop up and wrap a bit of sellotape around the inner barrel it'll hold in place more firmly. This, too, increases accuracy.

The mags leak awfully. I have 5 mags for mine and, from the 5, I've managed to bodge together 2 fully functional ones. I'm a perfectionist. If I hear a hiss of gas from a mag it'll bug me until I take the mags to bits and cure it. Maybe, if you're not as picky, you won't find the mags so bad.
Make no mistake, though, they don't just "leak". It's common to actually see a jet of gas venting out of the discharge valve as soon as you fill it.

If this gun was sold, new, for about �40 AND the mags didn't leak it'd have a niche in the market. As it is it's in competition with pistols like the KWA USPc, HFC M190 and the KWA G19 too. The only reason to choose the KJW P8 instead is if you really, really must have a full-sized USP.

I bought one just to keep my Mk23 company. It's an awful gun really though. Don't buy one unless you know what you're letting yourself in for and you STILL really, really want a USP.

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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/Hissing-Sid/Cert18.jpg

Deal with it.

X Lupin

Minister of FAMAS Arts & Sciences

Registered: May 2005
Location: South Florida
Posts: 703

Review Date: 3/6/07

Would you recommend the product? No | Price you paid?: None indicated | Rating: 4

Positive aspects of the product (pros):	Excellent power, range, and blowback
Cons:	It doesn't work.

Let me start off by saying that all technical problems people have reported with this gun happened to me, and sequentially.

I received this gun after making a trade with a kid in Virginia, He wanted a ($50) Neonfire M4 LPEG, and I wanted a GBB, so we made each other happy.

It included two magazines, one was functional, the other a brick. I figured this was no big deal, one was working, and it would keep the gun firing right? RIGHT?

At first, it was amazing, the thing was firing hard and true, Then the screws that held the worky bits and the iron sights in place were falling out through the slide, no biggie, some superglue fixed that.

Later, randomly, the "working" mag stopped holding gas, and had the same problem as the other brick I had received, after posting here on the forums and raping the magazine with silicon, it worked for a bit.

Later still, while clicking the trigger, the trigger snapped, making the entire gun, effectively, a brick.

So, all the rumored problems that people talked about with this gun happened to me. All of them.

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