M14 - ArniesAirsoft - Review Archive

Author

onidemonXLR

AFI has a new, more nocturna member...and hes EMO!!

Registered: March 2005
Posts: 835

Review Date: 10/7/06

Would you recommend the product? Yes | Price you paid?: �270.00 | Rating: 9

Positive aspects of the product (pros):	Ridiculous ROF, Preinstalled tightbore barrel, large 470 round magazines, great feel and weight, nice CLACK CLACK on the bolt, huge battery compartment
Cons:	shiny cheap plastic on the area above the barrel, not as many upgrades as the TM version, earlier versions were mechanically faulty

This gun was my first AEG and currently my favorite gun in my armory.

I bought this gun from Airsoft Atlanta's store. The gun comes in a very artistic white box. It is packaged firmly in a big piece of styrofoam. The gun comes with a magazine, cleaning rod, small pack of bbs, and a very attractive manual that looks like a checkbook. The manual is in English and an Asian language (Looks Japanese to me, but im no expert ^_^ )

Taking the gun out of the box, the first thing you notice is the weight. This gun is a brick! It weighs alot more than all the M4s, UMPs, G36s, MP5s, AUGs, PSG1s, and several other guns ive felt and been around. I would put it a tiny bit lighter than an M249 without the box mag. Definitely would reccomend a 3 pt for this if you plan on skirmishing with it for the entire day. The rifle has a nice balance to it (no you cant one hand it Wink

)

After I held it for a little bit, I tried out the mag, which fits very snugly (almost uncomfortably so) in the magwell. After the mag, there is the bolt... my second favorite part of the gun.

The bolt is the nicest, most real steel sounding bolt i have ever heard on an airsoft gun. It has a solid CLACK CLACK and weight to it. The bolt is held back by a little metal tab that you press flush against the side of the gun's upper reciever. Inside is the hop wheel, which moves smoothly and does not unwind itself out of place. Behind that is the fire selector swithc, which is in a bad position if you ask me. It is behind the trigger, forcing you to use either use your firing hand, or put the full weight of the rifle on your back hand while you move it to semi/auto. The safety is built into the trigger gaurd and is very simple and intuitive to operate. Flick it foreward, you can shoot. Flick it back, no shooting. The body is made out of high quality thick ABS plastic, not wood like the real deal, but nice never the less. The metal has a nice powdery matte finish and is painted well. The one glaring flaw in the gun is the plastic gaurd piece that covers the long outer barrel. It is cheaply made (still hasnt broken after a year, but not high quality) and very shiny. The piece also has a front and back movement and some flex to it. For such an expensive gun ($490 USD) this is unexplainable. The barrel and flash hider are very solid and made of the same quality metal of the reviever.

I finally couldnt wait any more and pulled out my battery to put it in. The battery compartment is protected by a nice metal butt plate that opens up to reveal the butt of the gun. Open a plastic cover and slide the battery in and you are good to go. The battery compartment here is huge, easily fititng a 3300 maAh battery. My 8.4v 1800 maAh fits great, with lots of extra room.

I quickly loaded up the magazine and winded the wheel for the longest time until it finally clicked twice. I walked out to my backyard and took aim at a chopped off whiskey barrel with some flowers in it (I didnt aim for the flowers) and opened fire. WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! The bbs came in a near solid plastic stream. The shot groupings on this gun are some of the best i have ever seen on a stock gun. They go wherever you want them to go. Sadly, when I removed the mag, it had jammed, and, me being the noob I was at the time, freaked out and immediately drove to Airsoft Atlanta, where they promptly fixed the problem with a half second worht of thought and a straightened out coat hanger <_<

This gun is pre upgraded out of the box. The gun comes with a tightbore barrel pre-installed, and a slightly stronger spring that clocks in at around 340 FPS.

SKIRMISH REPORT

I took this gun to Athen's Airsoft for my first skirmish. We started out to the pipe fort where I planned for a long and hard siege. The gun performed excelently. I got several kills and was ordered to the MG position where I got several more. I pinned down two players for several minutes until our sniper could work around them and nail them. They commented on how they were scared to move from behind the box because of the crazy ROF. That just made me smile.
Later in the same day, I decided to conserve ammo for a few rounds and switched to semi. The gun is still very accurate on semi auto, and I scored several more kills in semi auto mode only.

MECHANICAL UPDATE

I have only had one problem with my rifle. Airsoft Atlanta recieved their first batch of them and was ready to put them out on display when the one they tested broke. They tested another one and it broke. They returned the entire batch and recieved the version 2 M14s. I recieved a v2 and had a trigger mechanism break

At a match at Airsoft Dawsonville, during one of the last matches, I noticed that my M14s trigger pull was becomig increasingly difficult. The gun would shoot erratically, then not at all. I field stripped it, and didnt find anything out of the ordinary. The strip helped it for a while, until it started firing and did not stop until I stripped it again. I took the gun to AA and they fixed it for free, getting free parts from G&G and being nice enough to fix it for me without labor charges.

Overall, I give this gun a 9/10, losing a point for the cheap plastic covering the outer barrel.

Pros

-Bolt
-ROF
-Battery compartment
-tightbore
-weight and feel
-big mags

Cons
-cheap plastic outer barrel cover
-not as many accessories/upgrades as the TM version
-earlier versions are mechanicall faulty

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Verse me in the ways of dry British wit and I shall be come L337

Taco1942

Registered: April 2008
Location: SAN ANTONIO TX
Posts: 28

Review Date: 12/10/08

Would you recommend the product? Yes | Price you paid?: None indicated | Rating: 10

Positive aspects of the product (pros):	great ROF, build quality, FPS, multi-role capability
Cons:	the plastic heat shield, weight, not same as TM, upgrades

FIRST IMPRESSION:

The gun came to my front door after school, and there it was, a long box with brown paper taped to it. So, of course, i take it to my room, and rip the brown paper into shreds to find a nicely decorated white box with the pic of the gun on it. I open it to find that a pack of 1000 BBs that came with the gun had broken through the bag and made its way all around the box(no damage to the gun, but completely ruined the styrofoam box).
After picking up all the BBs,(i bought a combo deal that also came with a battery, charger, and BBs, so if u buy it, unless otherwise stated, will only come with the gun and magazine) i took a look at the packaging and was quite impressed: there were three separate pieces of styrofoam the kept the gun in place firmly. I took the three off and picked up my new rifle and wham!!! its heavy(i said wham because my older brother tripped and smacked the gun into my chest). as said in the above review, if u want to skirmish with it, it'll probably be a good idea to use a 3 point sling(i did).

THE GUN:

OK, i didn't buy the fancy walnut or veteran real wood stock because i'm on a budget. So, anyways, the plastic stock isn't all that bad, its very sturdy, it feels so sturdy that it literally feels like u can smack a guy with the stock, and u probably could. the barrel, flash hider, charging handle, butt plate, selector, trigger guard, trigger, safety, magazine release, and the front and rear sights are all metal and saying its metal, its not cheap metal, doesn't break easily, and has a very consistent color on all the parts. the heat shield is very disappointing though, for it is made out of plastic, and it stands out, a lot. but then again, its also very sturdy, and i only paid $260 for it(don't know why the guy above paid $490 for it, there all in the $250-$380 range depending on which type u buy). The charging handle does make a nice M14 CHUCK-CHING sound and there is, unlike the TM ver., a bolt stop for adjusting the hop up with ease. the hop up is very nice, because it adjusts easily by turning the knob left and right and turns very smoothly. the battery compartment is very large as stated before, and can fit my 8.4v large with so much space left over, that when u shake the stock, the battery rattles(might be a bad thing for some). So i shoot a few rounds, and am very impressed with the accuracy and ROF. the gun shoots pretty fast for a sniper, and is very accurate just like any other sniper. My poor man's chrono said its about 350-370FPS on .2g's. The magazine is metal, but is very tricky to put into the gun(this isn't because its an G&G, but the nature of the real gun itself) but is solved with practice. so with that said, i put the gun on my table and start taking it apart, and i was happy to see it field striped like the real steel, by pulling the trigger guard up, then pulling the trigger housing out of the gun(the entire trigger assembly is metal, so no need of it breaking) the entire receiver(that being the gearbox, hop up, and motor) as well as the barrel and heat shield pop off the stock after pulling the trigger housing out. i was surprised at what i saw: a long recoil spring connected to the charging handle just like the real steel, and the gearbox is full metal(don't know about the inside because i don't want to mess with it until the warranty expires). Now, i haven't figured out how to go any further in field stripping, for this is when it starts differing from the real steel. over all, i give this gun a 9/10, because of the heat shield, but thats not a problem for me, because i'm planning to buy a RAS heat shield for my scope.

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-Taco1942