P210-6 8mm Heavyweight - ArniesAirsoft

Author

PenGun

Registered: October 2004
Location: Dublin
Posts: 549

Review Date: 5/1/09

Would you recommend the product? Yes | Price you paid?: None indicated | Rating: 9

Positive aspects of the product (pros):	Powerful, accurate, rare!
Cons:	Light, delicate sights, need to upgrade barrel from LD-2

The SIG P210 is a lot like the Rolls Royce of handguns...its expensive, well made, exclusive and just a little impractical.
Marushin are the only airsoft manufacturer to make a P210 and as it is practically the stuff of legend in the real-steel world I had to have one.
I had ordered a Heavyweight version from TMC but I am pretty sure the version I got in the post was the standard version.
Marushin seem to define Heavyweight as "sufficiently heavy not to blow away in a soft breeze" so you can imagine how light the P210 is...
The real version is made from stainless steel and weighs quite a bit for a 9mm single stack handgun.
The Marushin gun has metal chrome-style trigger, hammer and slide stop, with the other external metal parts limited to the magazine and catch.

The P210 is probably the most accurate out-of-the-box production handgun in the world.
The originals were military-issue pistols yet they often shoot like match guns. The latest production versions cost several thousand dollars for even the most basic gun, with Heavy Frame and Stainless versions leaving you with little change from $5000.

One of the reasons for this legendary accuracy (and cost) is the reversed slide rail arrangement whereby a narrower slide is held inside a wider frame, thus reducing frame flex and improving lockup consistency, thus accuracy. Nearly every other handgun use the much cheaper slide-over-frame-rail system which allows more play bteween the two and hence reduces accuracy.
Thus the P210 is incredibly slim...there is barely enough metal to hold the 9mm barrel and recoil spring guide!
The much cheaper CZ-75 also uses this system along with the Sphinx series of CZ-clones and others like Tanfoglio, and all are more accurate when compared pistols with the usual Browning-style lockup.

The single stack magazine hold 8 rounds of 8mm BBs and makes the P210 very easy to hold and aim very naturally.
One thing to note is the heel-of-butt magazine release, like the Walther P-38.
I actually don't mind this at all but many Americans hate this configuration as it allegedly slows down reloads (which they wouldn't need to do so often if they AIMED Wink

)
I have found that you can extract a magazine pretty quickly despite the catch and on the plus side it prevents lost magazines due to bumping an over-sensitive 1911-style mag catch.

Like several of Marushins GBBs the gun has the dreaded LD-2 hopup system which adds a second useless hop chamber about 3/4 of the way down the barrel.
I replaced this almost immediately with a KM 8.04mm tighbore barrel which resulted in mostly single hole groupings from the gun.

The sights of the "target" style post and U-notch but are actually easy enough to use quickly as they are large and clear, much clearer than original 1911 style sights.
They are quite spindly though so some care should be taken not to knock them off the gun if skirmishing.
The gun is VERY accurate and power is also good, but the 8mm chambering and low capacity mean it is not a workhorse gun like the Glock.
In fairness, you wouldn't drink six cans of fine wine, would you?

Blowback is quite loud and certain but it doesnt kick all that much due to the light weight of the slide and barrel. It just seems more noticeable in such a light gun.
The trigger is ok but can be adjusted for overtravel by removing the slide and using a hex key. Creep can be reduced by gluing a small piece of plastic or metal (1mm aluminium etc.) to the front of the trigger lever.
This gives the P210 a match-style trigger with a light pull and short reset...as it should have!!!
This modification will prevent the safety from activating so be careful!

In true gun-snob fashion, I ordered a set of Nill Walnut "Swiss-Cross" grips for my P210 that cost more than the gun itself, but they are a huge improvement on the Marushin stock grips, although you do lose a lot of weight from an already light gun.

There are some good upgrades available for the P210, although the Prime kits for $450 are pricey for an 8-shot 8mm gun. Creation also do a metal kit for about half of this price.
However for the collector, the KM barrel upgrade is enough to make the P210 an interesting, accurate and rare piece to own.

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"I am the Great Gun-Hoolio...!!!"