M4-12" MRF-CX - ArniesAirsoft

Author

cazboab

The Arbiter of Conversation

Registered: September 2004
Location: Linwood
Posts: 4,007

Review Date: 4/10/08

Would you recommend the product? Yes | Price you paid?: None indicated | Rating: 7

Positive aspects of the product (pros):	looks good, fancy rails, shoots pretty good stock.
Cons:	shoots too hot for most sites in UK, some parts could be made a bit smoother.

So Deepfire make lots of shiny(actually they're sort of more matt with a bit of shimmer) titanium bits for AEGs, and they decided to shove all them inside an M4, this here is the result.

What do you get:
In the box you'll find a hicap, the gun a cleaning rod, a spare deans connector should you need to change the end on a battery and a nicely embossed and cleanly printed though almost completely useless manual.

How the gun looks:
The black parts are all a very nice finish, with the lower receiver to my eye being slightly less matt, the only exception being the locking ring on the stock which is quite shiny, and at fist I actually thought it was plastic. The pistol grip is a copy of the tango down battlegrip, the rails are a copy of the Troy MRF-CX, and the read flip sight is a troy battle sight. The end result being a rifle that I'd either describe as very high-end looking rifle, or a "guvvamint space gun". The grey colour of the selector, dust cover and mag catch will probably come down to personal taste, but I think its quite nice to have that little bit of a contrast, the smallest, but to me one of the most important (I even took a picture of it on its own) features looks wise is the medieval flash hider, which just looks mean. Smile

There are some trades on the gun and rail system, but they're not complete, the receiver is marked partially as a sabre defence lower while the rails and rear sight are marked pretty much the same as the troy product, but without the words "troy industries".

How the gun feels:
The grip, stock and rail covers are made of plastic that aparently comes from Germany and is textured quite nicely to aid grip, however, the stock does wobble quite badly, and without a battery to hold the twist covers in place they will rattle a lot, the bolt release will also rattle a fair bit. The mag catch feels quite gritty and some mags-even the hicap supplied- need a good solid thrust to seat them-star 30 rounds won't even go in the magwell-, once a mag is in it won't wobble at all, and I can hold the gun upside down by the magazine should I so wish. Pulling the charging handle feels very gritty, and the bolt will jam open when you let go(picture of jammed bolt)this might be deliberate on deepfire's part as it helps set the hop, but it feels cheap and is only done by the fake bolt rubbing on the ribbed cylinder. The forward assist is immobile and the fire select, though loose at first snaps nicely into all three positions once its tightened up.

How the gun shoots:
The hicap is functional, but a bit basic and the trap door on top won't lock open like most others.
Out of the box this one checked in at 380-390 fps with Xtream .2g bbs at 750 rounds a minute on 8.4v, it feeds fine from any magazine I have that fits, particularly the G&P tracer mags and VN mids which don't run too well in other M4s I've tried them in. After burning off a couple of hicaps in long bursts the motor was starting to get a bit warm, but it did cut a medium pizza box in half in a few seconds.

Other points:
After playing about for a few hours the selector lever became very loose, and since I had to drop the fps down before I can use it in a skirmish, I decided to take it down and fix both at once. First problem here was the screws used on the grip were hex heads, one of then pretty much dissolved under the pressure of the allen key, so I replaced them both with flat heads for now, next thing I notice taking the gun apart is that the selector plate looks slightly too small to fit the rails and doesn't always make a good connection, easily fixed by bending the contacts bellow up slightly, the selector switch was just a lose screw, and after swapping out the spring the gun gives 340 fps quite consistently.

After removing the rail covers I noticed a silver stud on the lower rail, which when pushed in and the large hex heads on the sides are loosened allows the lower rail to slide off to fit a barrel mounted M203.

By far the biggest gripe I have with this gun is the manual, it looks nice, but there's not much information in it, in fact it doesn't even tell you how to put the battery in. Its printed on really good paper and even embossed on the front, so the fact that its utterly pointless is a bit of a let down.

overall:
Really this is a nice gun, but its got a couple flaws, if deepfire tighten up your selector switch right and you can play with a nearly 400fps rifle in your locale you might never find out about them.

Its difficult to quantify whether or not I'd recommend the gun as a straight yes or no,- if someone's asking about what gun to spend $400 on ,on the one hand it looks really nice and shoots great, but on the other the little niggles detract from it a bit, though if you're thinking of buying one or you want a solid M4 that looks a little bit more different well then you can probably overlook the flaws or fix them in the space of a half hour.

Ultimately I'd say, yeah its a decent enough gun when compared to the other ones in its price range, and the internals should take much more abuse than those, and by the time you're investing in a $400 AEG you probably shouldn't need a manual to tell
you were the battery goes. :D

EDIT: after finally getting out to a skirmish, I found there's one huge problem with this, the hop is quite dire, given that I dropped the fps down I wasn't gonna be too harsh about the range, but for a 340 fps gun to have the piss-poor range this thing has something ain't right, and in this case its the hop nub, one my example it was very very soft, so soft it was squashing rather than imparting downward force on the sleeve, which has a rather odd three pronged arrangement in place of the regular one sideways lump. I'll test the sleeve out with a stiffer bucking some point in the next few weeks, but as it was the gun was rather disappointing given how good it looks.

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