A. Hong
Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2012
I'll note the pros first. Overall, the plastic body of the shotgun feels firm and relatively durable. Doesn't feel like the cheap plastic toy guns. You still don't want to abuse it nor drop it, but it definitely has a nice feel and non-reflective paint to make it look combat worthy.The included shell holder on the stock is a nice touch, and fairly decent quality. Pump action is nice, and relatively realistic for this gun. Keep in mind the pump doesn't automatically move back into place. You have to pump it back, then manually push it forward until it clicks back into position before the bb is properly loaded, or it won't shoot. Overall, shoots very nicely when it all works.The rails are a nice touch and you can place your own scope, laser sight, etc. for more accuracy, since there are no front sights on this thing. It also comes with a cheap sling. Nothing to write home about, but it does the trick. The top rail, for the scope, can be removed if you just want a basic shotgun look.But because there are no front sights to this, you may want to consider some sort of sight add-on if you want to take this gun seriously. The included bbs are 0.12g and pretty worthless. Ok to play around with, but not if you want accuracy. I would suggest to use 0.20g bbs for more accuracy. Even with 0.20g I would say you can still get at around 250fps to almost 300fps+/- out of this. ( I did not chrono this, but just made an estimated comparison to my 150fps, 300fps and 400fps airsoft weapons). I have also tried this with 0.25g bbs, and the speed is still noticeable, with a much harder punch. I have not tested overall effective range, but no problems at 25-40 ft, and still fairly accurate (using .2g or .25g). And to clarify, this is single shot, not triple shot.The Cons, and these are the reason I suggest not getting this.The shells do not actually hold 14 bbs, as advertised. I'm not new to airsoft and I know how to properly load mags with a speed loader. However, after you load like 6-8 bbs, you'll start feeling a lot of resistance when trying to load more. Just for testing I pushed in (the advertised) 12-14bbs per shell. ALL 4 shells ended up having the spring mechanism dislodged and nonfunctional. If you end up buying this (or something similar) and come to this issue, it can be fixed.::To fix the spring mechanism in the shell:: (scroll down pass this for the remainder of the review, if you don't have this issue)First, pull the tab down, at the top of the shell where the bbs load. This is just to pour out the remainder of the bbs. Next, look at the bottom of the shell for where the bottom cap meets the red shell. You will find there is a very tiny pin holding those parts together. Simply take a tiny pin/needle/hex wrench/strong toothpick and push into it. You may have to test both sides as one side will slip out, and the other won't (because one end of the pin's head is thicker).As you're pushing the pin out, make sure to hold the bottom in place, as the spring can pop it right out once the pin is removed. With the pin removed, slowly remove the bottom off and you will discover the simple spring mechanism, which is just a really long, thin spring with a nub at the end. All you need to do is just feed the nub back to the top of the cap, and push the spring back in and let it wrap to the other half of the inside of the shell. This will be more clear once you see the inside of the shell. After that, just push the bottom back in and push the pin back in. Your shell is now fixed. If this instruction still isn't very clear, you can reply to this comment and I'll see if I can add some pics.:: End Shell Fix::Back to the rest of the review. So aside from the shell issue, I found the door to keep the shell in place, is very flimsy and not always easy to clip in. Definitely a cheaper plastic than the rest of the gun. Once you load the shell in, sometimes you have to push a bit harder to make sure the door closes all the way. Because of this, it's not very effective if you're attempting to speed load, and the door's clip feels like it could snap off if you're not careful.For the most part, the gun works well when it shoots bbs. Sometimes I would get blank shots, but if I pumped it again once or twice more, it would resume firing. I don't know if this is an issue with the gun or the shell's spring mechanism. And I've made sure to fully pump it.Almost forgot to mention the hop up. This does come with a hop-up adjustment slider that is located right above the cartridge area. The bad thing is the slider is a composed of very cheap plastic that has very little friction and there is no means to snap the slider in place if you want the adjustment to be in the middle. If you push the slider all the way forward or back there is a little more friction to hold in place, but not by too much. But if you find you prefer the hopup slider to be centered, then short of taping it there or super gluing it, you can expect the slider to move around during play. If left there, very sudden movements can end up sliding the slider. A very light brush against someone, or yourself (particularly when reloading) will move the slider. So basically don't expect the slider to remain in its position at all times during play. Maybe other guns could have been assembled better, but mine definitely has a questionable hopup slider.An interesting thing with my package, and I don't know if this is the case for all packages, but mine did come with a flash light and red dot scope. The description mentions it does not come with this but mine did. However, the quality of those two items are so cheap that you might as well consider them not being included because they are rather useless, unless you just want to attach them for the look.The flash light is super cheap plastic with cheap led. It works, but it's a very weak and diffused light. Nothing like a nice focused led light should be. And the on/off switch to the light wasn't attached properly so the back part just falls right off. Can be fixed with superglue. Obviously, what do you expect for a cheap freebie. The red dot sight actually does produce a red dot on the lens, however the entire thing is constructed of plastic. There is an on/off switch to the sight, but there are no sight adjustments so you cannot zero in the dot. As is, it is completely useless so just consider them as toss-out items unless you/your kid just wants to put it on for looks.Both the red-dot sight and flash light requires 3 small batteries, which it sorta comes with. I say sorta because mine came with 5 batteries instead of 6. It almost seems like someone forgot to package the 6th one.So with all the dissatisfaction I got from this gun I wanted to return it. However, as this is an outside seller, even if the product was considered defective (because the shells did not work as advertised) you still have to pay for return postage. For me, it would cost around another $10 to ship. At that point, I just decided to keep it, since I really won't get much back from all this. At least the gun is alright for the most part, and considering the shell holder can be worth around $5 - $8 on the cheap end, and the speed loader is usually around $4 (including shipping at amazon) it's not too bad of a combo. Once I add an actual, usable scope and get better quality 30 round shells, this gun could be an ok backup in an indoor airsoft field.Now some of you may be saying, What did you expect for a $30 airsoft gun? Well, actually it's about $40 with shipping and tax. If we look at what's available for around $40 at other airsoft stores, there are much better quality shotguns. I thought I'd give this a try since I had some Amazon credit, and another review (outside of Amazon) gave it decent marks (which I now question).Especially with the holiday deals and lower pricing of airsoft shotguns at other online airsoft stores like airsoftmegastore.com (not affiliated), there are better reviewed shotguns at the $35 - $50 range (single shot and triple shot). And at some of those stores, you get free shipping when you spend a certain amount. So that's just something to consider if you're in the market for a somewhat serious airsoft CQB weapon, and you were going to get other things like bbs/accessories you could add up to qualify for the free shipping. I'm going there to grab a DE M3 Multi-shot (triple burst) full stock shotgun for around $50.So overall, this gun is not something I would suggest to intermediate players, and pro players will probably stay away from this to begin with. But on an intermediate level, adding a cheap, but reliable scope/sight and getting higher capacity shells while using 0.20g or 0.25g bbs, this gun can be an ok backup and/or medium range sniper rifle.As for beginners, I would still suggest looking at other options within the $35 - $50 range at other online stores first. Because even though some of the accessories look tempting, in this bundled price point, you will end up probably spending a little more on mods and shells to make it work better, or on par to other guns. But if you're like me and have some Amazon credit, and really wanted to try a single shot airsoft shotgun for CQB considerations, then this is ok as long as you understand the drawbacks.UPDATE: I mounted a good quality red dot sight just to test it out and it was very accurate. Was hitting 10s on a target with the shots clumped closely together, at around 20ft, using .20g bbs. I'll update again when I have a chance to test this out at farther distances (weather's been bad).UPDATE 2: It's been over a month now with very minimal use, and even with just that the pump action is no longer functioning correctly. It will pump to load the bb and cock the spring, but the pump handle will no longer lock into place after it's pumped. It just easily slides around. It still shoots fine, but this issue is annoying and displays cheap quality. Further reason to avoid this and spend a little extra for a higher quality shotgun.