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(1) The hi-cap mag that comes with this m4a1 is great.It matches the body well and is made of very durable metal, but how does it feed? This mag fed better than i expected. There were no misfeeds or hiccups. I wouldn't be surprised if it feeds well with a High Rof setup. |
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(2) Outer barrel can be worked on. It has the same setup as a TM. 2 piece outer barrel so we'll see that infamous barrel wobble soon, but out of the box it felt great. Hopefully its the same take down as a TM. The hand guards feel exactly like Tokyo Marui. So im sure the battery space is limited to a mini 8.4 but you can fit a mini 9.6 but its gonna be a tight fit. |
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(3)Firing the Gun! out of the box its shooting at 340 +/- 4. This gun is a BEAST out of the box and it doesn't sound like a chinese made AEG. This gun actually sounds like a stock TM gun. i can't wait to get into the gearbox and see it is. |
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(4)Upgrades!! We were thinking about doing just a basic upgrade, you know the typical 100 spring and metal bushings, but letsstep it up a lil bit. From my past experience an m120, metal spring guide, and metal bushings on a Tokyo marui gearbox will run for a long time IF the gun is nearly brand new. So here's what im installing: Guarder sp120, Guarder Metal Bushings, and a ball bearing spring guide. These are just simple upgrades you can get for less than 50 if you dont get the ball bearing spring guide. Only reason why i put the ball bearing spring guide is because we didnt have any metal spring guides in stock. |
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(5)The motor looks like a motor. nothing to special about it. Im just worried about how it would handle the m120. We'll find out soon |
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(6) Once Again the outer barrel is a 2 piece design. and it does come off like a TM |
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(7)Hop up unit is just OK. It doesnt' look like a cheap hop up and it actually works as you can see in one of the videos |
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(8)This is your standard retractable stock. made of heavy abs plastic..it wont crack or break on you. |
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(9)The gearboxes, on the left a Stock Classic Army Ver. 2 on the right your Stock Echo1 Ver. 2. As you can see the Echo1 gearbox resembles a TM gearbox down to the metal. From sources that i cannot mention the gearbox is actually stronger than a TM. So we'll see how it does with the sp120 |
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(10)The gearbox taken apart looks like a TM gearbox. The spring seems a lil weak so that leaves me wondering how it can shoot at 330. Good Compression, but it doesn't make sense because the o-ring on the piston and the cyclinder doesn't look that great. Piston looks a lil weak so hopefully it wont strip by the 10 th round using the sp120. The spring guide is the same as the TM, so nothing special there. the switch assembly looks promising and they didn't use cheap wires like Cyma does. I almost forgot about the plastic bushings they would hold up if you keep the gun stock but who wants a stock gun? |
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(11)The gears surprised me the most. This gun comes with CA Standard Ratio Gears, but they're not the new type stronger steel gears. so im guessing these are just left overs. |
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(12) A closer view of the switch assembly and gearbox. As i stated earlier the switch assembly looks promising. Hopefully im right. |
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(13) I closed the gearbox with just the gears to test out how they shimmed the gun. its almost perfect. the gears didnt have that much play. Im confident that these gun will last a long time if you kept it stock, but i gotta see if these are the same for all the guns. hopefully it is. if you closely the gearbox has some small stress cracks where the bushings are, i was concerned when i saw them but when i turned it over to check the other side it was clean as a whistle. I would check carefully though. |
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(14)The cyclinder and cyclinder looks cheap but its doing its job maintaining that compression. It was lacking some grease though so maybe a new o-ring and some good ol' lube will bump up the fps. |
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(15) Stated earlier i think the piston looks a lil cheap, but before ever opening up the gun i fired a good 600 rounds with a 9.6 3300mah battery to see if the gears will hold up under a high rof. There was no sign of wear at all once opened. |
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(16) plastic bushings will be plastic bushings. can't say anything else about them. they will hold up if you keep your gun stock but any other upgrades i recommend changing them |
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(17)Classic Army gears!! theres no cheap pot metal gears in this gun so no need to buy upgraded gears unless you want to go higher than a m120. |
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(18) the stock spring as you can see looks like a stock tokyo marui. i didnt have a stock tokyo marui spring to compare it with but i did compare it with a stock classic army spring. for some reason the Echo1 spring felt weaker than the CA, which made me wonder why the gun was shooting so high. |
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(19 Testing out the gearbox naked to make sure the motor is strong enough to pull the spring. At first it sounded awkward but it was just the motor height.after the motor was adjusted it was shooting great. |
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(20) Test fired the gun with KSC .20 perfect bbs. first shot was out of this world 479!..after a couple more shots it toned down to 450 +/- 5. Dont forget this is a sp120 spring, bushings, and a spring guide! |
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(21) 450 +/-5..i was amazed what the chrono read. i didnt think it would be shooting that hot on a sp120 spring. i've seen these kind of results before but with more expensive guns. |
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(22) just shoot to check out the rof with the 8.4v battery..very very slow but the battery and motor is holding up! |
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(23) testing the hop up was a blast..hop up was precise and accurate. i think i may improve the accuracy with a tightbore but we'll do that later. |
| Final words I was very skeptical about these guns at first. The company was stating that its comparable to Tokyo Marui but i've heard it before and there was nothing comparable to Tokyo Marui, but for some reason this gun changed my mind. For less than 150 USD its the best bang for the buck for the serious airsofter that needs a spare gun or a clean slate for your monster upgrades. I will be testing out the gearbox and abuse it during the next few weeks and i will update this review. For now grab an echo1 and try them out. I'm sure it'll be as good as any high end AEG out on the market today. Arlo 1stprotocol Technician |
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