"So at one point I'm sure I had the plurality of these in North America; I special ordered 3 from a Japanese seller about a week after they were released in Asia back in February of 22'. I'm a longtime ICS fan boy and I just had a really good feeling about this rifle from the press releases and descriptions and my experience with ICS keep moving the ball forward in quality and features.
This rifle delivered. So we'll so that I ordered a second one for myself from Evike after the first batch made it to the states(the other ones from Japan were ordered for friends).
First off, it's the best made AR15 patern airsoft AEG I've ever bought. It's built like a tank. The upper and lower recievers are clearly billit aluminum. Compared to my real steel AR15 recievers (AERO) the quality is striking. They weight about the same stripped, have a similar appearance. On thing that immediately struck me is that someone on ICSs design team looked into or is themselves into recreational civilian shooting as the exterior is designed to mimic the needs of a modern sports shooter for 3 guns or brutality events and less just another combat M4. What do I mean? Little touches like no forward assist(which gives ICS has historically used the FA as a spring decompression that says something). The FA is useless on real firearms and most sports shooters are opting to use uppers with them not present, both my Aero M5 and AR15 lack one. Having a lower canted grip angle, while functional for AEGs as well, is also increasingly common among sports shooters. Scalloped out major sections of the top rail also is more or a sport shooter thing(rarely does one mount something forward of the end of the upper reciever on the top rail other than a forward BUIS). These touches are fantastic.
The build in of itself is very good. Solid as a rock. Little to no play between the upper and lower. The rail is as good as my ATLAS ONE on my Aero. I have no complaints from exterior. The stock is the best AR15 airsoft stock I've seen as it has more than enough room in its heel to hold even a large brick 11.1v lipo with ease. It's comfortable to hold and shoot and looks sleek.
Internally this thing is a monster. The Master Mods internals can, stock, stand up against Lonex, systema, or any major brand upgrade parts. Compression is absolute, not one cc of air leaks out. I actually did a bubble test under water and couldn't get any air to escape. Cylinder head is a double o ring, one piece milled head. Piston is full metal teeth with a fantastic vented head. And a metal air nozzle with an o ring makes sure you lose nothing. The Master Mods barrel and hopup are great. I did sub them out with an angel custom and MAXX MI Pro hop up only because I'm too lazy to make my own r hop patches and I can't find a pre-made one for ICS cut barrels. That said stock testing was as follows:
With 0.28 g Matrix BBs, totally stock:
410 fps with a plus or minus 3 fps (abnormally consistent for a stock AEG).
185 foot range stock comfortably on a shoulder width target (i.e. every shoot hits) 205 foot stock range with proper hop and acceptable deviation of 1 in 5 shots missing. Range is measured using a completion golf range finder so that is not a hypothetical or guessed range. It's exact.
Let me be clear: no stock AEG shoots that far. I have an Arturus AK12, a Novritch P90, all manner of G&G guns: this is the best stock AEG I've ever touched period. I compares favorably to my highly upgraded guns.
The configuration I use it in primarily has stock compression and Lonex Red Piston (to disable the EBB without having to dremmel the stock piston) thr aforementioned angel custom barrel and MAXX hopup, modify bucking and nub and a r hop patch courtousy of Elvish Tac. I downgraded the spring to a systema M110 to drop the fps to 375, to comply with field rules, which in total produces a verified range of 250 feet comfortable, 265 with some misses, and Max range of suppression of 275 feet. Very impressive.
Bottom box is also very well done. The gears are solid, high torque variety. My only concern in the whole gun is the motor. It's a just a dinky Evo 1. And the load of the system (especially with the stock 400 fps spring) causes it to heat rapidly. My buddy had me test a brushless motor in his and that completely removed the issue and would be recommended or at least any upgraded motor as this one likely won't cut it long term.
The other electronics are also great. Deans stock. It has both a MOS and an ETU pre installed. The mosfet basically is just used for voltage protection. The ETU is programmable. By default it has a safe-semi-burst/auto setup along with precocking on semi. Precocking takes 5 shots to engage (so the sixth shot is precocked). This can be visually confirmed when the EBB is enabled and the fake bolt on the 6th shot remains to the rear. The auto setting has a light pull 3 round burst and a full pull auto. There is no break between the two stages and actually requires a very light touch to use the 3 round burst on the default settings, so no worries with it interfering with auto fire. You can quickly program through 3 round burst to be a full pull on either the auto or semi setting, disabling that setting. Reprogramming takes a few seconds and utilizes lights and vibrations as opposed to beeps. It does require shotgunning the upper but as with ALL ICS guns, that's no worse than on a real steel.
The trigger is abnormally crisp and light, feeling like a well tuned match trigger on a real rifle. Even with the stock motor the wine is light and quick.
Do yourself a favor and try to source a secondary upper box for this as you'll Wana take full advantage of being able to switch between indoor and outdoor. That being said, be prepared to buy some aftermarket compression parts as I am yet to see sold an upper box sold with the Master Mods parts pre installed. I opted got Lonex POM kit parts with a Master Mods nozzle with a lonex red piston for my indoor kit with an M100. With my r hopped barrel that gets me below 350 almost exactly and enables the same gun to be used everywhere. Range with that configuration is still a cool 225 feet btw.
Overall this is the best AEG I've ever touched and fully qualifies as a true factory pre upgrade. I cannot recommend it enough and functions as a great parallel training weapon to a real competition style AR15. My only negative is the motor and they've made swapping them even easier than the Marui style. I will be using this as my primary match rifle for a long time to come and has plenty of room to grow into and the ICS gearbox design makes maintenence and modification a breeze.
"This is my first airsoft gun so take this review for what it's worth. I've had it for two days and have fired a few hundred shots and figured out some of the features. I didn't shoot groups because I heard everything needed to break in, so "straight" is based on my subjective determination shooting leaves, bushes and posts after I adjusted the hop.
You have to find instruction manuals online. There is a manual for the gun and the SSS trigger and the diagnostic process is confusing, I found separate procedures online that seemed to work. Both are a pain so I'll describe what I learned below:
The SSS version is compatible with 7.4V and 11.1 LIPO batteries. It is difficult to cite my sources, but I think the SSS manual says 7.4V and 11.1V is ok and I read somewhere that below 360FPS they recommended the 7.4V and changing to the 20A fuse (Three were provided, all 25A), above that I guess is the 11.1V and 25A fuse. I think it ran fine with 7.4V with both springs. My indoor range is limited to 330 FPS with 0.20g BB's so I bought a 7.4V - 3000mA 15C stick battery and it fits ok in the stock tube. It may bend the wires when collapsed all the way.
You can figure this out if something goes wrong, but I'm an engineer and the diagnostic process seems to be:
1. Unplug battery
2. Put on semi, pull and hold trigger, and plug in battery.
3. When it blinks orange release trigger and it should turn green indicating trigger is good, then solid orange for next test.
4. Switch the selector switch through all the settings until the light turns green, indicating that works. Then it will turn solid orange and move the gears.
5. The gears will move three times and I think the light turns to green when everything is good. Who knows, the instructions are terrible.
6. Make sure you move the gears to the position shown in the manual before reassembling the gun.
When reassembling the upper, make sure the sector gear has the smooth, toothless side, up otherwise you may screw up your gun. You don't have to be too picky, the gun will learn the position of the gears after five shots and automatically pre-cock the piston, which is pretty cool. You'll know it did this because it cycles snappier.
I cleaned the barrel with silicon oil, then pushed a couple dry paper towels through. Do what you want, I like Negative Airsoft's recommendations and I think rubber needs love to keep rubbery. With the stock spring and 0.20g Matrix Bio BB's it shot very straight, much better than I expected. I was expecting to be disappointed by airsoft accuracy, but it looked useable to me at ranges where the trajectory was flat. The hop up adjusts smoothly, but does not have detents. My opinion is that is not a problem, it seems tight enough that it won't shift, but I'm going to mark my settings for each BB/ spring combo I use. Once I got the hop adjusted (I erred on the side of too little because I have a theory too much hop causes more fliers than too little, but I could be wrong) it shot fine, fliers every now and again, but didn't seem like I'd miss at airsoft ranges because of the gun. Wind is a different story obviously.
I changed the spring to M90 which should be below the indoor range limit. It is super easy, insert a 4mm allen wrench, push in, twist 45 degrees and it comes out. Put new spring in and good to go. Rear receiver pin is tight, I use a light hammer and brass punch to tap it gently) The range is obviously not as good, but it shot pretty straight. Just a little hop and that was about as good as it got. Seemed perfectly fine to me, I could consistently hit targets at multiple ranges out to an estimated 25 yards, or whatever distance the magnus effect wears off. Small leaves took a shot or two mostly because I don't know my height over bore and zero yet. I just kind of eyeball centered the red dot and called it good. I don't think I'm going to miss at short indoor ranges because of the gun. It does "recoil" slightly to the left after each shot, which made my shots seem like they shot right.
Full auto is fun and seems pretty accurate. The few reviews I found on similar internals indicate that the components are good materials and have a good seal. I haven't tested it, but the BB's seemed to follow the same path closely so everything is probably ok.
Disconnecting the battery resets the gun so that semi shoots semi and full auto (Smart trigger) shoots burst with a light touch and full auto if you hold it. If you place it on semi and hold the trigger for a few seconds it will change it so full auto just shoots full auto. Not really worth the hassle in my opinion, smart trigger works fine so far. I doubt I'll get to use full auto much anyway.
Grip is pretty good, feels like a BCM gunfighter with the beaver tail.
Neither of the ICS magazines I used drop free, but they did feed reliably until the last ten rounds or so. I think this is normal, but try other mags if you have them or care. I'd prefer drop free, but I do tactical reloads instead of running out of ammo mostly anyway and I've got 120 rounds instead of the 30 I'm used to lol.
The electronic blowback is dumb and pointless. I'm eventually going to disable it by grinding the nub off the piston. As far as I can tell, all it does is scratch the outside of the gearbox which is annoying. I shot a few hundred rounds and my battery barely lost any charge. I bet a 1400mA would work fine, but I don't have the experience to know. The EBB doesn't seem to drain batteries like some reviewers said about different guns with that gimmick.
Flip up sights are cheesy, but probably work fine.
Real m-lock components work with the rail just fine.
The ERGO stock is fine, but is probably an inch longer than most mil-spec stocks. I wish it had a QD in the middle on the right side, but the loop worked alright when I tried different ready positions with a two point sling.
The sling mounts on the lower dig into my fat, tender belly. They may snag on gear. It looks like it's easy to remove without messing anything up, but I haven't tried yet.
Safety is ambi, works fairly well, it's not super clean and it is a little too short. I like giant mil-spec safeties because I'm on safe except when firing, but I can get used to this one.
The blaster muzzle device is weird. The "flash hider" underneath has threads so the blaster is probably a thread protector.
The barrel is aluminum and looked like it was in ok condition. Not a mirror finish, but not rough either. I think it shot well.
My friend keeps telling me I need all the cool kids upgrades, but I don't really see a need yet. I don't see any weird wear on the gears or piston teeth and there's just a little movement side to side in the gears, so shimming is probably ok. It shoots as fast as my finger does without noticeable "lock time." I watched a ton of airsoft game videos and my BB's seem to be doing the same as some pretty nice guns so I'm probably good for a while. I will try 0.25's and 0.30's next to see how those work.
Hope this review is helpful. I recommend the gun if you saved your money and just want a gun that works well and don't want to build your own. It's especially cool if you need to change the springs. I can't vouch for the durability or reliability yet.
(626) 286-0360
Airsoft
Fishing
Air Gun
