"Getting back into the game after several years of hiatus, and I heard good things about LCT, so take this review as someone who hasn't played in a long while, with a fresh start, and rusty knowledge.
The gun is built extremely well. It's weighty and feels good on the hand, the wood is good quality, but be careful it does scratch rather easily. The -entire- gun is steel, stamped, milled, CNCed and welded. The gun comes with a orange tip from factory but the box includes a proper flash hider and it's an easy swap.
The trigger response is adequate, the safety lever is stiff at first but does get slightly better with use. The steel is actually not easy to scratch, so don't worry about banging it much, and it won't dent or bend easily so if you drop it, it isn't the end of the world.
The folding stock comes detached from the gun, it's an easy hex screw attachment on the rear of the gun, 30 second job, it's VERY sturdy, locks nicely on the side, and feels great on the shoulder, and because it folds to the right side of the gun, it's good for Lefties, like me ( however, it does get in the way of the safety lever, so be mindful )
Now a few categories.
Performance:
The gun shoots 420fps with 0.20s for me, with a variation of -3fps. Fantastic, solid predictable response, but it shoots really hot off the box, so that might be a problem to some.
The hop up unit on mine was fantastic, easy predictable hot with excellent grouping.
Internals:
It comes stock with a 6.02mm tight bore barrel ( ALL LCT Aks come with said tight bore barrel, I double checked with LCT and Evike, so keep that in mind if you want to buy another model )
The hopup unit is plastic, but sturdy, with a good seal
The motor and cabling is decent, the rate of fire is medium and feels realistic by not being crazy high ( I prefer it this way )
The v3 gearbox is built like a tank. All CNCed aluminum, the shimming is quite good, great gears, good ball bearings, nice aluminum piston head and aluminum piston cover.
The piston is red poly-carbonate with full metal teeth, felt very sturdy.
All the gears, reverse stopper, gearbox shell had the LCT branding engraved on it, very good stuff.
The compression was remarkable for a stock gun right out of the bat.
The spring in it is POSSIBLY a M115 or M120. I dropped a M105 in it and the FPS dropped by 20fps with 0.20s to around 400fps, while .25s and 0.30s were at around 380fps and 360fps respectively, with the hopup set correctly ( AKA not turned off, and not crammed to max ).
This is probably still too hot for most places, and I'd recommend a M95 to be safe if you want to CQC with it, or do any Milsims where the speed is kept to under 1.6 Joules on 0.30s
A few tips if you plan on disassembling this gun:
the upper hand guard lever that keeps in in place is VERY. STIFF. you'll have to put quite some force on it, it won't break, just push hard down on the upper hand guard and lift it up clockwise.
The end of the cleaning rod is screwed on, simply unscrew it if you want to take the rod out ( not necessary for disassembly )
You will need to remove the folding stock if you plan on taking the gearbox out, do that first always.
You'll need to take the iron sights off to release the two small hex screws holding the barrel in place, from above.
To release the gearbox, remove the hand grip, release the hopup unit and barrel form the gearbox by doing above steps, and unscrew the safety lever. The CAP of the safety lever, that on most other guns is just a cap for a screw underneath, IS THE ACTUAL SCREW, so DON'T try to yank it off, just use large pliers to grip and unscrew it. Once that's done, just lift the gearbox and motor out top.
To finalize:
I love this gun, I really do. Out of the box it's already a almost completely upgraded platform that can take quite a beating, with beefy internals, a tight bore, good hopup ( in my case ), feels sturdy like a real AK, and shoots amazing.
For $330 it's a STEAL for what you get right out of the box, where you practically don't have to spend more money upgrading almost anything in it, aside form the hopup unit if yours isn't to your liking, which isn't all that bad at all money wise.
Seriously, LCT knows what they're doing, and I'd recommend this, and any of their other AK series, to anyone and everyone. You WILL get your money's worth and this gun will last longer than you.