Cybergun Colt Licensed XM177E1 Airsoft AEG Rifle by G&P

"Picked one of these up recently, for nostalgic reasons, and also the low price point. I've owned the G&P M177 before, (or just CAR15 as we called them when I was in the Army...I know, I'm old as dirt.) and there are some key differences between older models and this 'Cybergun' version. The full metal and nicely trademarked receiver is a little grayer in color than previous models, which were slightly more black. A subtle difference and it's still a nice shade, but the 'blacker' color was more authentic. Previous models included a true steel copy of the long flash hider that the M177's were fitted with; this one did not come with a metal flash hider of any kind, only the orange plastic one. Be aware the metal one in the pictures is not included. The stock and handguards are ABS plastic, not polymer as with previous models. Really, G&P? I guess this is how the low price point is achieved, as ABS is much cheaper to produce. Still surprised though. The provided metal mid cap simply does not fit in the magwell. Well technically it does, but I don't appreciate having to put my knee on my rifle to get the mag out. Otherwise it's a G&P and after a bit of careful hand weathering, has that satisfying G&P, full metal, retro rifle glow and realism, and the price is very attractive. I look forward to re-building everything in the internals and making it another field worthy addition to the collection. I'd give this guy a 7 out of 10 stars.

"The gun shoots great, the mag it came with hardly fits and I had to use a bench grinder on it to get it to fit. About 25 rps with an 11.1v lipo. The trigger response is decent but not the best but the full auto makes up for it. Very accurate with. 25 and .20s out to about 50 yards

"Follow up to last review for an evaluation of the internals, now that I've actually shot the gun. I knew the i5 gearbox has gotten mixed reviews, but I was still surprised at what I experienced after...oh, maybe 20-30 rounds. I plugged in a small 1000mah, 11.1v lipo that fit in the buffer tube nicely. Gun was quite snappy and shooting about 1.3 joules out of the box. I had to replace the bucking and nub since the factory one was badly installed, so I upgraded to a Modify flat hop, soft. Great results, and that snappy trigger...nice. Next morning, pulled the trigger...nothing. Hmmm. Put in a new battery and it fired right up. First lipo battery was drained flat, wouldn't take a charge. Played with it a bit more, chronoed consistently, snappy trigger, good accuracy...yada, yada. Next morning, second dead lipo. Drained flat, no resuscitation. That's 2 brand new lipos, KIA. Wires are all good and what we have here is a confirmation of the problems with the i5 gearbox electronic trigger board: it fails and/or drains batteries. I'm hoping this will be taken care of by Evike. I love the gun and want to keep it, but it needs a traditional gearbox like G&P's trusty former 8mm gearbox, my go-to standard. It's disappointing because the XM177 is such a hard platform to find in a truly well rendered copy of the real steel, and this one has a problematic gearbox.

"tl;dr: If you want a great gun out of the box, get the CYMA/EMG version. If you want a great upgrade platform with top-notch build quality, get this.

I'm a big fan of retro ARs with carry handles, so I was really excited to see G&P bringing back these colt-licensed rifles. In addition to this rifle, I have a G&P M16A2, a G&P/PTS N23, and a CYMA/EMG XM177, so I feel like I have a good basis for comparison.

To put it bluntly, G&P makes solid feeling rifles with some of the best externals, but absolutely trash internals with shoddy QC. In my opinion, this rifle is not very skirmishable out of the box for the following reasons.
* Hop up rubber was misaligned out of the box, causing bbs to hook left.
* Gun is wired for a small buffer tube battery, but G&P uses a ferrite low torque/high speed motor with extremely high amp draw. So you won't get too many shots on your battery. But the biggest problem is that the high amp draw stresses the small buffer tube batteries, causing them to overheat and die an early death. The solution would be to add a higher torque, neo magnet, motor. However, in order to do this you need to solder on new motor connectors since G&P uses their own proprietary connectors.
* Shimming is bad out of the box. The CYMA/EMG version was shimmed extremely well and was much smoother.
* The G&P i5 MOSFET is known to be unreliable and prone to failure.

I knew what I was getting into when buying this gun. I plan on gutting the internals and replacing them the a custom-built gearbox like I have done with all my other G&P rifles. But if you are a newer player looking at getting this rifle, I would steer clear.

If G&P wants to make a better gun, here's what they should do at a minimum:
* Ditch the i5 gearbox and use the old style G&P gearbox. If possible, add a small inline mosfet or partner with GATE for something like an ASTER.
* Ditch the awful M140 ferrite motor for a neo-magnet motor. Something 16-22 tpa.
* Hire people that know how to shim a gearbox. Seriously, the cheap chinese brands do a better job.

"I got this XM177E1 when I bought a G&P Model 733 because someone had mixed up the boxes, which is pretty unfortunate as the 733 is a lot rarer (and uses a conventional V2 GB.)

The externals look very nice with sharply defined M16A1 trades. My AEG unfortunately has an almost quarter inch gap between the upper and lower receivers, i5 gearboxes are known for having issues and my replica screamed / sounded very grindy out of the box. It also would double and triple fire on semi with an 11.1v lipo (although it works fine on Titanpower 11.1v stick batts). I had a tech open it up for servicing and they found all of the shimming was awful. After about 900-1000 shots this replica had mostly destroyed its pinion gear and I plan on replacing the motor.

It has a non-rotary hop up, which is something of an oddity given this AEG hit evike mid 2022, but the range was decent with 0.25G BBs.

it is a cool and collectable piece for a retro carbine build, and I'm using mine as a base for a Black Hawk Down style build. If you buy one, get some internal work done on it ASAP, but I would get the far superior CYMA-based EMG XM177, as it is a lot more mechanically reliable and still has pretty good externals.

I just wish Evike hadn't screwed up my order in the first place as I missed out on an AEG that is now very hard to find.