March 7, 2018
Working here in the GI Tactical Texas store, I have interacted with many-a-new beginner player coming through looking to get started, and the interactions usually start with the new player declaring they are looking for an airsoft gun, which is almost always followed up with three questions: What style of gun are you looking for? Have you played before/what kind of play style do you want to do? What kind of Budget are you working with?
The second most common question is “What is the BEST starter gun?” Realistically, the three questions above answer this, as in airsoft, there really is not a true “best gun”. There is only price point, and features of different rifle at said price point. With that said, in this article, I will be going over the rifles that I believe to be the best bang-for-the-buck rifles for new airsoft players.
For the younger player, or the player who does not want to spend too much money getting in to the hobby, there are two very solid rifles for under $160. They are the Lancer Tactical Gen2 MK18 Mod0, and the G&G Combat Machine “CM16” M4A1.
The Lancer Tactical (LT) Gen2 is the cheapest of the bunch at $100, but that doesn’t necessarily count it out of the race at all. The Lancer Tactical comes with a solid plastic body, with a fully metal gearbox, with all the proper internals being metal. The externals are where the price point really shows, nearly all of the externals, save for the barrel and charging handle are plastic, keeping the cost and overall weight of the rifle down. The rifle being plastic isn’t exactly a bad thing, as the Lancer Rifles can definitely take a beating. Our guys over in Airsoft GI California ran an extensive torture test in which they dropped the rifle, ran it over with a truck, submerged it in water, and then took one and put mayonnaise inside the gearbox, I won’t spoil the results of the test here, but it is safe to say, it quite impressive to see “the little gun that could”. The gearbox features an 8mm bushing gearbox, which is mostly seen with higher end gun builds, makes an appearance in a $100 AEG. Also a feature of the gearbox is a quick change spring system, which, in an M4 platform only goes so far, short of a few high-end guns, the quick change spring here just means you don’t have to take the gearbox apart to swap the spring, but just remove it from the lower receiver. The internal components are nice and solid, with a polymer rotary hop-up up unit to house the barrel and bucking, and an M120 Spring to produce a velocity of nearly 400FPS, and a set of 18:1 standard ratio gears that are the powertrain of the gearbox, that are paired with a durable polymer piston with a full metal rack of teeth, which greatly help reduce the chance of stripping the piston. The internals have longevity in mind. The box includes a 9.6v battery in the box, as well as having a basic trickle charger, that just simply charges the battery.
