Magpul PTS AEG review — part one

June 28, 2009  |  Airsoft, Featured Airsoft, General
NOTE:  This review is split into two parts.  This is part one; the review of the gun out of the box and the fea­tured lis­ted as stand­ard.  Part two will be it per­form­ance in the field; prob­ably at Ground Zero in August.  Sorry for the delay, but I have no access to a test zone at the moment.  I will make up for it with a stonk­ing Basho Cam! film about own­ing lots of newbs with this gun.

Magpul PTS MOE Carbine AEG-DX (DE)

Hat­tori Hanzo reviews the Mag­pul PTS AEG

“Revenge is a dish best served cold”

- Old Klin­gon Proverb -

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An Eng­lish man enters Uncompany’s shop in Hong Kong. A single shop assist­ant hov­ers at the counter.

“What brings you to Hong Kong?” he asks.

“I came to see a man,” the Eng­lish­man replies.

“Who is he, may I ask?”

“Hat­tori Hanzo”

51889-26177 The shop assist­ant looks shocked.

“What do you want with Hat­tori Hanzo?” he asks nervously.

“I have need of a Japan­ese Mag­pul PTS as I have many new­bies to lace at the Ground Zero Weekender”

The shop assist­ant con­siders this, “You must have big-ass new­bies to lace if you need a Mag­pul PTS”.

The Eng­lish­man leans over the counter, “huge”.

“Fol­low me”.

Intro­duc­tion

When I first star­ted air­soft – all those years ago! – Mag­pul were exactly what the name sug­gests; a com­pany that made little rub­ber devices to attach to your M4 mags to make them easier to pull from your pouches. I didn’t have enough money to afford them and so used some string and tape.  Oh how things have moved on since then!  Mag­pul star­ted build­ing cus­tom guns, the type only seen in pho­tos from Shot­Shows.  Then I saw this:

shot09-sw-mp15-moe

…and like the rest of us I fell in love.  What a space age future look bit of kit!

Since then the name Mag­pul has come to mean to air­soft what the name of Gucci means to fash­ion.  Air­soft has always been split into two worlds, that of play­ers and chair­softers.  For once, a com­pany was releas­ing products that appealed to both.  Then came an announcement:

The Store Assist­ant (Hat­tori Hanzo) and the Eng­lish­man (Basho) enter the attic.  The room has racks of cus­tom AEG’s held silently, lit by sun­beams. Motes of dust float in the air.

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As Basho exam­ines the weapons Hanzo speaks,

1110223343_killbill13 “Funny, you like AEG’s… per­son­ally I prefer pis­tols!”  With a flour­ish he bangs the floor and a paper tar­get slides out from the wall at end of the room.

Basho whips back his jacket to reveal a West­ern Arms AMT Hardballer!

The gun bursts from its low pro­file hol­ster and Basho fires once at the target.

Hanzo walks over to the tar­get and regards the shot:

“I will make you the gun,” he says, “the Ground Zero Week­ender is a month away.  I sug­gest you spend the time practicing.”

The Mag­pul PTS AEG MOE Car­bine is the first AEG from the the PTS Divi­sion who are a part of the Mag­pul com­pany aim­ing towards train­ing and there­fore of great interest to air­softers.  Their web­site is slick as hell and everything points towards a Gucci product.  The spe­cific­a­tions tell us that the intern­als are as hot as the extern­als, and this is not just a basic body kit over TM parts (noth­ing wrong with TM of course).

The spe­cific­a­tions are as follows:

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  • Sys­tema Ver II Turbo Gear Box and Motor Set
  • Sys­tema BS 6.04mm Bar­rel (303mm).
  • Sys­tema Hop Up pack.
  • Sys­tema Metal Cham­ber Set
  • PTS Diecast­ing Metal Receiver
  • PTS MOE Hand Guard (Polymer)
  • PTS MOE Grip (Polymer)
  • PTS MOE Stock (Polymer)
  • PTS Mod­u­lar Sling Adaptor with Sling Mount
  • PTS PMAG (Mid Cap 120 Rounds) (Polymer)
  • PTS MBUS – Rear Sight (Polymer)
  • Muzzle Velo­city – 350 FPS
  • Color — Dark Earth

hattorihanzo Hat­tori Hanzo sits in front of the Basho examin­ing his new product, “I’m done doing what I swore an oath to God 28 years ago to never do again. I’ve cre­ated some­thing that laces people. And in that pur­pose I was a success.”

Basho watches the old gun­smith hand­ing the new AEG and Hanzo continues,

“I can tell you with no ego, this is my finest AEG. If on your jour­ney, you should encounter God, God will cry ‘hit!’”.

Basho takes the gun rev­er­ently from Hanzo’s hands and his eyes look at the greatest maker of AEG’s on this earth and says;

”Domo.”

Basho looks at the fin­ished product:

Basho Loadout

The box is noth­ing spe­cial com­pared to some out there, but it got back safe from Hong Kong with no worries.

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The stock tube is a work of art.  No rattle of the tube itself, the stock rattles a little of course.  The action is smooth and simple.

The fea­tures of this stock:

MOE™ M4 Car­bine Col­lapsible Butt-Stock – Mil­it­ary Model
Mag­pul® Ori­ginal Equip­ment (MOE™) is a line of Air­soft M16/M4 accessor­ies designed to provide a high-quality, eco­nom­ical altern­at­ive to stand­ard Air­soft M16/M4 parts. The MOE™ line dis­tin­guishes itself with a sim­pli­fied fea­ture set, but main­tains Mag­pul engin­eer­ing and mater­ial quality.

The Mag­pul® MOE™ Stock is a drop-in replace­ment butt-stock for car­bines using mil-spec size Air­soft receiver exten­sion tubes. Designed for light, fast action the stream­lined A-frame pro­file avoids snag­ging and shields the release latch to pre­vent acci­dental activ­a­tion. The extra-power lock mech­an­ism uses a premium chrome-silicon spring to avert auto-collapse fail­ure and main­tains strength by res­ist­ing spring relax­a­tion. The Mil­it­ary Model includes a stand­ard 0.30” rub­ber butt-pad which provides pos­it­ive shoulder pur­chase to pre­vent slip­page even with body armor or mod­u­lar gear.
Fea­tures
– Mounts on Mil­it­ary Car­bine Receiver Exten­sion tube (Not included) from man­u­fac­tur­ers such as Colt, Armal­ite, LMT, S&W, etc.
– Premium chrome-silicon lock spring provides pos­it­ive lock­ing and long ser­vice life
– Slop­ing cheek weld com­bines a slim pro­file with user com­fort
– Shiel­ded release latch pre­vents snag­ging and acci­dental oper­a­tion
– Side mount­ing slots accept optional cheek risers for NON-AR15 / M16 applic­a­tions
– Com­pat­ible with Single-Point® sling mounts

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This cover doe not close, or at least neither Trip or I can get it to close.  By the looks of it the intern­als are block­ing the body.  I don’t mind it open, but it may get dam­aged and let in water!  I will have to mod a solu­tion.  As with many AEG’s, pulling back the slide reveals the hop up.  The grip is very com­fort­able, but stand­ard stuff.  The selector switch is crisp for a new product.  The body itself is plastic, but has a chunky solid­ness to it and removes all chance of creek.  Every single angle is covered in trades, as keep­ing with the Gucci product

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The fore­g­rip is a clas­sic two part, but has no rails on it as stand­ard.  The Uncom­pany rep tried to sell me a cus­tom front end which had four rails, but that was ugly in the extreme.  I am going to get the “Drop in Rails” from the net that look like this:

magpul-037_1_mark IMG_9340 A 1028 Stick

Get­ting the bat­tery con­tainer off is a real bother, it is the clas­sic pulling back of the ring and pulling off of the plate, but it is very stiff and tricky to put back on – requir­ing a few tries.  Not some­thing I will want to do in battle.

The wir­ing looks to be of very high quality.

I am using a 8v small bat­tery, but the gun does say to use only a 7v.  The Uncom­pany guys say that the 8v is fine, but a 9v will break the pis­ton.  Suf­fice to say, I will be con­vert­ing to Lipoly ASAP.

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The sling attach­ment ring at the rear is adjustable to left or right, and this is a neat little idea.

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The Flash hider is a hor­rible orange plastic one, but no fear!  A full metal one comes with the gun.

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The rear sight is a very nice pop model and com­pletely adjustable.  The sight hole clips down to adjust for range.  I will be attach­ing a Red Dot of course.

Here is a quick vid of the rate of fire and the mov­ing parts in action.  Not the chunky thud of a single shot.  This is a well bal­anced system!

The P Mag.

One P Mag comes with the gun.  Much is being made of the P Mag.  It is being her­al­ded as the best mag you can buy.  Con­sider this You­Tube on the subject:

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Every angle is covered in trades again.  All the mags are marked as 30 rounds, but actu­ally take 120 BB’s.

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The fit into the gun is solid as I have every seen.  No wobble or anything.

How does the gun handle in the hand?

The length of the gun is sim­ilar to that of any other M4, or LR.  Slightly longer that a com­mando.  The weight is very well dis­trib­uted and the ergo­nomic fore grip aids tar­get acquis­i­tion.  The full battle report will come later as I have no access to a safe place to test the gun live ATM.

So, that’s it for now.  I think the Mag­pul is a great AEG to own and some­thing that will stand out in the field, if you can get hold of one!

I bought mine by fly­ing to Hong Kong and going into the Uncom­pany shop.  This was about £2.5k.  I don’t sug­gest you do that!  You can order it for US$ 529.00 here (when in stock!)

Regards,

Basho

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If you liked this review, try some of my others!

WA AMT Hardballer

Clas­sic Army SCAR

And remem­ber to always wear full face!

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View Comments


  1. mr t frost....

    hel­looooo mate.… lovely look­ing gun.. i am jeal­ous.. how­ever, on a more neg­at­ive note…

    i say pah to your pis­tol… pah i say..

    i wee on your wa from a great height with vigour­ous force…

    i see your amt hard­baller and raise you my élite shoot­ing cus­tom accucomp with tight­bore 7 inch bar­rel and compensator..

    so there.…

  2. I have just had poin­ted out to me, and sud­denly real­ised that it is true, that the body is in fact metal. It just looks like plastic! I has a thick coat of paint on it for sure!

  3. Hi basho,
    i have also pur­chased the same gun, but i feel con­fused about the bat­tery to be used…

  4. I use a small 8v. I am going to swap to a Lipoly when I can.

  5. you need to be care­ful with lipoly bat­ter­ies.… they have a tend­ency to explode and burn your house down if incor­rectly charged or bal­anced or left un atten­ded… plus they only have a life span of about 50 charge cycles..

  6. There is a cir­cuit you attach which pre­vents this.

  7. the cir­cuit pre­vents which? the lim­ited life span charge cycle? the explod­ing when incor­rectly charged? the weak­ness of the bat­tery to knocks and impacts? the need of the bat­tery to be cell bal­anced? the fact it must be con­stantly mon­itored when char­ging? should never on any kind of flam­able sur­face? may swell and explode for no real given reason? not really crit­is­iz­ing, just figured if you men­tion some­thing you should point out its downsides..

  8. Part two com­ing in a few days!

  9. scadgybadger

    I have the same gun & i use a 9.6v bat­tery & no prob­lems what­so­ever excel­lent rate of fire.
    best kit i have ever owned.

    • That’s great news. Uncom­pany did tell me that it would break very quickly, so please let me know if it goes down!

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  1. Magpul PTS AEG – Part Two « Outside Context

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