Heyhey, first review for me as I'm more comfortable dishing out the flames on the other parts of the board, but Shinobi was kind enough to give me a bag of these things to do the review, so here goes...please pardon my shitty pics as I was using my Iphone's camera.
*Disclaimer, I am not employed by or affiliated with Bioval or any of their dealers
First impressions, hefting the bag you hear the bb's shaking around inside, and they sound different, more like glass beads or marbles than plastic airsoft pellets.
Do they kill/maim
Short answer, no.
They are ALOT harder than plastic bb's, but after gaming with them, I received no complaints of bleeders, or shattered goggles etc. my capa shoots 320fps w/.20's
I tested them at point blank range against the following forms of eye protection and with my hi-capa and a G&G AK47 Beta Spetz (both are sub 350fps guns, didn't have anything hotter to test with)
CT Shop glasses - no damage
G&G Shooting glasses - no damage
Generic ACM Paintball mask - scuff on the lens, no damage to the plastic
Cheapo Dollarstore sunglasses - lens fell out of the frame - no damage to lens
ACM Mesh mask (the type with the woven wires, not the kind with the sheet metal with the holes which is notoriously weaker) - Paint chipped off the mesh, no penetration or shattering of the bb - same result with Sekito SIIS Japanese .25 BB
Torture Test
I tried squeezing them with pliers to see if they would squash or shatter like a normal BB, but all I could manage to do was make a scratch on either side of the bb, as you can see, the same force applied to a regular plastic bb resulted in an almost flat blob of white plastic.
Accuracy
I did get good groupings from them, using my TM Hi-capa 5.1, they are extremely accurate, once you have your hopup set right (more on this later) and the .27gram weight appears to be a great balance between the lighter and the heavier sniper grade ammunition.
I used these bb's at the recent CAPSII year end tournament and managed to place 3rd, take from that what you will, but I like to think that I'm a decent shot
Will try to post some pics of groupings later on.
Pros
- Very Accurate
- Very good range, used them at CQB Paintball in Toronto and was getting cross field kills with my TM Hi-capa 5.1
- No one's heads exploded or eyes shot through their goggles, no cars were in attendance so I didn't get a chance to test it on the windows
- Didn't get a chance to test it outdoors so I cannot comment on the performance in windy environments.
Cons
- They are a smaller diameter, not exactly sure as I do not have the tool to measure, and this has caused some misfeeds in my Hi-capa when the hopup isn't dialed in right. I lost my first round in the steel challenge of the CAPSII tourny due to bb's rolling out of the gun, they won't stay in the hopup if they hopup isn't turned up enough.
- They are more expensive than regular bb's
- You can't use them at TTAC3 as they are a PITA to clean up
* I would venture to guess that they would work very well in tightbore barrels due to their smaller diameter.
Conclusion
These are pretty decent bb's, I was very skeptical about them based on what I'd heard 3rd hand from the internet, but have found them to be safe and their performance is on par if not better than most plastic bb's out there.
I'm a poor guy so I couldn't buy a different bag of the leading brands to test them, so I won't be doing any shooting comparisons with these, I can only report on what my findings were after going through about half a bag of them.
*EDIT* Further testing done with KJW M700 Takedown Gas BA rifle (500-550 fps w/.20s)
Just got back from the shop, did some testing with a KJW M700 Takedown gas BA rifle (500-550 Fps w/ 0.2g) thanks to MoreToasties for the idea
Here's what I found, I shot only 2 surfaces as I didn't feel like lugging the rifle home to test on a variety of masks, so I shot a cheapo ACM Goggle and the Clear plastic lower from on of my Cansoft SCAR's
This is what happened:
Shot one side of the SCAR receiver with a regular plastic BB (Sekito SIIS .25) from an inch away, the receiver cracked, on the second shot to the exact same spot, 2 pieces of plastic fell off from inside the magwell, not sure where they came from exactly and the plastic bb cracked but did not shatter.
Next I shot the other side of the receiver (magwell again to be fair) and this time, the receiver did not crack or random plastic pieces fell off. Instead, I got small dimples in the plastic, with no damage to the BBBMax bb at all, like Maddog said, these bb's bounce around quite a bit so it was hard keeping track of where they were going, I did make it a point to retrieve them to make sure they hadn't shattered.
Repeated this 3 more times, and got more dimples but no cracks in the plastic, the shadow of a crack seen in this pic is from the opposite side of the receiver.
Next, the goggles, these aren't rated but they still held up to the 500+ BBBMax projectile that I fired at it, 2 shots to the exact same spot. First shot made a bad scuff and a small dent and the second shot pushed the dent deeper, again the bb's bounced away without shattering.
