Paintball Buyer's Guide

I have fielded many questions along the lines of "what should I buy?" lately, and figured I could help out with some personal gear advice. This is my opinionated guide to buying paintball gear.

As a general rule, paintball is a "get what you pay for" sport. There are simply hundreds of "deals" that are really just crap. So, you can save a little now, and get crap that will last a few days of play, or be very limited in upgrades in the future. Or you can spend a little more and buy gear that will endure years of play and accept any upgrades you can imagine. To me, saving up for the real deal makes more sense.

In paintball, there are huge hype campaigns that claim performance but have ZERO facts behind them. Be wary! There is also a lot of urban legend in the paintball community. Players tend to repeat what they hear from trusted sources (their friends), even if the facts are thin. These dubious facts get repeated and become accepted truths, and that leads to successful sales of ineffective products. (Electric-triggered blow-back guns come to mind)

On that note - if you don't know me and you are reading this article, you have no more reason to trust me than you do anyone else online. My credentials are my years of practical application, facts where they can be had, and my personal use of the gear I recommend. This document is mostly designed as a reference for people I know, since I can look them in the eye and say "This is the product I use and here is why." I have no affiliation or endorsement from the manufacturers of products listed in this article.

Goggles

Hands down, I use JT Products. I have played nearly my entire 17-year paintball career in JT goggles, except for a stint where our team was sponsored by Vents (Also good goggles). JTs are THE industry standard. They are comfortable, customizable, and easy to maintain.

Goggles are a very personal choice, though. The feel of a mask is critical to comfortable play. Try before you buy. Go to a local retailer and find out what suits you best. If you wear glasses, this is especially critical. Buy what feels most comfortable to you. The features for goggles are rather limited, so you really can't go wrong with buying whatever suits you best.

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Guns

Smart Parts Ion: The Muscle Car of Guns

This gun is for the player who wants value and high performance, but is willing to sacrifice some mil-sim upgrade options. This is the best gun value in paintball today. Smart Parts has created a pneumatically-operated blow-forward design that simply rocks. It's fast. It's reliable. It's simple. And it's under $200.

The Ion is like a mucle car in that the stock version may be alright, but with some customization, you can have a really great performer.

Since it's electro-pneumatic, the gun can shoot up to 17 balls per second with programmable modes of fire. This is not a really practical rate of fire, but it's an interesting number. It is light and has almost no detectable recoil. The rainbow of tournament upgrades is available, but mil-sim upgrades are less common. Out of the box, it is a respectable gun. With some upgrades, it is a top-level contender.

Some items are necessary if you want to shoot an Ion. It will run on C02, but this is not recommended. This means that you must buy a more expensive HPA tank rather than cheaper C02 ones. The feed neck system is a bit poorly designed, and is one of my first recommended replacements. After that, you can go down the performance path with a QEV and regulator upgrade, and also down the ergonomics path and find the body, trigger, etc. that work for you.

Ions can be purchased for about $199. Complete packages run about $350 with mask and low-end 3000 psi HPA tanks. Upgrades can cost $20 to hundreds of dollars, depending on what level you are trying to reach. This maxes out in the $800-1000 range for gun, tank, loader, barrel, trigger, feedneck, drop forward, regulator, bolt, board, etc.

Buy a Smart Parts Ion

Tippmann A-5/X-7: The Jeep of Guns

This gun is for the player who wants awesome reliability, nearly infinite upgrades in the mil-sim arena, but is willing to sacrifice some high-end performance. The A-5 is tough, simple to work on, and reliable.

The A-5 and X-7 are like a Jeep in that they have TONS of customization options and they can take abuse and keep going.

The A-5 and X-7 are blowback-operated guns and suffer from the associated problems with this fact: moderate recoil, temperature intolerance with C02, and louder operation. The ROF can be pretty high, but the shot-to-shot velocity consistency at upper range is in the middle-of-the-road, which means that accuracy is in the same middle-of-the-road level.

Both guns use the Cyclone feed system to reliably feed balls into the breech. This has pros and cons. The pros are not needing a motorized loader, saving some investment in that area. The system is very reliable, feeds quickly (in excess of 20 balls per second) and has a manual override if needed. The cons are the large blindspot in your sight picture (at about your 1 o'clock) and the extreme difficulty in cleaning in the event of a ball break. This is usually caused by getting shot in the loader (not at all uncommon) or rough play. If you have to clean a pinched ball or loader break, expect to be down for 15-30 minutes.

Tournament-level performance tweaks for the A-5 are somewhat limited. Electric triggers with full adjustment ranges are slowly creeping into the market. Making the gun low-pressure or adding regulators or expansion chambers to the gun tend to be awkward, because the air inlet is in the bottom-middle of the gun. This tends to ruin the mil-sim aesthetic and player ergonomics, but does offer some performance advantages. Without regulation, getting nice consistent shots can be a challenge. The usual answer to this is in the regulator at the tank, vs. on the gun itself.

Buy this gun if you want to add gadgets and never worry about the details of HOW your gun fires. Buy this gun if your PMCS (Preventative Maintenance, Cleaning and Service for you non-military jargon types) is less than stellar. This is the AK-47 of paintball guns, and is popular for roughly the same reasons as that assault rifle.

A-5s can be had for $150-200 (used or new) and entire "player kits" can be had on eBay for $230-275. The newer X-7 runs in the $300+ range. The upgrade paths can be as simple or complex as you'd like and you can get almost any visual modifcation you can think of.

Buy a Tippmann A-5

Buy a Tippmann X-7

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Air Tanks

These days, High Pressure Air is common enough and inexpensive enough that recommending CO2 is tough. CO2 tanks are cheaper, but their performance is seriously lacking compared to HPA. If you really are budget minded, you can buy CO2. I prefer the 12oz size aluminum tanks for their combination of capacity and compactness. Brand names are fairly similar in performance, though Pure Energy is easy to find and a good brand.

For HPA systems, I recommend Nitro Duck. They are tough, consistent and have some of the best manufacturing I've seen. Tank size is basically a personal preference, but remember this: you should be able to shoot all the paint you carry, plus a little buffer. Gatsplat paintball has an excellent "shot calculator" that can help you decide what size tank you need. This, in turn, will help you decide where you want to mount it, either on your gun or in your harness with a remote line. My favorite is a 68/4500. This has a good shot capacity, and is not too bulky for on-gun use.

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Barrels

I use J&J Performance Edge barrels. They are a long-standing industry name known for high quality. They have excellent customer service, and they have a good variety of options for length and bore size. Their ceramic-coated T6 aluminium is a tough, smooth product that will last a lifetime. Other good names include Smart Parts, Hammerhead and Dye.

Barrels are probably the most misunderstood addition to a paintball gun. The first thing any new player wants is a new barrel. They believe that better accuracy will be as simple as buying a ported, rifled, 20" barrel. This is a mistake! Accuracy is a concert, not a solo. For more info on making your paintball gun more accurate, read my article on paintball accuracy.

The basics of barrels is this: the most important thing is the inside bore match to your paint. Greater length does not equal more accurate. Tough is good, but light weight is important too.

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Loaders

I use Ricochet products, and have both a 2K and a 2KX. I like the feed-sensor mechanism of these loaders. A tab of flexible nylon activates a micro-switch every time a ball passes it. This results in a constant, positive feed action. They are not the fastest loader tested, but I believe they are capable enough to keep up with 90% of ROF demands for my Ion. The shape is supposed to be conducive to causing ricochets instead of breaks, and I like the aesthetic. They price out at about $65-75.

If you need top-of-the-line performance, the Halo is the way to go. They have a positive feed that will keep up with the fastest of guns. On the down side - they are power hogs, they are bulky and they are expensive.

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Conclusions

The bottom line: expect to spend about $300 dollars to get in to the sport. That will get you a complete set of good gear that will likely last you many years of play. Performance begins to ramp up at about the $600+ range. The differences get smaller until you hit about the $1000 mark. At that point, you can get some of the best gear out there, if you shop around.

Good luck. If you have further questions, or have "what do you think of this product" issues, please contact me at glenn at thinktankpaintball.com. Be sure to tell me who you are so I can reply appropriately.

I'll see you on the field.