Hi, I'm Luke with Out of Darts.
Today we are going to check out the SR200 from Orange Armory.
I finally got my hands on a working one; let's get going!
Back in the middle of March, I pre-ordered this blaster from Orange Armory called the SR200.
This blaster is a pump-action, spring-powered, talon-fed
blaster, and it is exclusively for short darts.
The fact that it was exclusively for short
darts and its unique styling are what really attracted this to me.
Nope. Probably attracted me to the blaster.
Let's say that(!)
However, when the first blaster did show up at the warehouse, my very first prime broke the blaster
in half, revealing some very poor layer heights inside and just very poor print quality overall.
I did speak with the company, and it sounds like Orange Mod Works had issues with both
their filament supplier and with the people that were actually printing and assembling these.
One of the reasons that you shouldn't outsource your production.
I'm saying that from experience; every time, with limited exception, I've tried
to outsource something as far as printing on demand, it is just really not a great idea.
So, this first blaster was essentially unusable.
Now, I'm starting this review out talking about the issues with the original one because
this took a long time to get fixed.
And I have to say that I'm pretty disappointed with that, and it
is definitely factored into my review.
Ordered the blaster in the middle of March, I believe March 19th;
about six or seven weeks later, I got this one that broke.
You will notice that we are in October.
At the very end of September, I finally got the replacement, so let's think…
May, June, July, August, September, October --
Five months to reprint and ship a blaster.
Now I don't know how many of these they sold,
and how many are out in the wild, or how many they had to replace, but to me, that just seems…
I have no other term but for it but unacceptable.
It is really incredibly disappointing to back a project and to pay for a blaster,
and then to wait that long, and then to get something that
broke after six weeks of waiting, and then to wait another five months to get the actual replacement.
Unfortunately, during all that time, they were pretty radio-silent about actually giving
updates, and it wasn't until I actually reached out again and
asked multiple people that I knew had contact with Orange Armory that we got a response.
I just want to put that all out there because it does taint the review for me considerably.
If this had showed up in the beginning, I think the review would be more positive, but
my experience at this point with the company is pretty poor.
And I hate to see this because I wanted them to win.
I wanted to see another third-party company really making cool stuff.
They came out with a Cybertek line of blasters, which was going to be
injection-molded solenoid-powered blasters, and those never got made;
They had to give refunds across the board (I never got mine), and this is kind of another,
in my opinion failing as far as customer service, expectations, and delivery schedules.
Without talking too much more on the delays,
we're going to just go ahead and review this as if we just received it.
Now it is worth noting that this is not sponsored in any way, and I did pay full price for this.
It was $150 plus shipping, so I think it ended up being about $166.
Right off the bat, it's a pump-action springer, and the first thing you're going
to notice when you pick up this blaster is that it is incredibly comfortable.
This is one of the best 3D-printed grips -- if not the best 3D-printed
grip -- on a springer that I think I have ever felt.
It is very comfortable for my hands, and I think it would be comfortable for a lot of hands.
We've got a very cool stylized design.
It feels very space-blaster-like, almost like a rail gun or something cool.
And these sort of industrial-looking rods up front.
These rods go all the way from the front to the back; that's how the assembly works.
One really nice touch that definitely feels more premium is this metal trigger
This is uncoated. It looks like galvanized… I believe it's galvanized steel.
So it shouldn't rust, but it's not like stainless, or it hasn't been anodized or anything like that;
That can add quite a bit to cost, but
I think it's some nice style points, and it feels pretty comfortable.
It's a little bit of a sharp edge there, but considering it's metal, it's pretty cool.
We did notice that when I first got the blaster
after the first couple magazines through it, the trigger pull was insanely hard.
It seems to be loosening up over time.
I'm not sure what's going on with the catch system there, but it still feels a little heavy.
The trigger pull is heavier than other blasters I've got,
and it leaves a little bit to be desired as far as the physical weight of the trigger.
Down below, we have a pretty standard mag release which is nice and crisp,
and it works with talon magazines and, of course, our Tachi mags.
It's worth noting that the tolerances are such that the Tachi won't airdrop,
but personally, I always grab them anyway.
I don't know who throws mags or pitches mags onto concrete that are made of plastic.
Does anybody actually do that?
Put that in the comments if you do.
No one does that.
It's also worth noting that you couldn't really do that with this blaster anyway
because you can't really reach that mag release very well with your middle finger.
So, I could definitely see the same size style extensions that we put on the Mark-3,
and the Nexus could be retrofitted for this blaster as well to make
it a little more comfortable if you wanted to have your middle finger remove the mag.
But you can get pretty used to grabbing just fine.
One more note on ergonomics is this front grip.
While the grip itself is very comfortable, and it didn't break like this one, at least not so far,
it is, unfortunately, a little sharp on these edges here, and
it tends to bite into the back of my hand here.
I'm starting to think that I just have mutant hands or something,
so I'd love to hear from anybody else that's actually touched this blaster.
But when priming this, the webbing on my between my thumb and my
pointer finger are cut in here, so I would have liked to have seen that either filled
or designed a little differently, so there's a little more space, but that's ultimately just me.
The grip itself is non-permanent underneath is actually a Picatinny rail,
so you could actually put any foregrip or pump grip you like on here making this
nice and easy to replace, which is a major improvement from their previous one.
If I had broken the Picatinny mounted version when I first got the original one, I would have just
slapped my own thing on it and done a review. On this one, it was not an [option] at all.
Blaster is pretty standard: prime, fire, prime, fire.
I did experience some misfires there; we're gonna hope that's darts.
Performance-wise this blaster comes with two springs and multiple spacers
to get you a range of performance out of the box.
Each of the spacers has a specific rating and
is either intended for the 7 kilogram or the 12 kilogram.
The seven kilogram by itself is supposedly 120 fps,
the spring spacer with the seven kilogram is 150 fps,
while the 12 kilogram with these with no spring space (or rather
with a spacer that's intended for the 12 kilogram) is 200 fps.
Now in our actual testing, Perry ran all of these three combinations through a 20-shot average,
throwing out only exceptionally bad shots that look like misreads and
using our Pro-Chrono same setup we use for everything, with a dedicated lighting setup…
We've got the numbers here on the screen:
So, you'll see they are quite a bit lower than the numbers that are on the caps, so we're suspecting
that they intended that to be sort of a hard cap like your blaster doesn't go above this.
The talon magwell is great. However, the breech inside is very interesting. The
breech seems to actually look like it was printed…
I'm assuming it's an SLS print, but I could be mistaken.
It's got a very nice texture to it, and it looks like SLS, meaning it might be nylon.
Now in one of Orange Mod Works videos -- sort of an apology video and talking about the update as
for why this took five months to get replacements, they mentioned some upgrades they made.
And one of those upgrades was a skinny-style breech, meaning
you could insert a magazine while you have it primed.
Now a magazine like the Tachi here.
This is our sample, so it's got the name on it the low power spring.
But this goes in there just fine, goes all the way up, and feels great.
However, both Perry and I here testing with the talons; the feed lips are much tighter than that
skinny pusher, so it's that's a lot more stress than I would want to put on my mags personally.
So, I can't say I'm sold on that feature.
It's just got more resistance going over that pusher than I would personally want to see,
and I don't think I would want to do that to my talon mags over and over,
especially with that textured print, which does (again) feel like SLS.
I think you'd probably wear down the mags. I guess maybe
over time, they would just wear themselves in.
I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on that, but it's definitely not a skinny pusher or skinny
breech like the ones we sell for the Nexus and the ones that are available on other blasters.
It requires a fair amount of force to plug in there, and just to be certain, we did test
quite a few different ones.
It certainly works, but it's definitely tight.
One more note on the gravity drop is with the skinny breech, you can't gravity drop;
if you're primed back, you can, so you can just see that the breech
is still holding it even if it's supposed to be a narrower breech.
And then the Tachi mag won't airdrop unless you give it…
No, you'll have to pull it.
I do think the Tachis look kind of look pretty nice in here,
and I think it would work pretty well.
On the back side, we've got a removable spacer and access to our spring.
It's kind of an interesting little mechanism inside you pull off these many,
many threads here to swap your springs, and there's a custom tool that we can
use (that looks to be SLS-printed as well) to actually remove the spring.
So, it's kind of a two-step process.
It's not just "pull this out
and swap your spring." You actually have to use this tool to get in there and remove the bits.
Kind of an interesting design.
I like the fact that it comes with three spring options out of the box,
so there's no need to find an upgrade or swap anything.
You can get everything from 120 to 175 fps on average, which
I think they'll cover you for most games.
I guess that 175 -- I'd kind of like to see that be actually 200
because there are a lot of games that are 200.
And then there's no reason there shouldn't be a
250 fps because a lot of competitive games are 250.
So that's another option I would like to see. Maybe they'll have a
new spring option in the future.
One very interesting thing that they are offering is an official warranty on the blaster.
They're claiming a two-year limited warranty on parts and replacements and two years of free
maintenance, limited to once a year available to US, Singapore, and Taiwanese customers.
That seems pretty insane.
I assume you have to pay for round-trip shipping if you're
going to have to send this off for them to service it, but
I'm going to go ahead and say that is going to be a nightmare for them to actually do.
That's not saying we don't take care of our customers, but two years
on a product that's going to get run around and played with and abused and
has had some issues out of the box is concerning, I would say at the very least.
I really do like this color scheme they call this rocket white, but to me, this just screams ghost
ops; very similar to the rival series, and I think I like that a lot; it's very cool.
One other accessory that apparently exists is an option to swap this for a buffer tube.
We are a little unclear whether that was supposed to be included
or if that's something you purchased separately.
And to me, it's kind of a problem because this is just not you cannot play with a blaster like this
and fire like this because just without being able to shoulder this.
I'm going to hold this as steady as I can. I mean, you can just see how much my muzzle is moving.
It's really not --
That was me double priming, not a blaster fault that time.
But it's definitely… it needs a stock!
So, I assume there's something either coming for that or an option.
It looks like this just bolts on, so that would be pretty easy to change.
One thing about the function of the blaster that Perry actually pointed
out was that you really don't have a sense for when you've fully primed the blaster.
You prime back, and you can feel the backplate, and you go forward, but
this is kind of just loose up here, and now I've just been double primed again.
But up front, you really don't know if you've got it primed.
So, you get this sense of: "I should just push the thing forward all the time."
There's nothing stopping you from double-priming it, of course,
but especially on the front end, you sort of don't know whether you are totally engaged.
So, I think I would get in the habit of just holding this forward as I'm firing.
I have seen other blasters that kind of behave like that, but it's something worth
noting that just with the stickiness of the slide -- which it is a fairly smooth prime.
It's a nice short stroke, and it feels very snappy.
I still am bugged by this notch here. I'm going to have to file or sand these edges here.
If these edges that are here were just all filleted or you had a little fill-in
piece that could just slot in place there, * chef's kiss* you'd be done.
Another thing we did notice is these screws up front seem to like to loosen themselves.
They basically were loose after firing one magazine.
And additionally, the front plate, which I don't think is structural, has two cracks in it already.
So, we've already got a 3D-printed part broken on our replacement.
But maybe we can take it from the original.
Hey, it's not broken here, so I'm going to swap those, and we'll have a complete blaster.
It does sound like they would obviously handle any replacements on parts like that.
However, ours did arrive broken.
The second version I was shipped does have much better print quality.
I'm still seeing some layer lines that are a little heavier than a lot of the
products we would ship here in-house, but we really do have our printers dialed in, and
I've been doing this for a while.
But, compared to the original, it is just it is night and day, especially if you put
a light source overhead and kind of look at the layer lines, and uneven extrusion,
and there's gaps and things in the original.
So, they definitely did improve the overall quality and feel of the blaster.
At the end of the day, I'm not sure who this blaster is for.
Talonclaws are more customizable; Lynxes are more customizable and have a lot of options.
They both fall into a similar price point, though this one is ready to fire out of the box.
At 150 plus shipping, it puts it within spitting distance of, say, the worker swift,
and I think honestly, the worker swift in many ways is a superior blaster.
It also puts it kind of hand in hand very close to a TalonClaw or a Lynx, and again
it's kind of the same issue: I think either of those blasters is probably a better performer.
That said, it definitely has some style points; it is unique.
But, as mentioned in the beginning of the video, my whole experience has kind of been tainted
with the customer service I've received on this.
I think I'm going to give this three out of five stars.
There are some issues here and there.
It's not perfect, but it is a much better offering than what I first received.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
Do we even think there's room for more 3D-printed springers on the market?
I mean, I ordered this when it came out
seven months ago -- or when it came up for sale in March anyway, and I ordered it because I was like,
"Who would dare try to make a 3D-printed blaster when we have
10 options on the field for springers?"
"What do they bring to the game that
beats the performance or ergonomics, or what room is there to actually build on
and improve what people have out currently?" And, I guess this is it!
I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Until next time, I'm out of darts.