Hey, it's Luke with Out of Darts. Today I'm going to run you through my top five
worst blaster grips ever made. Let's get going!
I'm a little bit obsessed with ergonomics. I took one entry-level ergonomics class in school,
and it really got me thinking about design and ergonomics in your life. Ergonomics,
for those who didn't see it in the previous video, is the study of human interaction
in design. It's everything from how a grip feels in your hand to the height of a table,
the height and angle of your desk, the height of and placement of monitors, the spacing on your
keyboard, and literally, every single thing you've ever interacted with that's made by people has had
ergonomic thought gone into it. Or perhaps, in the case of these blasters, not enough!
So, at number five is the Hera. Now, I love this blaster, so don't get me wrong. and
Zach made this blaster for me -- this paint job, and it is just
a beauty, so I love the blaster, do not get me wrong. It's also a great Proton Pack blaster,
but what I found with this thing is that this grip for my large hands -- which again, if you saw my
previous video: my hands from palm-to-tip are about 7.5 in, and my wingspan from pinky-to-thumb
is about 9 in. So, you can kind of measure your own hand, and that'll give you a feel for my hand
size versus yours. I am, you know, in my mid-30s, and this is you know my hands are sort of average;
I wear large gloves but not extra-large. This just feels massive, and I always have a problem
holding on to these for long periods of time during the day. When you're sweaty, it requires
more force than [needed] because your hands are stretched out farther. There's an optimal
spacing for your hands to have the most grip and purchase power without being strained. So,
say holding on to this large water bottle, which I love (a customer gave this to me: RL Coatings),
and this is hard to hold up here, while if I hold it down at the base, I've got a lot more control
over it. So I find that grabbing this water bottle, for instance, is much easier at the base;
the same goes with grips. If this grip was a little smaller, you'd be able to fit in here,
fit it in your hand better, and have more power. Now obviously, some of you are saying, "well,
of course, it's like that! it's got to have a magazine through it!" which it does. That's part
of the design, but ultimately that decision in design versus, say, putting the normal magazine
up here like the Rival Charger is what makes this grip uncomfortable. And I do feel the same
way about many talon grips as well because they just get much larger. That said, it accomplishes
a specific kind of loadout, and a specific kind of blaster, and a goal. So it has its purpose.
The placement of the trigger and everything else is good. It's really the size here that bugs me.
[Number four:] this is the Doomlands 2021 Desolator. Now, this is a funky blaster,
and I really do love the styling, but the grip is bad. It's got a number of problems. The
first large issue is the actual grip shape and size. It feels a little small for my hands. The
placement of this trigger is also very, very strange to me. My finger wants to be up here
pulling the trigger, not way back here where it ends up even with my middle finger
knuckle. I end up pulling this trigger very awkwardly in the middle of my hand or doing
a very awkward trigger pull from the top with the point of my finger. It doesn't naturally... I feel
like my hand should be back here further, and then my finger should naturally rest on the trigger,
and because of that, this gets number four in addition to the actual ergonomic issues of the
placement of the trigger, again, which I think should be further forward. You've
got these ridges up here, and these ridges -- despite this looking really cool, they grind in
on my hands. And so, I think if I ever use this blaster for a full day of play as a
primary loadout, I would have to fill this and put something softer there because it
just grinds the back of my thumb, and that cannot do. So that comes in at number four.
Number three: you knew these were coming! Elite 2.0. now we're going to look at the Phoenix here
because it's one of the worst offenders, but they all are terrible. They're just bad. Now again,
my hands are large. This is not comfortable for my grip. It's not the worst grip in the world, but
it's not the best. You've got multiple problems: the first being that the grip is too small, the
second being that if you have adult hands, your pinky ends up on the tip here, which is really
frustrating. I think I would hack that off if I actually care to use this blaster long-term. Next,
you've got a very cramped fingerwell, where the mag release is not only extremely hard to push,
but it is always in the way of your finger, and I find it actually can wear on your finger and kind
of give you little blisters on the back of your trigger finger, which is very, very frustrating.
So overall, I think this is a real bad one. one thing to note here is that you can take this grip
off, so this would actually be a prime candidate for a replacement grip, but I don't think I will
bother considering the difficulty of modding this blaster. So that comes in at number three.
Number two: you're probably expecting it. It's basically the entire Ultra line. I don't even
know what Hasbro was doing here. The Ultra line features some of the worst ergonomics
and least comfortable grips that exist. This isn't necessarily the worst one the,
ultra amp, but it is a bad one. We have the same problem that we saw in Elite 2.0,
which is where the fingers do not fit inside of here, so for adults, this is terrible.
It just does not feel good. We also have a rev trigger that a full-size human finger cannot fit
on here unless maybe you are eight years old. So you end up getting stabbed by the middle of the
rev trigger on your finger. I mean, you can just see there's just no way to look at this. Again,
my pinky is resting on the tip of the grip. It just doesn't fit here. Now I know some of you
are thinking, "well, this is a toy. It's meant for an 8-year-old or a 10-year-old.
I would say that the target market is definitely around 10-to-12, but they are certainly used by
both older and younger. So I could definitely see some improvement on this overall because it
is bad in a lot of ways. This trigger is also not large enough to hold my full-size finger
and just not a great blaster or grip, and this applies to the entire lineup of Ultra.
that said, I do think the Ultra 2 is pretty cool, so I mean, that's the one bright spot. That's
if you change it to short darts or full-length darts, of course. So that comes in at number two.
Number one: can you guess it? Can you guess it? I wonder. It's the McCree!
The overwatch series is super cool, and I know that cosplayers love these blasters. Obviously,
they are selling well. It's a great piece of IP that Hasbro has, and it's a cool
lifelike representation of the game. However, this is one of the least comfortable
uh [trigger guards] and triggers you'll ever see. It's actually a little sharp, and it's not great.
This curve just doesn't work. Now it does get sort of a pass because of its purpose. It is a
partial prop. This is not an effective blaster. It's really more about cosplayers
and kind of reliving your gameplay moments, but for me, this is really,
really rough. If I pull on here, this literally hurts my finger—it like pinches. I'm just going
to hold on here for a second, and you can see what it does to my finger. I'll do that again.
just holding that where I would pull it, and it really pinches the finger in this small curve.
There are limitations, of course, when you're making a blaster that
is based on a video game. You've got to make it look like the game, and replicas from games are
never going to feel as comfortable as something purpose-designed to be a blaster from the start.
And an honorable mention: here we've got a few other blasters that I thought I would cover
while we were talking about bad grips. So first, we've got the, you know, the Jolt. The classic,
most popular nerf blaster, probably of all time by sales volume. There's no way there's another
version that hasn't sold more. For kids, this definitely feels better than it does for mine.
Now my hands go like this. Obviously, this is a cheap little blaster. You can buy it in
so many different versions, and it's still very cool. But, of course, the grip is terrible. Now,
this is one example where the grip is terrible because this is function over form. That
is to say, that this is the smallest blaster that exists, and it does that job well. it doesn't
do much else well, other than being a very small blaster, but it's got a pretty uncomfortable grip.
Next up, we got this baby launcher. I got this from Michelle and Addie,
my friends over at Foam Blast, and boy, is it a lot of fun to launch
multi-racial babies across the room. It's quite entertaining. But, you know, I guess this was
designed for babies because there's just no way to hold this... I can't do this with a straight face.
Next, I thought I would talk about the [Dart Zone Pro] Mark-II. Now, don't get me wrong. I
love this blaster. This is a phenomenal blaster; it is a powerhouse. But the grip itself,
while the grip portion is fine, the tolerances and ergonomics of the top of the blaster sits
too close to the grip. This whole grip needed to come down further and allow for more space between
the curve and the base here, and it really bites in, especially with the heavier spring
load. It bites in at the back here, and I end up with a pretty sore back of my hand. That said,
this is a sidearm. You're not going to have to probably fire this hundreds of times per day,
but it's something to note. It's not perfect, and this is yet another example of function over form.
They wanted to keep this as small as possible. They needed to fit the magazine in the handgrip,
so there's a certain size it had to be. However, I would have loved to have seen this rounded out
or maybe even just five millimeters down the grip to reduce the amount that that rubs on that point.
Lastly, this is an example of taste. When I was a kid, this was the most comfortable grip of any
blaster I'd ever touched, and I think for your average eight-year-old (or maybe a little bit
younger), that's probably still true. And this is a good reminder that, as this whole video,
is my opinion for my hands and my preferences. But, if I were to go back and try to use this now,
I not only can't get my finger in here but at least my pinky and
middle part of my ring finger actually come off the blaster. So, while this is a prized
possession of mine as far as the nerf collection, it is really not an easy one to hold on to
with my adult large hands. But, again, it's still probably a great blaster for younger kids.
I hope you guys enjoyed this video. I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. If you've
watched this long, thank you again. Do hit that like button. It helps us all out as YouTubers
in this crazy, ever-changing algorithm. Until next time, I'm out of darts.
Oh no, there go all the babies(!)