Hi, it's Luke with Out of Darts.
It is that time of year when blasters seem to come into this warehouse faster than ever.
Bullseye, LLC, the makers of the D-Dart platform, were kind enough to send
over four brand new blasters that they teased about a year and a half ago at the last toy fair.
We're gonna dive into all four of these blasters and review them and
talk about them all in a single video here.
Let's get going!
Back in 2019, Bullseye, LLC released the D-Dart Tempest.
It was a very refreshing new take on a blaster and a very unique form factor.
That video got a lot of hits, and I’m not really sure why
That’s just how things go sometimes with YouTube.
This blaster wasn't perfect.
You can see on this one I actually chopped the front portion off to allow for full-size darts.
I am happy to say that since releasing the 1.0,
the 2.0 (which came out last year) has fixed these issues.
We actually carry the 2.0 on our shop, and the 2.0 allows you to use full-length
standard nerf darts which was a much-needed improvement from the original.
Clearly, the product development team over at Bullseye, LLC was having some fun.
I am a little shocked they made so many different variants of a similar platform.
Starting off, we've got the D-Dart Pro
which is the fastest rate of fire for a single dart out of the system.
We've got the tornado which is a dual ring system where you've got two rings of darts,
and it holds 54 darts instead of 27.
We've got the D-Dart Cyclone which is very similar to the Pro or the v2,
except it comes with swappable drums, and you do get two drums with the kit.
Then finally, we've got the D-Dart Blizzard which is the craziest of
them all; it essentially has little magazines that go all the way around,
making it a little bit complicated to reload and a 76-dart capacity.
The entire D-Dart lineup has a lot of similarities from blaster to blaster; they essentially all
feature the same ergonomics and same through grip that you're holding onto.
The grip is very comfortable. I have always really liked this grip and felt that it fit very well.
The Pro does not feature a rev trigger. It’s just a simple on/off.
So, when you flick it on, the blaster turns on, and then you have to pull the fire trigger.
The Blizzard, the Cyclone, and the Twin Tornado, however, all feature a new palm rev trigger.
Now, this is a little bit of an odd feature, so I wanted to talk about it as a whole.
You rev by essentially sticking the webbing of your finger into this grip.
Revving this is a little bit awkward and a little bit uncomfortable overall.
You have to stick this soft fleshy part webbing of your
between your thumb and pointer finger into that wedge.
It works for all intents purposes, but it makes holding onto the blaster a little bit awkward
because I feel like I’m cupping the back there to not rev accidentally while running around.
And if you're really running around or playing with this,
you're going to activate that rev trigger by accident.
I expect there's not a lot of room in here to get a trigger, but I
really would just much rather have a rev trigger here or a better system that revs and fires.
But given the power source of AAAs, that's not going to work so well.
The entire blaster lineup seems to have relatively similar flywheel motors.
Now, this is a little bit of a mixed bag because the rev time is fairly slow.
If we give a little, listen here…
It's going to take you about two and a half seconds,
maybe three seconds, to get up to full rev.
Here we'll try again…
I'd say that was even a little bit longer, and here we'll do the Blizzard.
Oh, please don't be broken.
Again, pushing three seconds or more to get up to full speed.
Now that's somewhat to be expected when the power source is AAAs.
When generally comparing the rev times here,
it does seem like the Twin Tornado has a little bit of a longer spin-up time.
I suspect that's due to maybe slightly more powerful motors and/or
the full-size, full-height flywheel.
A little bit more on that later.
All of the blasters work on four AAA cells.
That comes with some major disadvantages.
The first is that the battery life is not going to be very long;
the second is that there's a limited amount of current you can pull from a AAA-sized cell.
D-Dart did send me
lithium batteries to work with these blasters, and that is what we're using currently.
We are currently running these all on two lithium batteries and two dummy spacers.
These batteries are lithium cobalt rechargeable.
They are considerably safer than a lipo pack because they are less prone to
fire and over-draining, and overcharging.
They are a Protected cell; you’ll see at the top of the cell a little
bump there that is a piece of circuitry that prevents over-draining and overcharging.
All four of the offerings can now fire full
darts, and they do seem to work with a variety of darts we have here.
I don't think you'd want to try short darts because the pusher,
of course, is not going to push them in.
All of the actual turrets themselves do have a little retention clip in the back.
There are little teeth here that actually hold the dart in place so.
If you look closely at this dart, you'll actually see that we've got little notches, so
I could imagine over time if you're going to keep shoving these in and over and over,
you are going to get some wear on the back of your dart there.
But darts are pretty cheap; it's probably not that big of a deal.
I'm just trying to stick it -- I don't know – 30-40 times and just
see what that wear looks like over time.
It'll Probably get somewhere there, but I don't think it's really a deal-breaker by any means.
Another nice addition to all the blasters is that there is now
an obvious place to start your blaster.
What I mean by start is an indicator as to where on the
turret itself you are actually supposed to start the blaster.
Each of them features the same release method,
which allows you to rotate the drum freely so you can reload or restart, but at least
you've got a nice home position with an empty dart that allows you to start up the blaster.
The blasters use a pretty innovative little ratcheting mechanism that
basically bounces this plastic pusher over and over at whatever speed you can rotate that.
So, to start off, we've got the Pro.
The Pro feels very much like the original blaster except they have upgraded the rate of fire.
As I mentioned earlier, there is no rev trigger on this, so when you turn this on,
you're going to fire right away.
And that's a pretty healthy rate of fire.
It has a pretty good feel in hand. I think kids would have a lot of fun with this.
Modded, you can make these things absolutely rip.
In our previous videos, we've been able to fire these things at 25 rounds a second
because when you just move the cylinder.
Essentially, as fast as you can rotate that cylinder, you will get darts out of the blaster.
Since this has fixed my biggest gripe with the original, this is a pretty
decent upgrade from the original.
It's a higher rate of fire than the v 2.0 or the original, but that's really about it.
There's not a whole lot else that's different there.
The geometry is very similar, it can take the same cage upgrade that we offer on the shop,
and there we've got a little mod kit for this as well that will be compatible, and
we'll update all those listings and probably do a mod guide now that these new blasters are out.
Next up, we've got the Twin Tornado.
Now the Twin Tornado is one of the goofier ones of the bunch,
but I think it's one of the more interesting ones.
In addition to the normal start-stop that you've got in the back,
I should actually index this over to the starting position.
So there again, we're at our start.
The neat thing about this blaster is the single or double shot.
By default, it'll fire the inner ring, but to fire the outer ring, you are essentially
rotating this to enable that little spring to catch to activate the second pusher.
We've got the rev switch back here in my palm.
It's a fairly slow rev, and I think again it's due to those larger flywheels.
So that's single, and then if I switch that around, we got double.
It's a little bit gimmicky to have the two rings here,
but I think it's actually a pretty usable option.
You compare it to the Pro here; you definitely have a larger form factor,
but the weight isn't that much larger, and since you're doubling your capacity,
I would say that's actually pretty much worth doing.
Plus, I really do like the option to just dump
two darts at a time per shot and really increase that rate of fire brute force method.
The Twin Tornado only comes in green, so this is the color you're going to see.
I did find loading this to be a little bit more awkward than the single ring Pro or
original versions because you're dodging this safety bar here and to get the darts inside.
Overall, not a big deal, but you'll find that if you're playing and you're trying
to load on the fly, you might have a little more trouble getting the right one loaded.
Next up, we have the Cyclone.
The Cyclone also features the same rev trigger in the back.
It pretty much looks identical to the Pro, except it comes in white which I think looks
very striking, and it has one other special gimmick.
You flip this little switch here, you swing that pusher arm down,
and you can pop out your cylinder and hot-swap another one right in.
That is really well done, I have to say.
So, if we rev and fire.
I think with a little practice, you could swap those pretty fast.
The hot-swap feature is really interesting.
I can't really imagine carrying these, personally.
I’m not sure how well…
Maybe I’d run around like that with a couple of these dangling on my arm.
It's a nice feature, and I think it's a really good option for those that might
want to 3d print something to say make a maybe we could make a short dart work.
I think it's gonna be a little tricky
given the space it has to clear to get into those wheels, but I like the option.
It's a neat idea, but I think it might be a little more gimmicky than
actually practical, given the design and feel of this blaster.
When you're running around, you would just have to have a good way to actually carry
these and then dump the other one, so if you could figure that out.
I think it'd be a pretty good concept overall.
Lastly, we've got the beast that is the Blizzard.
Now, this is the most ridiculous looking blaster of the bunch.
We've got 76 darts all the way around, and each of them are in individual four-round magazines.
These are very light, thin-wall magazines, and you load them like you would any other
standard magazine, and that's probably my biggest gripe with the Blizzard.
When you want to reload this--
First of all, you can't do it one-handed because you're going to pull this out,
and you have to set the blaster down.
I can't see any other way but to hold this awkwardly, pick up additional darts,
load them back in, find the slot that was open, and then put them in the blaster.
So, I really would look at this as you take it out in a game, maybe around your house or with
friends or whatever, you fire your ammo, and then you just give up, and you go do something else.
Or you stop the game and wait till the next round.
That said, it works very similar: rev-fire.
Let's see if I can force it faster.
Yes, I can!
Like the other blasters -- I had to just try that, -- you can just rip through them.
So, if we upgraded the pusher motor like I have in the original Tempest,
we would get a much higher rate of fire.
Of course, with upgrading that, you do have to change the power source,
so that adds some cost and complexity as well.
The weight is another thing that really hits me.
Just holding this out at arm's length, I mean, maybe I’m not the strongest person, but
this would get heavy after a while.
You can't really use a second hand to alleviate the weight,
and then you've got that rev switch back there that…
I feel like I’m fighting, holding onto the thing tightly enough
without revving, and there's nowhere else to hold it unless I’m not firing.
You can hold down here just fine when you're not firing,
but generally, the weight makes this one a little bit awkward.
I don't care for that quite as much, but it does have a very cool look,
and 12-year-old me would have Probably loved this.
Ergonomically the blasters are all very similar;
it really comes down to whether you like having the rev trigger back behind your palm or not.
On the lighter models, I have no problem with that, but on the heavier models,
the Blizzard and the Twin Tornado, I really
have a Problem holding these long term without activating that rev switch by accident.
That said, the grips are very comfortable all across the board,
and they are very simple and easy to use.
As far as performance, they are definitely not heavy hitters.
We're gonna put up our actual performance numbers (20-shot
average) on the screen for all four blasters.
As I mentioned earlier, there are definitely options to upgrade this as far as cage, wheels,
motor, and even the pusher motor as well to increase the rate of fire.
The Pro is going to give you the highest rate of fire across the whole line;
the Blizzard's going to give you the highest capacity, with the Twin Tornado
and the Cyclone coming somewhere in the middle.
The Pro is Probably my favorite of the offerings,
even though it doesn't have that rev trigger back here.
Because I’m going to upgrade it to a single trigger, I think that works just fine for me.
I'm going to give this one 4 out of 5 stars because it is the most comfortable lightweight,
and it sticks to the classic feel of these blasters.
The Twin Tornado is also very fun; I think I’d give this four stars as well.
The downsides are the little somewhat awkward loading,
and again that rev trigger on the palm is a little bit awkward.
It’s not so bad in this blaster compared to
the Blizzard, but I do think this is a pretty compelling offering.
For the Cyclone, I’m going to go with four stars.
I think it's kind of a novelty to have this second cylinder.
If you're playing around your house and you're playing
in a fort or something, this could be fun to have for a quick change.
But effectively, the blaster still functions just like
the Pro or one of the other blasters but does have that rev trigger in the back.
Lastly, I’m going to wrap up with the Blizzard.
The Blizzard, I’m going to give a three-star.
I just cannot see carrying this heavy guy around,
and these magazines are quite awkward and cumbersome to load.
I'm imagining this taking several minutes -- Probably would take me five minutes to load
the entire thing, and that is just too long to
load this many darts when you compare it to something that just carries a magazine
or even just the simplicity of loading the Pro one at a time as you were going.
I think the best thing about this lineup is that when you're playing with something like this,
you've got a nice scavenger blaster where you can just toss new ones in as they come around.
And I think this is a great HvZ blaster because when you're playing HvZ, you don't really need
that high of performance, so if you get this rewired to a single trigger or go with one
of the blasters that's got the rev trigger, it's a pretty good offering for HvZ because
you can load on the fly very easily and it's very compact and lightweight to carry around.
One last thing I did want to mention is that there is a missing blaster to this lineup.
A year and a half ago, D-Dart teased the Hailstorm, which was their rival
ball-compatible blaster for the lineup.
Now, when I saw that, I was a little suspect because
I know that rival balls require a lot more torque and power in the motors to Propel the
balls because of the larger ammo type, and it's less aerodynamic and less efficient.
Getting that out of an AAA form factor as far as the battery source seems pretty impossible.
I'm wondering if that blaster isn't going to be made because of the feasibility or if there
are other dangers such as users being able to shove their fingers down the flywheels.
That is another thing that's worth mentioning these blasters are definitely not for young
kids because if you turn this on, you can stick your finger right into the flywheels.
Now, fortunately, these flywheels (as I’m flinching. It didn't actually hurt) …
These flywheels don't have enough torque to actually hurt me.
I suspect this is how they are somehow getting away with toy laws.
But you definitely could get your finger in here, so that's something to be aware of.
I imagine that if you put in serrated higher power
motors and wheels for rival, it would be pretty dangerous as far as the current design goes.
Thank you so much for watching!
I hope you enjoyed the look at all of these D-Dart blasters.
Thank you again to Bullseye, LLC for sending these over.
I'd love to hear what you think of all these blasters
and would you actually use them in a game.
I have found this one to be very fun for little warehouse battles
and for room clearing, so if we get a chance in the next month or so,
I’m definitely going to use these in some of our warehouse battles.
That's it for this video!
Until next time, I’m out of darts!