Hi, I'm Luke with Out of Darts.
Today we are checking out a sequel to a really great blaster:
This is the Hummingbird 2.0.
Let's get going!
This is the Hummingbird 2.0.
For those that didn't see the Gen 1 Hummingbird, I did a review on the channel a few years back.
It was a really cool blaster and a unique design using off-the-shelf components for
both the Magpul grip and stock, meaning that everything is very ergonomic and comfortable.
It was a very solid blaster, it performed quite well,
and it was also one of the earlier blasters to use a solenoid.
Full disclosure before we get into this video any further:
This blaster was sent to me by my buddy Timmy for free -- that is
the creator of the Hummingbird Gen 2, so keep that in mind.
My opinions are my own, but this was, at the end of the day, a free review sample.
Now I did have a tiny hand in guiding the direction here, and I want to say very tiny.
The reason for that is we did send him over one of our Neutron solenoids.
One of my largest complaints with the 1.0 was the size and the weight, but with our new solenoids,
these are smaller dimensionally, they can fire faster, and they are lighter,
meaning that he could reduce the form factor and the weight and handling feel on this blaster and,
it is remarkably better than the original even though it's just a small incremental change.
It's sort of like if you had iPods back in the day.
The first time you held an iPod Mini compared to a standard iPod –
I'm aging myself, I know, by talking about iPods.
But, it was a remarkable change in how it fit and felt in your hand and in your pocket.
And, in this case, in your hand and while you're playing with it.
Timmy, the designer, goes by “Ansuzalgiz,” which is a combination of two Norse runes.
You can actually see those Norse runes here on the front of the blaster,
which I think is a really nice touch.
Like all of his other work, he built builds these blasters and sells them assembled as
completed kits, and his print quality is absolutely remarkable; it's very good.
It's on par with what we would ship out of our warehouse here;
I think he’s even on the Prusa Mk 3's, if I'm not mistaken.
I specifically love this color combo, and it just happened to
work with the two angled mags that we had on hand right here in the studio.
At its core, this is a flywheel, single trigger, mag in front -- angled mag specifically, blaster.
I think the look and feel of it is just really sweet.
It's very compact, it's comfortable; it feels good.
It's rock solid because of these nice touches of not trying to improve on a
grip when manufacturers have been working on making good grips for a very long time.
It is a single trigger, meaning you pull part-way to Rev and then all the way to fire.
Now I'm gonna have to put it up on the screen here because I didn't get the clarification,
and I haven't ripped this open yet, but inside here, from my understanding, there's
clearly a board driving the full-auto because a solenoid does not make it full-auto by itself.
Now upon further investigation, it turns out there's actually no board inside here.
The firing system using the solenoid is completely electromechanical.
What that means is:
When you pull the trigger…
What you're hearing there is the solenoid not activating a switch or activating a switch,
and that switch allows the circuit to reset.
And then when the circuit has reset -- if you're still pulling the trigger,
it fires the solenoid again.
It just repeats this over and over completely electromechanically rather than electronically.
Really nice touch and a great solution to the
issue of not being able to produce boards right now.
A bit like momentum, you can just dump mags to your heart's content.
That's one of the things I loved about momentum so much is the rate of fire
along with the smaller solenoid, really reducing the form factor and making this feel, honestly,
more Compact and comfortable than, say, a Stryfe or most other blasters.
We were really excited to get a solenoid on the market; it was something I wanted to do for years.
In the past, we wanted to retail other sellers’ options, but we were never given the opportunity.
So, we ultimately developed our own with Eli.
These are available in the shop now, so Shameless promotion here for those.
If any designers are out there working on a new blaster and you're an established designer in
our hobby, reach out, and I’ll send you a sample so you can try it out for yourself.
Now the original Hummingbird actually used Straight magazines,
and he did that design prior to the angled Talons actually being available.
But, he put the straight magazine at an angle in the magwell.
Now, this looked really cool, but the problem was that the dart was needing
to be realigned from sitting at a 15-degree angle to straight through the flywheel cage.
With the Hummingbird Gen 2, since we're using an angled mag right out of the box,
we have solved that problem, and from what I can see, the accuracy seems to have improved as well.
Now, this specific setup is 3s; it's running on a 950-milliamp graphene,
which you can pull out here.
It's a little bit smaller battery compartment than he had before,
but I really like it because it dramatically reduces the size of the blaster.
You've got a toolless release with this quick-release pin.
Really nice touch.
Ergonomically, it is extremely comfortable; you've got ambidextrous mag release on either side,
it's very solid, and I really I'm really impressed with this overall.
As far as the flywheels themselves, we've got Keppler’s in here, so we're hitting
right around that, just under the 150 FPS mark, which is perfect for a 150 cap.
It appears the whole system is built around screws going right into the actual solenoid itself.
You can see here where that sits one two three four screws,
and that would sit right in there (probably the other direction).
So you can kind of see where that lives inside there, which is kind of neat.
I think it is a really well-put-together system, and Timmy is no stranger to design.
He's been working on stuff for a number of years; he also did the Kestrel, which was a sidearm.
A couple of months back, He actually asked what I would rather see:
a new Kestrel or a new Hummingbird.
For me, I felt like this was the better offering of the two, especially in a world where….
The Kestrel is a great blaster, but it has to compete with the PewPew and Flycore
(Meowser, Quik, and that whole system), along with competing with the worker Nightingale and PewPew.
Did I already say PewPew?
I probably already said PewPew.
The Magwell is very nicely designed; you can gravity drop the mags, which is great.
It is worth noting that while the Nightingale mags do fit in the magwell, they will not lock
into place, and this is completely due to how it is aligned in the system here.
It would be very trivial to update this to make it work with one or the other or both.
Probably just updating to this would only involve extending this piece.
So, if people were interested in that, I'm fairly certain that Timmy would actually take
care of that because I can see it's all lined up; it just doesn't go far enough.
So if that's all there is to do to it, you could run this as a primary with
a nightingale as a secondary; it seems like a pretty solid Loadout.
One other bit of testing that Perry did here is we found that if you put on a
bumper or an extender on these mags, the mag spring is not fast enough to keep up
with the full rate of fire because this thing can fire so many rounds per second.
Another little detail that Perry found out, and I didn't catch immediately, is that:
In addition to being able to gravity drop
or [release and] pull the mag, you also can just pull the mag.
It is just the right amount of interference fit and hold that you can do either,
which I have to say I love that feature.
That's really cool.
Form-factor-wise, this definitely has a little bit more of a real-steel look.
However, he's got some nice bright colors up front.
I wouldn't print this in all dark colors,
certainly, if you're going to run around at a park.
But at the end of the day, I think it looks a lot like many of the other blasters we've got
going at this point, including modded Stryfes and all the Dart Zone blasters at this point.
At the end of the day, I couldn't recommend this any higher.
I think it's a really great platform.
I loved the previous version, and I think all of the improvements are better in every way.
It's smaller, it's more compact, we've got full-auto now, we've got default
angled mag support, a smaller battery compartment for a 950 instead of such a
large battery where the foregrip was a little bit extra-large before, and it's just solid.
So, I would definitely recommend this.
Again I did get this blaster for free, so keep that in mind, but I think it's
a really great design, and Timmy is one of the wonderful creators in this hobby.
I would love to hear from you on what you think
of the Hummingbird Gen 2 and what you think of our Neutron solenoid.
I am really excited to see more of these out on the field,
and I will put all the links in the description to both his website and
where to purchase these and any other information we come up with.
Until next time I'm out of darts.
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Until next time I'm out of darts.
Oh.
I'm out of darts for real.