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- Tippmann A-5
- hellion666's review
Have a picture of Tippmann A-5?, please send it to us.
Picture courtesy of nd89nba.
| Value for Money | 8.9/10  |
|---|---|
| Reviewer Rating | 9.3/10 |
| Overall Rating | 9.3/10  |
By hellion666
on 29th Jan 2007
| Value for money | 10/10 |
|---|---|
| Overall value | 9/10 |
 hellion666's recommendation | |
Awesome feed system straight out of the box
Reliability, great rate of fire
Tippmann durability
Bulky stock hopper
Awful stock barrel
I did a lot of homework before making a final purchase decision. I wanted a marker that I know what last, have great durability, reliability, stability and accuracy, but I didn't want to spend a lot of money. This sounds sort of selfish in a way: I want an awesome marker for not a lot of money. Well, after doing a lot of research and reading a lot of reviews on this site as well as any others I could find, I started shopping around for prices on a Tippmann A-5. I finally found a place that had the Tippmann A-5 for a nice price and that shipped to Canada.
Now onto my review of the gun: This marker was so easy to set up out of the box: put it on safety, load it, and attach the Co2 cylinder. Done. From the very first shot I knew I had made the right decision. Just holding this marker gives you the feeling that a lot of work went into making this marker just right. And it's worth every penny even if it is slightly more expensive than most blow backs. This gun has everything the average paintballer would ever need: Amazing accuracy, height rate of fire when it's needed, durable construction, easy to use sights, and the almighty cyclone feed.
What this really means is that you don't have to go out and spend another $200 to get the gun to work the way you thought it would. You can get about 10 balls a second just by pulling the trigger normally. The cyclone feed works just as well as the advertisements say: the faster you pull the trigger, the faster this thing loads the balls. And it never messes up (well, not so far. And I've done some pretty rigorous testing). The gun shoots pretty straight compared to every other gun I've seen, this is the most accurate. This gun also has a built in front handle that's darned comfortable albeit a little small for those with big hands. Also, the vertical Co2 adapter is a nice feature when you want a compact marker for indoor play.
First off, I'm going to break down the cocking, loading of the balls, rate of fire and accuracy. The cocking handle is located on the left side at the front of the fun. It's easy to pull back and actually quite fun to load because it mimics a real gun.
If you don't know how the cyclone feed works, it's actually pretty simple. A star shaped object (a sprocket if you will) sits at the bottom of the hopper. In between the sprocket are 5 balls. To the left of the sprocket is the hole where the balls are pushed from the sprocket located at the bottom of the hopper and go into the chamber. When the trigger is pulled, the ball in the chamber is fired. At the same time, excess Co2 is diverted from the barrel to a smaller chamber to force the sprocket to rotate, pushing a fresh ball into the chamber. This sounds like a timely process, but it's not. It can happen up to 15 times a second according to the advertisements. Of course, you do need an electronic trigger to achieve a rate of 15 rounds per second. It's the main reason this gun fires as quickly as it does. The faster you pull the trigger, the faster a fresh ball will enter the chamber after firing. So far it has worked perfectly. Not a single ball has backfired or been chopped by the bolt.
Traditionally, rate of fire is usually inversely proportional to the accuracy. Well this is not the case with the A-5. The accuracy is just as great if you are sniping while prone or charging the enemy base. The balls shoot pretty much as straight as a spherical object can given that wind and air resistance can have a profound affect on its trajectory. For example, in a low wind situation, I can kneel about 30 feet away from a pole about 1 inch in diameter and hit it more than 50% of the time at a rate of about 4 balls a second. Most of the misses are within 1-inch left of right of the pole. Bear in mind that I am in a kneeling position and attempting to react to the slight recoil while maintaining a constant ROF. With practice I'm sure I could get up to 75% accuracy.
Secondly, I will know discuss the construction, weight and durability of the marker.
The gun weighs in at about 6 pounds total with 200 balls in the hopper and a 12oz Co2 tank attached. I'm not really sure if that is heavier than the average gun, but it feels very solid and stable. The frame of the gun is a very dense plastic.Strong plastic! Almost every piece of the body of the marker is held in place by additional support as well. My only concern is the manual-loading arm for the cyclone feed. It's only normal plastic and does not have much support. The arm's only use is to manually rotate the sprocket in the event that a ball is not pushed into the chamber (You can also just fire 1 blank round to force the cyclone feed into action to load a new ball anyways). This arm is also needed when your Co2 tank is low on gas. Occasionally the sprocket won't rotate, but at this point, your muzzle velocity is so low due to lack of gas that you should just replace the cylinder anyways. I'm sure that I will never break this piece off in the lifetime of this gun because it runs parallel to the main part of the body and has some protection from the strong hopper. This arm is also very flexible too; I'm sure it would take a lot of stress to break it off.
Another great feature of this gun is the quick strip. Me, being the casual paintballer, will probably never need to use this feature. But I did quick strip it just to see some of the innards of this marker. And yes. You can strip this gun down very quickly. 2 push pins and the handle falls off. A few more and you can get to any piece of the gun. Also, you don't have to worry about the push pins falling out while playing. A pin has to be pushed from one side of the gun, and then pulled from the other side. The pin is also securely fitted as well.
All right, I've pretty much gone over the technical end of things. I will now proceed to my experiences while using the gun in a game.
I have to say, I love the realistic look of this gun. From the sights down to the handle and the cocking handle, it feels very authentic. You probably don't want to carry this one in your front seat on the way down to your local park, nor would you want to ever fire this gun in an urban area. I live in the bush so no one cares. Anyways, this is the best thing I have ever invested money in. So far it's performed exactly how I wanted it to. With the exception of the weak looking manual cyclone feed loader arm and the slightly bulky hopper I am thoroughly satisfied with my purchase. The hopper only looks bulky because of the wide neck. It's really not any bigger than any other 200 round hoppers. It's just that I place the gun on my left shoulder so the hopper blocks a small portion of my field of view. For everyone else that places the Co2 against their right shoulder, you probably won't even notice. And let me reiterate that reliability of the cyclone feed and the gun in general: I thought it would be a good idea to waste what was left of a 200 can of Brass Eagle paint balls that were nearing the age of one year. I fired them off as fast as I could and not a single ball broke nor did they curve off of their trajectory. I then proceeded to load up some quality paint and was very pleased with the results.
Conclusion: If this in-depth review doesn't convince you to spend the extra bit of cash and get an A-5 as opposed to a marker that will need more maintenance and upgrades, then nothing will. For approximately $240 US (lower if you shop around) you get a lot more bang for your buck because of all the included extra features at are otherwise mods or upgrades for every other gun. I sincerely hope this review helps someone out. Inthefrey, another person who wrote an excellent review of the Tippmann A-5 under this section was posted on march 7, 2003 sold me on this marker. So I hope I am writing this to at least back up his claims that the A-5 is an "excellent piece of Tippmann engineering and workmanship". It was worth every penny to get it. I hope anyone who buys this gun enjoys it even half as much as I have.
P.S. I want to thank all those that submitted whole-hearted, detailed reviews of the Tippmann A-5. You helped me make the right purchase decision.
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