Alpha Trooper vs.. Alpha Trooper?

Two Alpha Troopers walk into a bag..

Ok.. so putting the automatic weapons aside, I'm back to poppin' wit ma 'trooper yo! While I am clearly a big fan of the tuff lil Alpha, there are many owners out there who..well aren't. Personally I had experienced almost above average ranges and accuracy from the blaster and I hear there are many of you who would agree with me, but then there seems to be a proportion of you out there who find the Alpha Trooper is pretty much a disappointment and fires horribly. One answer to this could be managing expectations (maybe I'm easily satisfied!) or perhaps the other is maybe the quality control- maybe some of these are poorly made and others are just freaks of an over zealous factory worker?

This gave me the perfect excuse to pull another one out of its box.. In the interests of testing and research:)

My Alpha Troopers were bought from different suppliers;  AT #1 has been used significantly over the past few months, whereas AT#2 was just cracked open this morning.  AT#2 was purchased first but stayed in its box because it took ages to arrive, whereas AT#1 is actually a newer release blaster (but older in terms of my usage).

Going down to my underground carpark, I took both Alpha Troopers and two packets of 18 fresh darts (actually the ones that came with one of my Stampedes) for this test. Each blaster had a chance to shoot with the other's drum (just in case the drum could affect the performance). No wind in the underground carpark, just the odd bemused neighbour taking out their rubbish:) (I did notice however for the first time the really unusual dramatic arc the dart does once it's flown for some distance.. at times it just suddenly veers off to the side?)

After the tests-to be honest.. I was a lil disappointed that there actually WAS a difference.  AT#2 was significantly underpowered compared to AT#1. I could possibly chalk this up to issues with spring wear or frequency of use if AT#2 WAS the blaster I used the most, but it wasn't. And, while there were a few rounds where the AT#2 did get some decent distance, but on the whole it was quite a bit less than the older blaster.

AT#2 was hitting around 11-12 metres and AT#1 was getting around 14-15 metres easy (and yes, this was on contact with the ground, not after the bounce). 

I admit given I mostly use them inside in my apartment, the ranges aren't that big a deal so I probably wouldn't have noticed had I not gone down to the carpark. It won't have me whining and throwing my inferior Trooper out.. although maybe I'll have to be calling it "Beta Trooper" now:P (I can now understand why modding becomes popular..)

Anyway..strangely enough.. there's a difference. I'm not wondering if this is the case with other Nerf blasters as well; when you read posts of people saying "I hate (insert blaster here) it sucks" maybe they've just got themselves a dud?