X-Shot: Turbofire

We got ourselves the much anticipated X-Shot Turbofire; this is a blaster from the second release of blasters from relatively unknown toy manufacturer Zuru. They seem to have ditched the dual ammo of foam and water and just concentrated on releasing a blaster that shoots just foam darts. 20 of them, to be exact, with a pump action cocking mechanism under the muzzle, and an inbuilt  ammo drum. X-Shot blasters have been touch and go- we had the surprisingly awesome Stealth, followed by the absolute rubbish that was the Thundershot. So how does this one go? More pics and info after the jump.

The Turbofire is quite a decent sized piece of kit, comparable to the Nerf Raider CS-35. It sports the standard X-Shot green and black paint scheme, with a translucent orange shell around the barrel and the standard yellow trigger. In box it comes with the blaster and 20 of the black and yellow sucker darts- or if you buy the dual pack, two blasters and 40 darts. It feels a little rattley, but on the whole it's pretty solid and decently built.

The cocking mechanism looks fantastic, but is incredibly uncomfortable to hold and even with my tiny kid like hands, I had issues with gripping it and pulling it back and forth. This was a fail for us which frustrated me somewhat.

the stock is a solid green plastic.

the original images show an opening in the stock

It has an inbuilt stock (or what they call a "dynamic shoulder rest" ???) , which is probably too short to be of any benefit, but it looks cool. Interestingly enough, the original images of the Turbofire we showed a few months ago allowed for the stock to open up and store extra darts- they seem to have dumped that idea as you can see the stock is a solid green plastic with no opening. Not sure if this is just my test model or not.

 The Turbofire features an inbuilt 20 round drum, which you can easily rotate manually to insert your darts. It comes with 20 of its own foam suckers (black and yellow) but it easily fits other branded foam darts too.

 From the back, it has an interesting round thingy that sticks out of the blaster-I'm guessing this is just for show because gawd knows what else it's for. Aesthetics- if you like.. round thingies.

 It's simply a matter of loading your darts, using the pump action cocking mechanism to prime your blaster, and fire away.

How does it perform is the big question, and I'll be honest- surprisingly pretty darn good. From our experiences, it's got similar ranges to a Recon or a Deploy- it easily made it up the distance of my staircase and to the second floor as well as hitting the ceiling with no problem. No jams thus far, other than the annoying grip on the cocking mechanism which keeps slipping out of my hand. But it's surprisingly quite accurate and decent to fire. Much of this depends on the darts though- the quality of the X-Shot darts leave something to be desired which tend to result in them flying all over the shop. Inspecting your dart before you load can really assist in your accuracy.

Sizewise compared to the Alpha Trooper

 Would we recommend it? At the moment K-Mart have a sale on where you can pick up TWO of them for 25 dollars AUS. That's a $12.50 blaster that fires 20 rounds and performs pretty decently for what it is. For that kind of money, I'd be definitely thinking it's worth checking out and having some fun with it. Personally, I like it- i'd like it more if the grip on the cocking mechanism wasn't so awkward to hold but hey, it does the job. It's no Nerf but.. if you want a Nerf blaster.. go buy a Nerf blaster:)