Thursday, November 10, 2011

Air Zone Quick Fire: Hoo Rarrr!


The Air Zone Quick Fire is a Toys R Us exclusive motorised belt fed flywheel blaster that fires foam darts. It's been in our radar for quite some time, and we finally got our hands on a unit to try out thanks to Jerm from Nerf Mods + Reviews. Air Zone have been bringing out some pretty sweet looking gear lately and we're pleased to report the Quick Fire is no exception.


The Quick Fire is a solid piece of kit. It's quite weighty and well made and feels pretty solid in the hand. Out of the box it comes with the blaster, a 25 round belt and the detachable stock; as a flywheel blaster it also requires six AA batteries that aren't included. 

We love the way it looks, although gun lovers will question the odd design of having a clip AND a belt, though personally I didn't really care. It sports a red and gold/orange paint hob, with some black "camo" spots sprayed on. The colours remind me of the Powerstrike 48, another one of Airzone's flywheel blasters.

The 'clip' is actually the battery compartment for the Quick Fire, and it takes a fair whack of juice with SIX AA batteries. The door is attached using two Phillips head screws.


 The Quick Fire comes with a detachable stock that extends by pushing against a lever. It attaches in a similar way to Nerf stocks, but will not fit a Nerf blaster and vice versa. Normally I like the look of a blaster without a stock but this one actually works for me and the Quick Fire feels better with it attached.




The ammo belt is a continuous loop (unlike that of the Nerf Vulcan) and takes 25 rounds (like the Vulcan!). Interestingly enough it has "Punisher" written on the shell holders, so while I've personally never owned an Air Zone Punisher, I'd suggest it's using the same belt other than it being a full loop.



As always, Air Zone darts are shorter than standard Nerf darts and therefore aren't compatible unless you chop down your Nerf darts to fit.  Loading the belt is as easy as sliding the darts in; I did find they tended to fall out if you were on the move, although it was also pretty easy to just slide them in on the fly at the same time:)

Loading the belt into the Quick Fire is pretty simple; popping open the breach cover on top of the blaster, slide the belt in to line up against the "teeth" , and then snap shut the breech cover. There's something that resembles a tactical rail on top of the cover, but it doesn't seem to be able to accommodate anything I've got that COULD attach to it, and it's also in an awkward position on the blaster in any case.

Breech Cover with a tactical rail that takes.. nothing:P
The two cogs "teeth" to drop the belt into
Belt loaded into the Quickfire
The Quick Fire will turn on my pushing the switch on the left side of the blaster above the trigger. It's a little less sophisticated than Nerf in this aspect- regardless of whether there is a belt loaded or not, you can still power it up regardless. Given it's a flywheel blaster, it's obviously going to be rather noisy.




The Quick Fire is both semi automatic and fully automatic, although I found the "semi automatic" mode wasn't really that crash hot. Rate of fire is quite slow, and therefore a quick squeeze of the trigger wouldn't necessarily fire off a dart. Keeping the trigger pulled will churn through the belt and I tried this several times with no misfires or jams.


Ranges are pretty decent; I found it surpassed the average 10 metre mark quite consistently and with quite a bit of force. It's quite fun, though again the ROF is slow and a bit of a let down . The Quick Fire is pretty accurate though; I found it was hitting the targets well so that was a plus.

On the whole, I thought the Air Zone Quick Fire was pretty cool. It's a decent flywheel blaster that has a more traditional styling with trigger rather than the Power Strike and Punisher; it's a well made blaster that is also good looking and does look sweet other than the odd clip/belt appearance. Ranges and accuracy are great; my beef is mainly with the slow rate of fire and due to the way it's designed, it's really more of a "fire off three shots at a time at least" sort of blaster rather than getting that well timed lined up single shot.

The barrel seemed to be a lil' bit warped?




Size comparison with a Longstrike

 Our unit came from the US (thanks Jerm!) but no doubt they'll be in Australian Toys R Us stores shortly (if not already.. which seems to be the trend lately!)


7 comments:

  1. Real nice. I think the batteries being in the magazine is a good idea, but it might be misleading to some.

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  2. The most interesting thign here is that I believe it may be 'hitting harder' is because it requres 6AA batteries to run. Therefore it's already on 9Vs compared to the others that only require 3AA batteries to run.

    - littlebro05

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  3. you should do a crazy voltage mod like you did to the raven see if itincrease rpm and distance

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  4. That tac-rail looks like it'll probably take the scope from the QuickFire Sniper, it also looks like you might actually be able to use the scope without grinding down any parts of the blaster as is needed with the sniper.

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  5. After all you went through to get one, I'm glad you like it:)

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  6. An interesting mod idea would be just increasing power to the chain drive wheels and not the flywheels. Easy way to do this is add some batteries in line with the trigger. The you get more rate of fire without the flywheels foing crazy.

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  7. it's best than the power strike 48? please answer

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