X-Shot Dual: Discs and Darts in one

The Dual is one of the blasters in the new X-Shot line pegged for this year. It's a very small and compact blaster with the main selling point being the ability to shoot both darts AND discs, hence the clever play on words giving it its name. On paper it sounds pretty good, and at 9.95 AUS, I thought I'd pick it up to have a lil' play and see whether it could impress. 

The Dual comes in an open card package, with three foam suction cap darts and 6 foam ring discs. The blaster sports the traditional X-Shot green, black and gold finish and while a tad on the lightweight side and no Nerf blaster, is still ok in build quality. 

The first thing that really springs to mind on encountering the Dual is it's size- it's hard to not pick it up and think "well it's smaller than I expected". This blaster has a tiny grip and even with my little girl hands, I still struggled to feel comfortable holding the Dual in my hand.

The darts load thru sliding them in the barrel at the front; it also comes with two holes for spare darts but this IS a single shot blaster. 

The front of the blaster also has a thin slot where the discs come out when firing them. There is also an orange transparent hinged compartment on top of the blaster that opens to contain the accompanied foam discs. The discs themselves are no Vortex XLR ammo; they're essentially just flat foam rings that are quite soft and can be squeezed in half quite easily. 

Cocking mechanism is located at the back of the blaster using a looped arm, much like the Nerf Nitefinder. Cocking the blaster is required for shooting both the darts AND the discs, by pulling the arm back till it locks in place.

 Depending on how you load it, you can fire just darts or just discs, or if your'e so inclined popping them out simultaneously. As a dart shooter, the Dual isn't bad. It's not nearly as powerful as a Nitefinder, but it's ok. With the accompanied X-Shot darts it's pretty average, but with some better made Nerf darts it's got quite a decent punch. 

Ranges are pretty normal for this kinda blaster but blasters like the Nerf Jolt probably own it as far as distance and they're considerably smaller too. That being said, the Dual would serve well as a very compact secondary or tertiary blaster given its size. 

As a disc shooter though, it's next to rubbish. The mechanism to shoot the discs is merely a case of the cocking arm "pushing" the dart out at moderate speed. The result is a rather pathetic dribble of a disc falling out of the blaster and pushing off to the side with absolutely no accuracy and/or even half decent distances. 

It's a novel idea, but it really did seem like a more of a side thought putting this feature into the blaster rather than a whole lot of R+D into it and I can't see many people using this blaster for discs; the lack of availability of the discs by themselves also suggests they're just going to get lost/turfed anyway:) 

For around 10 bucks the X-Shot Dual isn't bad value for money, but you'll need to remember the disc shooting capabilities are a non event and therefore you're not really getting the "2-in-1" capabilities that it sounds like on paper. While I think there are other blasters available for similar dollars that'll probably do better, I don't think the Dual is bad, it's just nothing THAT exciting. 

Worth checking out if you just want something different from the yellow and orange- I got mine from Myer Canberra Centre.