While good range, there are others that shoot further.
Review:
I'm a 49 year old kid and I've been playing paintball for about a year now (started playing march of 2006). All of it woods ball (except for 3 games). I play an average of twice a month... Mostly capture the flag. My church has a group, and supplies Tipman A5's as their rental guns.
The A5 performs well... and I was fine using the stock A5... Until a friend let me use one with his Whisper barrel on it! (7/4/2006) At the time he did this he said he would probably regret it, because I would probably end up shooting him with it. (up until then I had never been successful when trying to get him) Well sure enough, I did! It was a long shot (I'm not good at judging the distance in feet, but I'd say it was about 85% of the maximum range of the barrel) and after 3-4 shots with a somewhat careless aim I got him... and even with my careless aim, the spread was less than 2 feet! With the stock barrel, for that same shot, the spread would have been about 4-5 foot.
That game I got 4 people out! The most I'd ever done before was just one. After that one use I decided I Need to get me one of these!
I have not regretted it! Now with a carefull aim (at the same distance as above), I can put the balls into a 1 foot spread!
This passed weekend (7/29/2006), was the first time I used my own whisper barrel, and I am totally in love with it! I had the best day I've had so far! Previously, my best over-all for a day had been 3 kills. I had 3 kills in my first game! I think I had 8 kills for the day, and my most memorable was my last.
It was our last game of the day. It had just been raining. When the horn blew I raced up the main path to the other fort... unfortunately, Jim got there the same time I did. He was coming up on one side of a giant root-ball of a fallen tree, and I was coming up on the other. I saw him and tried to stop... and ended up on my b__t. As I fell I fired a shot that whistled passed his ear. (we were really too close to fire but at that point it was all instinct... we were about 4 feet from each other). Immediately Jim pops up over the root-ball aims and hollers, "surrender!"... Here I am thinking "surrender? but he's in front of me... surrender is for when he's behind me..." For what seemed like forever we just stared at each other, knowing that if either fired it would be bad! Just then the ref came up and saved us both from a bad thing. He told us he would give us three seconds to run for cover. We both took off. At the end of my run I turned, sighted, and fired... right between the uprights of two crossing trees... bingo! A Center Mass Kill!
Immediately after that Wanye shot me... my shortest game ever. Less than 60 seconds, but it was my best game ever... I know I couldn't have pulled that off with the stock barrel.
I love this thing...
Conclusion:
You will have no regrets, unless you're in a large clearing, and the other guy has a longer range... that's kinda rare.
