marballizers - the bag I got must have been old, because they had an extremely tough shell. on average they scored 12-16 on the paintball break test. at least they flew straight.
midnight - average consistency/accuracy, but it can be almost impossible to see where they're flying, due to the black shell.
Marker Setup:
spyder xtra
smartparts teardrop 14"
Recommended Barrels:
teardrop - works fine
Strengths:
-cheap
-few eggs/dimples
-relatively accurate
-no breaks
Weaknesses:
-inconsistent shell strength
-a bit small?
Review:
When I first got these, I wasn't expecting much. They cost under $14 for 500 at walmart. They rolled right through both my stock barrel and my teardrop with no resistance, telling me that they were a little too small for my barrels. I performed the break test several times; this is where you take a paintball and drop it from about 6 feet onto a flat concrete surface, catch it before it bounces again, and repeat. You count how many times it must be dropped from 6 feet before it breaks. 1-3 is considered too fragile and prone to breakage in barrels, 4-6 is just about right, and above that there's a good chance the shells are so tough that they will bounce off opponents. About a third of these paintballs broke on the very first drop, while the rest fell in the 4-6 range.
However, despite all that, I took these out and have fired about 500 so far. The first thing I noticed was that they flew quite straight. I really couldn't ask for more consistent shooting, given the velocity spikes from my unregulated co2 tank. I was laying quite a few on top of each other from 60 feet, and I got nice tight spreads overall. Looking at the balls themselves, they were consistently round overall with only a few eggs and dimples. Also, not one has broken in either of my barrels.
It's probably more of a merit to the teardrop barrel than to the paintballs that these performed so well even with a poor ball-to-barrel bore size match (they did perform considerably worse with the stock barrel).
Mine came with a white/red shell and a thinnish white fill. Can't complain there really - it's easy to see how your shots are flying with a bright shell.
Conclusion:
I really can't complain about these. I'd imagine that there are brands that are even more consistent in shape and hardness, but then you're probably talking fresh marbs/premiums/blaze, which will cost more. Taking the price into consideration, I rate these 9. Recommended.
Rating:
9 out of 10
Last edited on Sunday, August 17th, 2003 at 10:24 am PST
