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Toystar M4A1 W/ M203

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Outline:
1. First Looks
2. Closer examination
3. Durability
4. Performance
5. Conclusion

1. First Looks

I got this gun courtesy of Model Marts Korea. I received the gun within 10 days upon shipping with regular airmail. Not bad if I do say so myself. They were very prompt about shipping it. Upon taking it out of the mailing box it was sent in,
I noticed that the box it was packages in looked very nice. Good colors, good pictures.

As I removed the gun from its box, all I thought was "How beautiful." It has full Colt trademarks except for at the bottom where it says,
"BB 6.0 MM." The M203 is beautiful. Ok, the whole gun is beautiful except for the orange flash hider.

The gun comes with a cleaning rod, lower hand guard (more on that later...), small manual, and a pack of 100 .1 weight BBs. The manual is in mostly Korean with those little cartoons we all love so much. .1 gram BBs, something we hardly see here in the US. Korean law states that airsoft guns cannot fire over 200 fps with .1s. The BBs it comes with are OK, not great. All who live in the US can use .12s in it with no problems. The lower hand guard it comes with is for completing the gun when the M203 is removed. The M203 is nonfunctional, but looks nice nonetheless. It is easy to remove-just unscrew three screws and pop it off. The cleaning rod it comes with is identical to the one Marui guns come with, except it has no markings of how far to insert it.

2. Closer examination

The gun is light, weighing in at around 3 pounds, and has very little external or internal metal parts. Metal parts include: trigger, selector switch, rear receiver pin, charging handle, front sight assy., M203 trigger guard, and various screws throughout the gun. As stated before, the trademarks are very well done. However, there is one mistake. On the bottom of the magazine, it says: "CAL. 56.5MM". . Of course we know the real M4 fires a much smaller round(5.56 caliber to be exact-Shriak). The magazine holds 30 in the chamber and over 300 in the storage space in the mag. Reloads are quick, but BB's rattle around a lot inside the magazine. Anyways, there are a few minor gripes about the looks of this gun.
1) The M203 grip is very shiny.
2) The whole gun does feel a little bit too light, but no matter.
One thing I just love about Armalites is the dust cover. This one has a functioning dust cover. When you cock the gun, the dust cover flips down. The carrying handle has a hole in the top for mounting a scope. The windage on the sights is adjustable, but the elevation is not. This gun has a three-position stock, very handy, and very solid feeling. One thing on this that beats almost every spring powered M16/M4/Xm177 etc. is its ability to strip. Just pop out the rear receiver pin and fold down the upper receiver, just like the real thing! The M203 is pretty nice looking. There are full Colt trademarks on the launcher. I said before that the launcher doesn't function, neither does the chamber open, but it still looks nice. One thing that Toystar really mastered on the M203 is the safety. It folds in just like the real thing and keeps the trigger from moving (not that the trigger did anything in the first place).

3. Durability

Not bad. Though the plastic on the body is a little weak, it should hold up to some banging pretty well. As far as internals? Well, unless upgraded (more on that later), they should last a lifetime. The least durable thing on the whole gun is the dust cover. Its thin, and made of weak plastic, but since this part doesn't take much beating, it should be fine.

4. Performance

I saved this for last because the performance compared to Taiwanese and Japanese guns is pretty poor, but this is due to the power restrictions of Korean airsoft guns. If I were to compare it to any gun, it would be a lower end spring pistol. However, where this gun lacks in power, it makes up in accuracy. This gun is very accurate. I set up a target at 50 feet and the groups were about 5 inches. It has a metal inner barrel. This gun performs best with .12s. .1s overhop a little, and .2s go about 50 feet before hitting the ground. In an airsoft game, the effective range is about 70 feet. It can be upgraded. I have no quite figured out how to put in a new spring, but now that I have finished this review, I might be more aggressive. To sum it up, the performance is less than you would want while playing an airsoft game.

5. Conclusion

For those collectors out there, this should be your prime choice for a wall hanger. It costs much less than a Marui, but looks really great. Airsoft gamers, don't expect much in the ways of performance. This gun isn't a good skirmisher unless you upgrade it. Overall, I'm please with it. So here is my conclusion:
Collectors, if you want an M4, you don't have to crank out the $$$. This gun looks nice, and has good function. Could be a good training tool as well.
Gamers, unless you are good with upgrading spring guns, this isn't the gun for you. Now, if you play with spring pistols mainly, then this will do fine, but it won't hold out against higher end springer rifles and pistols. This isn't a good skirmisher.

That's it all, and thanks for reading!

[!UPDATE!][Attention][Achtung!]
I upgraded it successfully. I put a cut down super 9 spring in it and now its as good or better than the UHC MP5. I put a cut down PVC pipe behind the spring guide and it's holding well.

~Haraneil

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