TSD Tactical XM8 AEG Review


I was very excited to get the chance to review this gun, as the XM8 is not frequently replicated, and it is quite a stylish looking gun if I do say so myself. There are extremely cheap versions in the MPEG and 'clone' categories, but this one is a legitimate high grade AEG. It is significantly cheaper than most AEGs however and even a little cheaper than the other guns produced by TSD Tactical. I was not only glad to be looking at this XM8, but also looking at TSD Tactical. I at first believed this company to be a new one, but in fact they are old relative to others in the industry as they started in 2007, but have really been overlooked do to the lack of exposure and marketing. The AEG world has been rapidly growing and changing, and I would like to do my best to stay up to date on all of the players and such, and this is one way of doing that.







The XM8 is an interesting model, as it is not even entirely mass produced at the real steel level. The XM8 is a project idea for a replacement weapon for the M16 and M4 variants currently used by the US military. There are many prototypes out there which were tested by the US military, but the project has been delayed, possibly for good as it does not seem to be the immediate solution for the US military. Regardless of whether or not it ever becomes a widespread military weapon at the real steel level, it is an attractive looking weapon, and provides unique looks and features to the M16/M4 covered airsoft fields of the world today.



I also would like to first point out that TSD Tactical has this gun and others produced by SRC, and each of these guns (all which have OEM by SRC on their box) are backed with a 60 day warranty if anything is to go wrong. I would not venture to compare the SRC of the MPEG world to the SRC of the high grade AEG world. You get what you pay for, and since these guns are more expensive you can bet they are made with a higher quality in mind. In my opinion warranties are something missing from the airsoft world, especially for new companies, as the only way to be able to trust a new brand is with some sort of guarantee. So hats off to TSD Tactical for offering this warranty. Their guns also come internally upgraded with steel gears, metal bushings, and a high torque motor.



First Impressions








The gun came in a cardboard box with logos, images, and feature blurbs as seen in the picture above. It advertises immediately on the outside that the gun is equipped with steel gears, metal hop-up, two hi-caps, 3x adjustable aluminum scope, flip up sights, and a 'ultra high torque motor'. These are the high lights of the gun, and in addition to that the gun shoots 330 FPS out of the box, which is becoming a pretty common stock velocity for manufacturers with the exception of airsoft giant Tokyo Marui. When I first looked and held the gun the first thing that popped into my head was to check the price of the gun, as it did not strike me as that impressive cosmetically. It did look alright, but at the same time looked a little plasticy for my liking, and few of the parts seemed to be a little weak. This gun, along with all TSD line guns, comes with two hi-capacity magazines, metal bushings, and a metal hop-up unit (about $50 worth of add ons), all with an approximate price range from about $205-250 USD. So it is pretty inexpensive all things considered.






The highlights of the gun stamped clearly on the box




The gun is pretty much all plastic, like the real steel version, though the quality of the plastic, you can tell even through images, does not match the quality of the real guns plastic (as I guess would be expected). I did notice that it did have a solid aluminum scope at the top, which actually does function as a nice, useful scope. I was impressed to find how useful and even how accurate the scope actually was but more on that later in the review. Other metal pieces include the entire charging handle construction, the ejection port cover, the magazine release, the trigger, both selector switches, the outer barrel, and the iron sights. The gun has a fair amount of weight to it, about what you would expect from a typical Marui, but I felt like it should be a tad heavier at certain points; perhaps I was being picky. Despite my slight dissatisfaction with the weight of the gun I must admit it is very balanced, even with the battery installed in the front hand guard. You notice a slight front heaviness in the front, but it is only slight, and in my opinion rivals the TM M733 in terms of weight distribution for a movable stocked gun. The weight could be perfectly distributed however if more weight was put in the stock region, which is one of the more disappointing components of this gun as I will discuss later.





The box as it came packed




The Body







The main body of the gun feels pretty solid, but the plastic finish is a little too shiny, and feels a little bit less durable than the plastic of a Marui. The pistol grip and receiver do feel quite solid though and I currently have no complaints about these regions. The front hand guard also feels pretty solid externally, but again is just a grade below Marui quality in my opinion. The gun contains very little trade marks at all, as the receiver is pretty much completely bare. On the one side it simply states "Warning refer to instruction manual" while on the other side appears to be more like an actual trademark with "Kal 5.56mmx45 SRC Defense, Made in Taiwan". Pretty bare in terms of trademarks, but in all fairness the real gun is pretty bare in this respect too, and I believe that TSD replicated the locations exactly right on where they put their marks. The body is alright, but I do believe it could be of a higher quality by simply making it a little less shiny by using a higher quality plastic. Not bad however, as it is similar to a Marui in terms of overall body look and feel, but hey, you get this XM8 for cheaper than a Marui so why complain?








The Stock



The stock would probably be the only part of this gun I believe they need to work on. As with pretty much any gun there are many parts which could be improved upon, but I must say the stock design should be improved upon. The stock looks exactly like the real steel stock, and operates in the same manner, I will give it that. But it does not however, possess enough weight or quality for such a critical region. The stock is made of the same type of plastic as the rest of the gun, which is perfectly fine with me, but it is not anchored to the rest of the gun in anyway. This gun does not possess a screw, or beam or anything which connects it to the main part of the gun, as is seen in most airsoft gun designs. Since there is nothing consistent from the body through the movable stock, the farther the stock gets out the more wobbly and unstable it gets, and only a little bit of plastic prevents you from yanking the entire stock off (which I did by accident, but easily put it back into its slots).



The stock fully in




To describe the problem more in depth the stock obviously can be adjusted, and there are ridges in the side of the stock that allow it to lock into place at many different stock lengths. The only problem is that these locks into the ridges are the only thing holding the stock on, as it is not sliding along anything. It is simply connected to the rest of the gun, by the plastic leading up to the movable stock. This plastic-on-plastic sliding and locking mechanism I also disagree with because it is a very sporadic sliding process, and when the gun is brand new is somewhat difficult. It definitely could be smoother. Luckily this problem is hardly a problem which would affect performance, and is not something I personally am too bothered by, but I do believe it would be much better off fixed. My only concern is that if the stock is fully extended, it is a little wobbly, and is at risk for being broken off if there were a hard fall or something of that nature. Unlikely I'll admit, but very possible unlike most airsoft guns you'll find out there.





The stock fully extended




I have been trying to come up with a solution to the stock problem, but really haven't had much luck. I can see why it was built this way, as you can't use a screw, and there isn't much room for reinforcement inside of the stock. The only idea I came up with was to have the inside of the main stock (the part that doesn't move) metal so that the movable part is sliding along metal. You then could have a very thin beam, like a smaller version of the M4's coming out from the receiver, which will hold the stock from being completely yanked out. This will make it less wobbly, and also smoother to adjust. This is all speculation however, and I do not really know how it could be done. If you don�t plan on moving your stock much, or don�t extend the stock at all, these problems I am discussing will not even matter.





The sling attachment on the stock




The Hand guard and Battery Compartment








My first attempt at the battery compartment left me believing it to be a flawed system. Once I got the hang of it however I realized it is quite well done. The issue I had was when I put the battery in I would pull the connector from the gun towards the battery, then stick the battery in the gun, and try to close the hand guard so it all fits. This complicated things because when you pull the connector on the gun, it pulls from the other side of the barrel, which is where in the fuse is, and in my case I kept pulling wires off the fuse, and having to replace them. Once I gathered the intelligence not to make this mistake again (I was being stupid), I still battled getting the battery to fit, and the hand guard to close. I then realized if you stuck the battery into the hand guard and not the gun, it closed quite nicely, without much trouble... So now I like this part of the gun.











The hand guard is permanently attached to the gun at the very tip of the gun, so when you pull the one pin out to open the hand guard, it simply swings down, still attached to the gun. Then when you wish to close it you simply swing it back up and pop the pin in and you are ready to go. It is also worth noting that the pin does have a locking system, so it does not just slide out as some of the TM Colts do. I love and hate this attached hand guard as it does make things easier, but it also scares me. I feel that when it swings down it is always at serious risk of just being broken right off, and I know it is going to happen to someone, if not myself. Reinforcement could help this part of the gun to, but either way it worries me that someone could be stuck with a broken off hand guard.







This part of the gun overall I am happy with, especially after using it in a skirmish. It is a good system and well thought out. I do feel however that a little reinforcement or modification would really improve on the system, as it avoids a disastrous broken hand guard situation for someone out there.




The Sights








This gun comes with both a built in aluminum 3x adjustable scope, in addition to two nifty pop-up iron sights, giving you both options. It is bit embarrassing for me to admit though, that I have not yet found the reasoning for having both on the gun. Though it is a nice touch, it seems that with a big irremovable scope on the top of the gun, there is little use of having iron sights as well. The directions indicate that you could have all of your sights up at one time, but this serves no practical improvement in terms of sight accuracy. The iron sights are a nice touch.










The scope I was impressed with as I was not expecting much. The structure of it is aluminum as has been mentioned several times, and is rock solid. It adds a fair amount of weight to the gun, and also is pretty fun to use when shooting around the house. The scope is adjustable, so you can get it zeroed in fairly well. This gun is pretty accurate, so the sight is very useful, and I like it a lot. I do not know if it was adjusted before it was sent to me, but out of the box it was nearly perfect. I adjusted the hop-up slightly and I was able to hit pretty much anything I put the cross hairs on. Maybe not on the first shot, but a few quick shots was pretty much a guaranteed hit on a coke can from 40 feet, which is quite impressive.










If you plan on getting this gun I hope you are not one looking for a lot of add ons because you won't really be finding many options for this gun. As mentioned it is a pretty unique model so there is not a lot out there to modify this gun, and in terms of sights there is not much you can do without some serious modifications.



The Magazines



The magazines are pretty much as expected, they seem to be identical to TM's G36c magazines, and they operate similarly as well. They click together as pictured, to make switching magazines very easy which is quite nifty. They also so far have been able to shoot nearly all of their capacity without having to keep winding the magazine. They are both said to hold 470 rounds, which seems reasonable. With the exception of a warning label and one trademark which also appeared on the gun, "Kal 5.56mmx45, SRC, Made in Taiwan", there are not any marks. Both of my magazines did however come with the bottoms a little bit loose so I had to tighten up that screw to solve the problem. That piece keeps all the guts of the magazine in so it is a good idea to keep it tight just in case. The magazines overall are very solid and you would have a hard time differentiating them from another brand. I tested a Tokyo Marui G36c magazine on this product and it did work fine. I assume other versions of the G36c magazine would work as well.










Performance (All Using .23g TSD Tactical BBs)



Up until the point that I first fired this gun, I was not sold on it. I thought it was OK, but nothing special and not something I would be interested in using everyday. Everything on the gun was pretty basic, or expected. This is not a bad thing as it is not like something was missing, but it was not something I would rave about. Once I loaded it up and took it outside to plink around though, I started to become impressed. The gun shoots very well, and the most impressive thing I believe, was its accuracy. Using the scope I was consistently hitting my mark from pretty much every range up until 100 or so feet (obviously the farther away I was the less likely it was to hit my mark, but it was still a pretty tight grouping). The scope came almost dead on, with a slight adjustment of the hop-up it was nearly perfect. You probably will not be this lucky, but the scope does adjust so it should not be too hard to get the gun dead on. The ROF on this gun was also quite impressive, especially considering I was only running an 8.4v 600 mAh battery with it.



The shooting though was not perfectly smooth, as I found out when I took it into the field for its first skirmish. Like with most guns there would be tiny little issues with it when being out there, like a random dry fire then two come flying out the next shot, or if I shot too fast on semi it would stop working then I would have to switch to full-auto (This is most likely because of the small battery however, I plan to get a larger battery to see if it solves this problem). These problems are experienced with almost all airsoft guns, I have had it happen to me several times with the Maruis, but the XM8 had it with a little more frequency but nothing ridiculous. I can honestly say these little bugs I ran into did not affect my play on the field at all, but it is a little annoying, and a possibility that you may want to know about. Once I try a larger battery I will see if this eliminates the problem.





Magazine chamber




On full-auto with this gun, I can not complain. With the range, accuracy, and ROF this thing was pinning people down, or wiping them out. In one scenario, while on a second story window, it was able to pin a player down from probably 100ft or more away (we didn�t measure it), as he hid behind a thick tree stump. While playing on this day I switched back and forth between my ICS AK-74 and my TSD Tactical XM8 as I felt they were guns and companies in similar situations. Both on the newer end, shoot supposedly the same velocity, and so I thought it might not be a bad idea to compare the two. While I was using one I would let a friend use the other to see how they felt about the guns so I would have more than one opinion on them. The AK-74 packing the larger battery had a similarly high ROF, but for whatever reason, with both using .23g BB�s (also TSD Tactical brand), the XM8 significantly out ranged it. The AK was significantly tightly grouped for maybe 60-70 feet, but it was a quick drop off from there, and it just was not pinning people down, when used in the same situations or distances as the XM8. The range of the XM8 was probably the closest to my 350 FPS Tokyo Marui M16a2 Carbine which someone else was using in the game. The M16 had a 3300 9.6v battery, so it�s ROF was superior, but range wise they were strikingly close, and grouping wise the XM8 may have had it beat if anything which really impressed me since that M16 was my go to gun.



This gun has a familiar sound to it, very similar to that of the Tokyo Marui G36c in my opinion. The best way I can describe it is slightly high pitched for the shooter, as you can hear the motor better. But the sound coming out of the gun is a pretty deep sounding thud, or click, or however you wish to describe it. The gun sounds and feels smooth, but I just feel like it is not as tight as a Tokyo Marui, but barely. The real test is going to be how this gun does when it has gone through 20-30,000 BBs instead of only the 3,000 or so it went through on its first and so far only skirmish. I will keep you updated. I plan on putting it to the test.



Ergonomically this performed much better than I had anticipated. To be quite honest I was babying it to start, something I usually never do with my airsoft guns, and was also warning friends who used it about the possible stock problems, and told them even to be careful with the bridge/carrying handle at the top of the gun since I did not fully trust it. By the end of the day however, partly because of the skirmishing, and mainly because the gun had no problems, I began using it like I should have been from the start; normally. It held up perfectly fine in every category, and I never came into a situation where I thought anything on the gun could possibly have broken. I did not notice any wobble from the stock as I had feared, and I even added extra pressure on the stock by using my wolf hook like sling, which only attaches to the stock, so when you let go it hangs by the stock. The gun felt great and smooth while moving around. I even used it in some CQB situations and it held up fine, probably a little too big, but not out of the question. The only problem I ran into was that at the end of the day the cap on the pistol grip was very loose, so I had to retighten that. I do not know what caused that, but once I tighten it I expect it to run smoother than before.




Magazine Release




Overall



Overall I say that this gun has a lot of potential, and if you are looking for a good all around gun, with a unique look, this could be the gun for you. There are not really any good XM8 options out there currently that are at this price, and from what I can tell so far you can expect good performance. I do feel however that the gun can be improved upon cosmetically and that would change my mind from it being a pretty good gun to a great gun, but we will see how this version holds up. The true test for this gun will be the time test. I like the looks and feel enough so that if this gun holds up well when it counts, I could fall in love with it. But there is always that question mark on durability, so I will do my best to report that back to you as soon as I possibly can.



As a general statement of TSD Tactical and their AEGs, I must say that I trust their guns and think they are worth the money. They are selling for fairly cheap, and it appears that the XM8 is cheaper than the M16 variants, which would make sense since the XM8�s externals are all plastic, and their M16 seem to have the cosmetics down as most companies do these days. These guns manufactured by SRC (the MPEG company) do not resemble MPEGs, and appear so far to have genuinely high quality internals and externals. My plan regarding internals is to shoot the gun as far as a I can stock (as that is what most would do with the gun), and then once I run into a problem, open it up to see where it went wrong. If nothing goes wrong, who cares what is inside?



Who should buy this gun?



This gun is a perfect cheap solution to having a unique gun. If that sounds like you, this gun would be perfect; very versatile allowing for multiple roles with the built in scope, and easy to maneuver design. While I used it I acted as a spotter, an assault man, a defender, and it held up in all categories. I even used it acting as an escort, and it worked out perfectly. The scope came in handy as more of a spotting tool than a sight, as I typically do not take the time to look down the sights. Since I know there are a lot of people out there who are sick of seeing the same old guns on the field, but do not wish do go out there and spend $300 getting a new gun, this gun does have a market. Take $100 off that price and you have yourself this XM8 with two hi-caps so you are good to go. All you need is a mini-battery.



This gun also has potential as good, economic starter weapon. It would probably save someone $100 or more as a starter gun since it comes with two hi-capacity magazines, and is cheaper to start off with. I always hesitate when recommending starter guns, because if this gun does not pass the time test, it may not be a good starter gun. I see no indication of that happening as from what I have researched and seen with this gun, it seems to be holding up just fine.



I am talking about a �cheap� solution because the gun is cheaper then most, but manages to perform above average when compared to other stock guns, and even some upgraded guns. So with that kind of performance it could also be a new primary weapon for anyone out there.








Conclusion



In my mind the gun took a U-turn from the day I took it out of the box, and the day I packed it away after my first skirmish with it. I initially saw the all plastic design, and bright orange tip and immediately began to associate it as a toy. But as I quickly found out, and some of my airsoft opponents can confirm, it does not shoot like a toy. I have also pondered that the whole look of the gun might come together with a black end of the gun instead of the bright orange� Of course that is illegal so that is the end of that discussion =P



I like the gun, and like it even more when I realized that it is quite cheap, comes with two hi-caps, shoots 330+ FPS, and is backed by a 60 day warranty, perhaps the longest in the airsoft manufacturing world as sad as that may seem. If the XM8 is not doing it for you, then you have other TSD Tactical AEGs to look at, which all come with the same features. I will be continuing to use this gun when I skirmish, and will keep you guys updated on how it continues to work out for me.



- Meatball