Best Beginner AEGs for ~$200?

[Bigload]

Matt, check out the used section as there are some nice treasures hidden in the forums.... most users include batteries and extra mags and bb's...

[Caelan]

King Arms M4 or G&G Raider

If you do want to spend the money and want a gun that will out perform most and last a long time without having to open it up and repair it

KWA M4 Ris/ Sr7/ Sr10

[GR]

Originally Posted by J-Man19

Welcome to airsoft. Be prepared to spend $1000 before stepping on the field.

^^ This.

I'm an AK lover my self, and I would recommend CYMA if you're going into AK's (my personal preferability would be the AKS-101, but it all matters on opinion). Be prepared though: it is hard and expensive to build AK's (as in attachments and such, I'm having quite a bit of trouble with AKS-74U at the moment).

[nardac]

KA m4, I've had mine. 3 years now, have done a few internal upgrades. But never had any problems stock. I've moved up to a VFC PDW, but still the KA does a great job.

[BogardusFoul]

Cyma ak

[VALENTINE-ONE]

I know my post count may be low, I'm gonna say the G&G Raider.

What to expect out of the low budget AEGS
- The quality of moving parts / exterior parts won't last long
- Your accessories will cost more than the AEG
- The cost of time to diagnose the weapon would be tremendous
- Increased headaches and stress of gun hiccups in game
- If it breaks and you decide to get a better AEG, you will find out you could have saved a bit more, while waiting a bit longer and have gotten a better one in the first place.

This is coming from a guy who cheaped out in paintball guns. A budget of $500 including accessories such as magazines in the used market is what anyone with moderate interest should be starting off with. Even if the experience isn't for you, you can always sell it for a bit cheaper and count the loss of money as renting.

[BogardusFoul]

Don't think of CYMA aks as "low end". They are inexpensive, and you get good quality for what you pay for. I own 6 aks 3 of them are CYMA. They have all been gamed heavily for a few seasons but only one (my first gun) has required repairs. I upgraded the shit out of it, and now I use it as my primary and keep the Realsword as my backup.

Stay away from ICS. They perform well, but take proprietary parts, so you are screwed out of some upgrade.

If you like the AK platform then go with CYMA. If you like m4 then it seems like KA is the good choice.

[Kingsix]

Full steel Dboys. RK01S,RK10S,RK-03S, RK-08, RK06S.
The stock hopup and mechbox are pretty garbage but I'm buying them for externals not internals. I can fix internals externals not as much.

If the stock tang breaks, or front sight cracks, locking mechcanism fails you are out of luck.





I have 3, the only aluminum part is the barrel.

My AKMS had a loose front sight drum, so I replaced it with a real AKM sight drum and sight post. Fit like a glove not bad for a replica.

CYMA on the other hand uses a weird half moon style front sight drum that looks weird in my opinion.

Although they use steel on the newer models, they still use cast aluminum alloy stock trunnion, folding hinges (For side folders) locking mechanism (AKMS). Aluminum alloy front sight.

Dboys paint is like a truck liner it's rough but protects the gun from rusting. Heck it does a better job then my Type 56 bluing. (I know Bluing doesn't protect against rust)

Typical Dboys upgrade for me would be.
New Hopup chamber/hopup rubber
LCT bakalite pistol grip
Throw away the shitty dboys sling that you can't actually install with actual eastern bloc sling
AOE/Shim, regrease mechbox
rewire to deans
Replace whole mechbox if it fails with a CYMA one. It's not worth my time and money to keep it running.
Sight in the front sight (hey it's wind age adjustable!)

Play with it to wear out the wood. Gun oil from a chicom oil bottle when it gets wet.
Preach to others why they should own a Kalashnikov rifle

[DrunkenTeddy]

For AK's, I have owned a dboys ak74, a plastic cyma ak47 and I currently have a g&g top tech rk47.
The dboys I had was a piece of junk, multiple internal parts broke in no time at all and even after fixing it a couple times it kept breaking the stock parts, I also had a dboys pdw which had some major build quality issues, I would avoid the dboys.
The Cyma worked fairly well for being a cheap plastic gun, externally it had some wobbly parts and didn't feel all that solid but the gearbox just kept going. Of the economical AK choices I would say Cyma is one of the better ones.
My G&G RK47 is a beautiful gun, practically no wobble, external parts are all high quality and it shoots hard and straight like it should. G&G does a great job with quality control on their high end guns, their quality control seems to go down a lot with their lower priced guns, but the internal parts are usually still pretty good for what you pay.
As for other guns, I agree with those who suggest the full metal KA M4, it's one of the best starters on the market.

Make sure you are budgeting for your other gear too, a good set of goggles goes a long way. Doesn't matter what gun you're carrying if you can't see.

[lurkingknight]

Originally Posted by BogardusFoul

Don't think of CYMA aks as "low end". They are inexpensive, and you get good quality for what you pay for. I own 6 aks 3 of them are CYMA. They have all been gamed heavily for a few seasons but only one (my first gun) has required repairs. I upgraded the shit out of it, and now I use it as my primary and keep the Realsword as my backup.

Stay away from ICS. They perform well, but take proprietary parts, so you are screwed out of some upgrade.

If you like the AK platform then go with CYMA. If you like m4 then it seems like KA is the good choice.

truth.

With the cost of the KA metal m4 and cyma AKs being full metal around 200$, there's no reason to consider a plastic bodied version. In most cases the price difference will be like <50 bucks from plastic to metal version.

If it comes down to not being able to cover that spread, airsoft is not for you. It will get expensive for you WHEN something breaks. Everything breaks, from plastic cyma to high end vfc or g&p.

[GR]

Also, a great gun to start out with would be G&G Combat Machine CM16. Works great, feels great, and comes with a 9.6v battery instead of 8.4v. Plus, relatively good price for a G&G product.

[MattG666]

Thanks for all the info guys! Finally going to Toronto Airsoft tomorrow to see what they have.

Im going to check out most of the ones mentioned here, and get a bit of a feel for them. No sense buying something you hate holding right?