Review: EA Electric Auto BB Loader

Fallschirmjager

I ordered this of ehobbyasia about a week ago and finally got a chance to use it in anger last night. Here are my experiences with it

The Reason why?
A lot of people dont 'get' the reason why anyone would need an autoloading tool. Well being a conformed midcapper, and a confirmed milsimmer i can honestly confirm there is no greater waste of oxygen then sitting there filling 12 magazines (okay, okay, okay, a little unrealstic for milsim but what the hell). Also i have tried large loading tools, specifically the one from King Arms, which is the greatest steaming pile of kak, since the bb's get jammed about every fourth or fifth press, but i digress. Not to put too fine a point on it, i hate loading, well not so much loading as the repetition of it (hell is filling mags for all eternity and never playing). add to that i near damn well took my head off when a midcap unloaded near my face when hand loading, so i especially despise it now.

My Hopes and Prayers
My goal was an auto loading tool that would quickly refill mid cap mags, fit in a vest that i could use after each game without all that laborious finger pressing, grabbing handfulls of bb's, trying to aim them into a loader, then mindlessly drooling out of the horrendous boredom of refilling. SO, with the autoloader, i would take it out of the vest, take a magazine, press one on the other and 15-20 seconds later...bingo. All sound good so far? Its what we all would want isnt it? Well does this product do this...the sad news is, unfortunately...no

What does it do?
okay what you get for using your hard earned, overtaxed, soon to be over inflated and almost worthless euros..(thanks again to the community reinvestment act in the US) here goes:
1. you get a brown cardbord box, the mag tool itself and a small bag of plastic thingies for various mag configurations (i guess). I picked one that looked like it was for 6mm magazines and gave it a whirl? What did you say? Hold on. you said...yeah i picked one that looked right..as there is zero instructions with this product, but then again, i guess you dont need a lot but some would have been nice (more on this and the whys later). You will need 4 AA batteries placed in the bottom of the item.

2. the product is not a double mag size, its more like a triple size. Now that is flaw number 1: it wont fit in my vest, add to that the loose plastic 'thingy' and the fact that when you fill it, and start it, the bb's will just fall out of the loading tube at the top. So you cant fit it in a vest to keep it upright, so you use a mag stash bag, only to find it spilled its contents everywhere, and you lost the plastic 'thingy'. I guess the need for that essential piece of kit...duck (or is it duct) tape. Yes i know i could get a triple mag pouch to hold it but who the hell wants that.

3. The next issue is that the mag looks big but most of the internal is taken up with the gearing to load the bb's. It holds a good number (maybe 4-5 mags worth at a guess) but not anywhere what you would expect. So bang goes another dream, that i would not need to hawk around a bag or bottle of bb's. Also you need a good number of bb's in to tool for it to work.

4. To use the product raises another issue. Now be advised that this maybe due to my own inexperience using it BUT the problem is 99.99% of mags are not clear plastic. So when you put the mag on the nozzle thingy and press down (incidently thats how you activate it or at least with no instructions its the only way i could see you use it), You hear a grinding, motorised sound. The bb's start loading. Now i was loading the tm sig mags last night, so i could see them loading. You will need to get used to listening for the spring working in the mag. It takes a bit of angling the mag to get it to load. Sometimes it sounds as if it is loading, but it isnt. The smokey plastic was what saved me as i could see it. Also i did this on a tabletop and then came the next problem. The gears to load need a constant supply off bb's to supply the pressure to push them into the nozzle and into the mag. Because i wasnt shaking it, sometimes they would get stuck and the flow would stop...BUT and this is important..it still sounded like it was working. IN fact, i checked a mag and i could see what looked like the bb's moving but in fact it was just shaking them. You have to check that the spring is being depressed. Eventually there is a sound change to the loading and i took this as it was full. Well again, with no notes...that what i assume it means. To test it i took my trusty loader a pistol magazine one that i have had for years, and started loading. Yes that right, it hadnt fully loaded. I took a count, 4-5 loader presses (approx 20 bb's) less then the maximum and it was fairly consistent on that. If the mag has been used a bit and the spring is a little looser, i guess you would have more success with it, that was my experience, as i was also loading m16 vn mags that were in the same order also, and it didnt fare well with them at all. I guess that it was due to the newness of the spring. I tested with a very old plastic mid cap from mag and it behaved like the sig mags, about, 75 to 80% full with the auto loader. As it happens i dont mind that so much as it means a lot of the drudgery is taken out of loading but it isnt what i was hoping for or indeed what i ordered it for. The real issue begins with classic mags that are not clear. You really are using your best guess and feeling/hearing the spring being depressed. I am guessing you would get better as time went on and the experience grows but on a few occasions last night, i ended up hand loading the mag almost completely as the loaded at only punched in 5-10 bb's. So you have to keep an eye on the volume of bb's in the reservoir , it needs to be full(ish), you have to shake it to make sure they are not blocking the back pressure to load them, you have to shake and angle the mag and you have to listen to ensure its loading. Overall its still better then by hand, but this is no life saver tool, its a nice to have.

I loaded maybe 30 mags last night (was bringing the sig and the m4 to the gathering) before i had a fire from an exploding battery (i kid you not!). I scorched the kitchen top (wow, i was not popular) and as it happens almost needed to change my underwear. Hence why i was not at the gathering...no, mr smarty pants i do have more then one pair of shorts, but i dont have any other smart charger..hence no battery could be charged...so TLP is added to my list of companies that majorly suck. Anyway, back to the loader, the batteries (the ones in the loader) were still working but i felt they were getting weaker about mag 15-17. not bad considering it was doing them back to back. There is also a nice touch on the loading door if you are doing it on a flat surface, the loader has a small lip so any bb's that spill out of the loading tube, will fall back into the reservoir (if the door is open) which i dont know is by design or an accident but does stop the bb's from rolling anywhere.

So there you have it....does it do what i wanted...no. Is it close to what i wanted...not really, does it load bb's, a reserved yes on that one, would i buy it again, well i will hold that opinion for a couple of weeks of loading before i vote. It does do sort of what it says on the tin, but it would appear to me at least to be a few versions away from being a really cool tool for an airsofter. Finally, i am not sure, it will last, i dont know why but it feels a little plasticy and there are some heavy gearing going on, so i would plan on this lasting maybe a year......maybe. Again, that just a feeling, there are no facts there. Also there probably should be a way to plug this sucker in to the wall for home use and a backup battery approach for mobile or field use would be my next recommendation. Also i have not idea is there a way of getting it to force more into a mag (change gear so to speak), since there are no instructions, so i could be missing a trick there, so the above is based on 30 or so mags of experience with this product.



S0 to scores:

practical for field use 3/10
practical for home use 6/10
instructions 0/10 but then again it could be a simple as put batteries in and press)
longevity (guess) 3/10


Hope that helps some of ye out there. Maybe there is one shining light, i was also doing the loading in the kitchen when the battery went bang...so maybe they stopped a fire but cost me my shorts....maybe they could put that on the instructions going forward??