AR Mag Collection Overview & Favorites

so i was recently taking inventory and taking stock of all my ar mags and come to find out i have quite a few of them so not only have i discovered that i have quite a few magazines from a count standpoint but i have a small variety of them so i thought it might be kind of fun for me if not for you guys to just go through and detail my experiences with each one and very arbitrarily pick a favorite i'm not necessarily saying that my favorite is the best you can get but it's the favorite of the one that i have again very subjective thing so i'll group these into two categories polymer and metal i have more metal than i do polymer on here it doesn't necessarily mean that i have more metal than i do polymer in total but i have a smaller variety of polymer than i do metal ones as kind of a baseline all of these magazines work well none of these i have a lot of problems with some work a little bit better than others and that'll weigh into picking which ones are my favorite and which ones are my go-to mags and also i tend to buy these in sets of three because i have these little military surplus mag pouches these fit 30 round magazines pretty well this one has the dividers torn out a lot of times you see them like that but they're pretty cheap you can find them online generally pretty cheap we bought them from a local army surplus store for about a dollar a piece and i just get a ton of them and i like to load basically one of a couple different varieties of magazines and a few different mag pouches so that way when we're out test firing guns we can very decidedly eliminate the magazine as the failure point if we're having problems with a particular gun for most people that's probably not even a consideration for us because we're getting your rifles in all the time through the store and then taking not testing them for videos it is kind of important to make sure that we know for a fact that we're not having a magazine issue versus a rifle issue so i'll go ahead and start with polymer mags first and i guess i'll start with sort of the baseline polymer magazine at least the one that most people are probably familiar with if you have a rifle also i'm only going to be doing 30 round mags i have other sizes i do have this 40 round puff gun magazine might be a 43 round i don't remember anyway it's uh bigger than 30. um it's the only 40 that i have though and i also have some drums but you can check out the drum video if you're interested in those the magpul pmag is so ubiquitous that even if you don't have if you've never actually bought a pmag you probably have one because for a long time they were sort of the de facto ar mag that just got shipped with ar guns or any gun for that matter that took a stanag mag there's a very good reason for that and that's that they work my experience with pmags has been very positive overall they have a very solid body polymer they have magpul's anti-tilt followers which is good if you're not familiar with that i'll demonstrate what a not anti-tilt follower does and why that could potentially be an issue um i like the floor plates really well it's this very generous takedown release here i will say the only magazine ar magazine that i've had that has just outright failed on me and stopped working was a magpul pmag i haven't really diagnosed it as far as determining if it's a spring problem or a follower problem or a feed lip problem because honestly i have so many magpuls that i just chucked it and grabbed another one so but i did determine that it was a mag problem it didn't work across multiple guns but that said again they're fairly inexpensive usually you can find them for around 11 bucks during sales and stuff 10 or less i'm gonna go ahead and qualify that and say you know i realized that magazine prices changed constantly and that this video is a moment time so the prices will be different by the time you see it depending on who you're buying it from but that's usually about the going rate on these at the time this video is around 11 so it's pretty easy to collect a bunch of them and uh yeah just a really solid polymer magazine i don't really have any complaints at all about magpul uh now they do have a bunch of different generations i have no idea what generation they're on now i think i have a pretty solid mix of gen 3 of m3 and m2 and i know some rifles have mag well compatibility issues depending on the generation of pmag i think most of that stuff has been sorted out by now and honestly the number of guns that that is even a problem with is probably so small that it's not even going to be a consideration but if you do have an oddball gun like that like the beretta air x or the fs2000 i'd make sure before you go buying 10 or 20 p mags that they do work with the magwell in your gun so just a solid overall very ubiquitous polymer magazine so one that you don't see much of really is the troy battle mag it is lighter quite a bit lighter than the magpul one thing i really like about it is this scale pattern on the front and on the back it's very aggressive grippy and it kind of looks cool i think it does have an anti-tilt follower in it i think it might be only a two-point anti-tilt follower because if you notice even just then the follower stuck just kind of pushing forward on it so i don't think the follower is inherently as good as the magpul it's also i've noticed very thin these has a flex to it that the magpul just does not have and i think the polymer and the reason why it's so much lighter than the magpul is because it's it is a very thin body magazine i've also noticed that whenever i load this magazine full to 30 rounds it bows a little bit you can see that follower keeps getting stuck whenever i push down on the front of it which again you'll see on another magazine a little later on one thing about these two is they at least the ones that i bought whenever i bought them included these weird replacement followers or floor plates i should say that have this um kind of well it's a magpul is what it is but it's not from magpul not company magpul but something to grab a hold of and pull so that's an option for you the big thing with these i think i paid whenever i bought them around six dollars a piece so for a very cheap range mag i think it's totally fine i will say as a go-to mag i kind of question it because that flex in the polymer concerns me so i'm not really sure what the long-term durability would be like so it's not a magazine that i would use as a go-to mag but for a range mag they seem totally fine especially if you can get them really cheap if you're paying about half what a magpul goes for then it seems like it might be worth it i've heard some complaints about the locking tabs with this floor plate i've never had a problem i've never broken one but other people have broken them trying to get that fall of that floor plate magpul in but i never had a problem with that so anyway these are okay for cheap but i would not necessarily go run out and buy them over some of the other polymer mags on this table one of those other polymer mags being of course the lancer awm l5 awm lancer is known on these polymer magazines for having once again a anti-tilt follower that does appear to be a four-point anti-tilt follower but has reinforced feed lips on the top of the magazine metal reinforced feed lips i believe that these are spring steel if i remember right um the other thing that i really like them is they're very smooth to load the rounds even with the metal reinforcements feels more like a polymer magazine than a metal magazine as far as when you're seating the rounds in them it's just very smooth to load and you hear the the spring kind of grinding there on the polymer bodies but it is a very smooth operating magazine i've never tried to take one apart yeah there's the takedown to get into the magazine body but i've never had to disassemble one for any reason but these seem overall oh one other thing too is you have this aggressive texturing here at the bottom which is kind of nice and i actually really do like especially compared to something like this i really do like the very squared off kind of blocky look that is purely a cosmetic thing but i i enjoy that it has a very solid feel much like the magpul but doesn't feel as chunky in the hand and does seem like it's a bit lighter as well even with the metal reinforcements but that's really the big selling point is that metal reinforcement another big selling point potentially and this is a cosmetic thing again so your experience and desires may vary is they offer quite a big variety of colors and i had a fde one somewhere around here that i can't seem to locate now it's probably actually in a range bag but they do have a quite a variety of colors in fact i think that they kind of have the corner the market cornered on completely transparent magazines i'm not here to argue the viability of a completely transparent magazine but it does look really cool with 30 rounds of brass in it especially whenever you're doing videos or taking pictures and you know cosmetic choices or something that you know you consider if not they do have basic black you can get a smoke you can get the clear one you can get like i said there is an fde color that's also transparent that again i don't know where it ended up i had it out for this video now i can't find it anyway but uh yeah i really really like these magazines they're very smooth they're very smooth in and out of the mag well they're smooth to load like i said and they've been 100 functional for me so for all those reasons the lancer l580 unit is actually my favorite polymer magazine i have almost as many of these as i do magpuls with the biggest issue is really just the price um the basic black and again prices are going to vary the basic black i paid around 16 for as opposed to magpuls around eleven dollars once you start getting into the colors and the transparencies these run can run around nineteen twenty bucks each so you can definitely buy more almost two to one magpul to lancer but again the big benefit here is having metal reinforcements so just a little bit of extra durability there i really do like lancer mags and again that's my favorite polymer magazine now i'm saying metal and not aluminum because not all these are that are on the table are aluminum let's go ahead and start with one that i think you'll find quite often a couple of the lesser expensive versions this is the d h aluminum magazine four point and two follower just basic you can usually find these and find see products magazines for under 10 bucks a piece so if you want just a basic black aluminum magazine these are out there and again i've been seeing i think a lot of dnh in newly manufactured guns that take air mags so i don't really have a ton to say about these they've been functional but one thing that i have noticed is they can be a little bit difficult to load and but what that by that what i mean is when you're putting dropping the round in and say you don't get one quite seated it takes a lot of force to kind of push it in and then even if you're manually cycling i've noticed it takes a fair amount of force to strip back out that's something that i think will wear in over time the more you shoot it but it is something i've noticed it doesn't feel neither of these both of these do that by the way they don't feel as smooth as another magazine that i'll talk about here shortly um the sea products always feels just kind of chintzy to me but again i've not really had any failures with it so i can't really say that that's anything other than a cosmetic thing now occasionally you'll run into steel magazines i believe this one came with my arx also has an anti-tilt follower and also has a steel follower and a steel base plate this magazine is really heavy i'm sure it's very durable but it is chunky now i you will find these out in the wilds sometimes but i rarely ever see steel magazines and i think the only reason why i have it honestly is just because it came with a rifle that shipped with so i'm not sure how common those are going to be but it seems well made it seems like a tank for metal mag someone else who's in the game right now is brownells so they also are fairly inexpensive about 10 bucks a piece a lot of times they'll run black friday deals and things like that i think whenever i bought mine i think i did a 10 pack for 80 or something like that because i just needed to have some basic gray gi style magazines and that's what they advertise this as as a gi style now when i bought mine i don't know if this is still the case they did not include anti-tilt followers and this is where we get into the anti-tilt thing if something goes haywire and the follower as it's feeding in that follower can stick and cause a malfunction so not um not really the most up-to-date technology there and the other thing that i've noticed as well is i mentioned this on the d h and the c products loading is a little bit tricky it's not super smooth because again if you have to try to seat the round back it's going to catch and even when either manually stripping it or manually cycling the gun i have found that rounds get stuck really easy on that front feed lip and it doesn't matter if it's this specific uh magazine or any of the other magazines i've tried but misha actually we were trying to shoot this through um which one was it the set me l and we're having feeding problems using this magazine and what was happening was the set meow maybe the recoil spring was a little light or a little weak or maybe the gun was a little under gassed i don't know it may have just been magazine tolerances but what was happening was the rounds were getting stuck on that front feed lip and not stripping out entirely so if you have a gun that has a little bit of under gas or has a weak recoil spring that's something that i think could actually cause a functional issue a reliability issue now in my ars in my brand 2 i've never had an issue with that but it is something i've noticed and again all i'm trying to do is describe my experience so if you compare that to the okay industries magazine i think this is the difference you can see if we get it lined up see if you can see that the okay industries mag is actually cut out in the front it's very it's curved down in here you can see that little recess now that's something that exists on the okay industries mag that does not exist on the dnh or on the c products now the ok industries magazine is extremely smooth to load extremely smooth to feed it's super easy to drop in the follower moves very smoothly in the mag body which i think they has say has to do something with the coating or something like that i don't know but i do know that it is a very smooth magazine to load to extract to strip from the mag i should say and functions really really well just it has a it has a much more solid feel than like the [Music] see products does and again i'm not saying that that in and of itself directly directly translates to better quality or better reliability but it feels better quality i say that much so yeah just a really solid really reliable magazine that's because okay industries has been making mags i believe for the for the military since the 70s so they have a long story history with making really reliable good quality magazines this also has an anti-tilt follower and interestingly you may run across occasionally some colt branded magazines i think this one has an anti-tilt yep this one came with my m4 a1 socom us6920 and from what i understand ok industries actually makes the magazines that are sold on the colt brand from what i understand um that's just what i read on forums don't know the veracity of that but there you go you may also run across a brand labeled as uh in hmtg from what i understand these are also manufactured by okay industries or were manufactured by okay industries this is one that i found at a local gun shop uh for like five bucks or something in a big dump bin does it's an older mag does not have an anti-tilt follower but once i googled what nhmtg was i realized where they came from and snapped one up because they're well regarded as well so realistically i think for the money and if i remember right i think i paid around 12 bucks for these as well 11 bucks somewhere around there okay industries i think makes about the best metal ar mag that you can get they're really highly regarded the very least it's the best one that i've ever experienced super smooth really solid and just really really reliable they're known to be really reliable they have a fantastic reputation online and that's why i've picked this as my favorite metal ar mag and they offer them of course in a bunch of different colors if you don't like the gray that shows scratches and stuff because you're concerned about cosmetics even though cosmetics don't matter right then you can definitely get gray oh you can definitely get black i should say um if you're wanting to match your accessories accessorize you can also get fde all seem to work exactly the same so ok industries is overall my favorite metal magazine and actually i would go so far as to go ahead and say that between the two lancer in ok industries i generally prefer i think the okay industries overall i i do like the idea of having a metal body ar mag i like the very classic way they look um one thing to note too is that insert insertion on these phrasing is really smooth really easy they drop free really easily they don't hang up anywhere they're both really solid mags but considering what the price differences are i really have to say i think the the okay industries is my favorite overall this has been the okay industries have become my go-to mag i've started not slowly phasing out all of my other magpuls and stuff because i still use them as range mags all the time but as far as ones that i keep loaded and rotate the okay industries are the ones that i use the most so really solid mag overall like i said reliable good reputation online and um uh just well considered well made so yeah there you go so hope you liked the video please click like if you did be sure to like share and subscribe all that fun stuff and uh we'll see you in the next one i think i'm going to do an ak one next and we'll see how that that goes oh what is this huh interesting this looks weirdly out of place it's long this actually is a korean ar mag you can see it's strangely not the same size as a standard ar mag but it is the same capacity um not even quite the same shape ended up actually buying this because i had a daewoo k2 for a while so i bought two of these just so i had korean made ar mags i thought it was appropriate i've never actually had an issue with these either like i said none of these i really had a significant problem with but a lot of times these are found cheap and readily available but i don't know they're pretty heavy they're very heavy very chunky they're longer than a standard ar mag seem fine i guess but really to me again if you're gonna spend the money on a metal mag and just go with the okay industries a lot lighter and um you know that there isn't any going to be any variability in the manufacturer there on a uh on an okay industry so yeah i'm gonna do an ak mag video like this like i started to say and um kind of give you my impressions too and kind of show off some different mags that i have for that as well also be limited to 30 rounds so i hope you all have a good one

Channel: Mishaco

Views: 6,138

Rating: 4.8816566 out of 5

Keywords: Educational Historical Documentary Historic History Preservation Documentation, Misha, Mishaco, Ozark Bear Arms, OBA, plinking101, MishacoOBA

Id: vT_bvHbnfVI

Length: 24min 17sec (1457 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 14 2020