HEXMAG vs PMAG vs TROY vs USGI: Which is best?

hey guys DJ gunner to fight here again bringing you this time a comparison video between three widely known and tested magazines and comparing them to a newcomer to the field of magazines a new magazine anyway we're starting off from the right going to the left we have the US GI age old standard US GI issue magazine with a upgraded anti rotational anti-tilt follower because if it didn't have that it wouldn't stand a chance compared to these other magazines if it did not have that upgrade to the left of that we have the Troy industries battle mag which some people use they've been around for a little while they're kind of new and that's a decent magazine but to the left of that we have these standardized well known for reliability and cheapness and economy and everything is the Magpul PMAG this is the gen 2 version which I use and I love I mean there's the gen 3 version out there but I fell in love with the Gen 2 for whatever reason and I'll get to that later but to the far left we have the new comer which is the hex mag so I'm gonna be comparing these and just sharing some of my opinions on them we'll see how long this video is hopefully I can get it down to pretty short anyway let's go ahead and start off with comparing them by comparing their weights now weight is a pretty important thing to some people um I'm not sure how much how important I would say it is when it comes to magazines because um I don't know it's pretty insignificant now there is a lightest weight magazine and let's see if you can see that you can kind of see that for me try and tilt this in your favor so you can you can kind of see that anyway I'll tell you out the way the weights out loud we're do measuring and it announces right here so we'll start up with the lightest one which is the usgi magazine that magazine is 4.1 ounces so that's the lightest magazine the second lightest is the Troy industries battle mag coming in at 4.2 ounces and then the third lightest is the hex mag which is four point four ounces so and then the heaviest is the Magpul PMAG windowed version at four point eight ounces and as far as I'm concerned I'm pretty sure that the windowed version is lighter than the non window version so this is the lightest form of the PMAG you can get and again this is a version two so what are you getting for the different weights let's go ahead and first look at the standard usgi magazine go ahead and show you this okay so here we have the standard usgi magazine it's been used for ever you know since the Vietnam War or kind of anyway the reason why I say you need to have a anti rotational follower or tilt anti-tilt follower is because I have used some and they failed me time and time again this is the only standard u.s. GI mag I actually like to use because it's our only u.s. di mag that has an anti tilt follower there's just several reasons which make anti-tilt followers far superior i mean if like if you even have one and just test it out you push in on one corner and the rotational or the follower will just rotate and flip over and it's just not good for anything especially when you're wanting to feed rounds reliably so um that's one disadvantage is if you don't have a anti rotational follower another disadvantage is probably a ergonomics it's made out of aluminum which is really slick and there's no I mean you can always put grip tape on it but there is no initial retention or whatever for for your hand to grip on there's no there's no built-in way to keep it from slipping out of your hand which is kind of a downside also economics you know it's just it doesn't feel as good and I mean I guess they get cold but that's kind of a minor thing you should be wearing gloves anyway um but yeah there's the standard usgi mag which is a pretty good magazine I don't prefer them but if you do that's fine oh and another good thing about usgi mags is that they're our super slim and you can fit them into double stack magazines are made for that's another thing which I almost forgot to talk about which a lot of these other mags can't do now what can do that is the Troy battle mag which is also pretty dang slim in an profile of it's very slim now it does have retention or I don't know you know what to call it resistant surfaces on it you can see the scales on it it is actually pretty slick compared to some of the other ones some of the other mags that we'll get to later now I don't really have any problems with this maggot hasn't failed me or anything there's well it has failed me it hasn't failed any magazine feeding issues there's been none of those now when I first got the magazine as you can see the base plate of this magazine is a different color from the rest of it I wonder why I was taking out the follower and to do that you have to push in on these two tabs anyway I well once you pushed out on the two tabs it flips flips open anyway I pushed in on the two tabs and one of these tabs snapped off and it would still retain the magazine but obviously that's not what it was not designed to snap off so I called Troy and they sent me a new floor plate very quickly but it was the wrong color so yeah I don't know I told him is flat darker it's so I don't know if they have a different brown color but the first one matched and this one didn't so I don't know if they change their flat dark earth or something which they shouldn't but anyway it's mismatched and I have not taken the the plate off since because I'm scared of the same thing happening which is not a good thing for you to feel about your mags to be scared to take them apart cause you're afraid that you're going to break them so not the best design right there also on the back side when using stripper clips I found that this plastic is starting to peel at some places depending how hard I try and put the stripper clips in which I haven't ran into any problems with that on any of the other magazines so anyway out of all these magazines I would say the Troy battle mag is probably my least favorite next up we have the tried-and-true Magpul PMAG the generation 2 and I have to say this is probably a lot of people's favorite mags um honestly it just comes time to economy and reliability I mean there's been so many torture tests this is really the industry standard magazine at the current time I mean you have people that prefer other different magazines but it's pretty much generally agreed that there is no reason not to get a PMA at around 14 dollars a pop or less if you're getting the generation 2 P mags instead of the gen 3 they're just so cheap compared to some other mags like the us GIM mags I mean I've seen them running like 30 dollars a pop at some local gun stores not online of course but they are a great value a great company the windowed feature on the more expensive mags like this one is a great option have to know how many rounds you have left they're just a great magazine and I don't think I'd really need to tell you about how good they are now here is where the main contrasting comes into play which is the hex mag this magazine has kind of been made to rival the PMAG it's similar price point i've tested them out pre pretty efficiently and they have pretty much the same reliability they're pretty good mag overall but they have some distinct features over the PMAG first let's talk about the grip eNOS I can never figure out what to call this the retention in your hand of the magazine here the PMAG has ridges that kind of grip your hand now they're really pretty shallow I know that they beefed them up in the generation three but not super substantially the ridges now the hex mag has this interesting hex pattern obviously why they call it the hex mag on the side of the magazine and it actually does a pretty good job of retaining or providing resistance for your hand anyway I would say on the sides of the magazine I would actually give it to P the retention to PMAG instead of hex mag even though it is more dimpled and there's more ridges to provide resistance against your hand and avoid slipping it's actually comes down to the material that the magazine is made out of the hex mag is very well made it's a great polymer and so is the PMAG but it seems like it's a different kind of polymer this the hex mag is more of like a smooth polymer where it is it is very like a standardized plastic but the PMAG is kind of porous and it's it's a hard thing to describe but it seems more resistance on this it seems like there's more resistance on the sides of the PMAG because of the type of material they use now you can fix that with the hex mag because another cool thing about the hex mag is they rely on a lot of customization um you can get these little hex hexagonal shaped pieces of like sandpaper or like skateboard tape that you can buy straight from hex mag and they come in different colors flat dark earth grey black anyway you put those in there and that locks your fingers onto that surface so you're going to be adding a little bit more weight and they'll probably be about the same weight as a PMAG at that point even though there are a little bit lighter at the moment without any modifications but it is a great option to allow you to have like lock your hand on the side of those magazines now probably in my opinion the more important part than the sides of the magazine right here is the front and back of the magazines when it comes to gripping them and pulling them out of the mag well now the reason that is is because those are the two major contact points where you're applying a force you're not squeezing with the tips of your fingers you're squeezing with the inside of your palm and your knuckles out here that's how you're squeezing you're not squeezing like this so the more important part of the retention issue is on the front and back which I say the hex mag wins hands down now you have the same little ridges that are on the sides on the front of the PMAG but on the hex mag you get these very deep ridges that are extremely resistant and then same on the backside which really lock your fingers in there and I would say even with the slicker polymer the hex mag wins and retention there on the PMAG you know there's just not too much in the form of retention also going back to customization they make these vinyl type decals that you can put over the hex mag there's a lot of cool customization um in the end what would I recommend I don't know oh there's something else I forgot with the hex mag there is a identification system that they are also marketing it is a color coded marketing mark marking system sorry for identifying which mag has what ammo in it this is going to be useful if you're using a suppressor you can have magazines marked as subsonic or supersonic or how I see this being effective is for 300 blackout users who also have five five six rifles which is probably most 300 blackout users because it looks almost identical or the magazines take the same magazines take takes the same bolt carrier thing you know the dangers of accidentally loading a 300 blackout round into a two to three wild or five five six barrel anyway this can help you substantially because when you get a different follower set that gives you a the standard ones come in orange but then you can buy a follower set that would give you blue like green or red followers and it would change out the follower and also change out the tab on the bottom so if they were in a magazine pouch upside down you could quickly look down and see let's say red was supersonic five five six so you'd be like oh that's supersonic five five six blue would be subsonic five five six and then you could have something like green be 300 blackout so you would know all your different magazines just from looking at the bottom of the magazine so that's pretty cool system now is this worth it over the PMAG um I don't know it really depends if you can get them cheap which they are pretty cheap I got mine on Black Friday I got four of them for forty dollars which is really good ten ten bucks a magazine I'm pretty sure they're about the same price if you don't get them on sale um the thing that it comes down to is the PMAG is more available right now I can literally run out to my gun store and pick them off the shelves and buy like five of them now the hex mag isn't out there it's also not as proven I've seen people run over them with cars and stuff and same I mean the PMAG has been I've seen that ten times over it's just a tried and true tested design but I think there's a lot of Merit to going with the hex mag system especially if you're planning on expanding your future into suppressors and different caliber conversions for like AR rifles like three on a blackout 6.5 Brendel or 6.8 spc there is a lot of cool stuff that you can do with the hex mag now at this point I would say it doesn't really matter just go with whatever magazine you want I would say the hex mag and the PMAG are definitely the best options the usgi mags are great I just think they lack a lot in aesthetic and retention on your for your hand and Detroit auto mags as much as I love my Troy alpha rail and other Detroit products I probably wouldn't go with them just from my knowledge in my experience of one snapping on me I mean I'm definitely going to keep it and use it but I'm not gonna put it in my w RL w rol system which can be a matter of life and death um anyway considering my W rol system I'm going to be making a video on that soon for the one year end of their anniversary we'll see when I get that out because it might be a little while anyway either of these two mags have your pick whichever one you prefer is really what it comes down to I'm going to probably be using the hex mags but that's not going to make me love my four pmags any less anyway this has been a pretty long comparison video thanks a lot if you guys stick around and watch this entire thing like the video subscribe for more videos there's going to be a lot more like this on anyway I'll see you guys later see

Channel: djgunner258

Views: 65,335

Rating: 4.4112902 out of 5

Keywords: Magpul, hexmag, battlemag, pmag, Hexmag

Id: Ed-tx5EpSFU

Length: 16min 33sec (993 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 07 2015