Rock River Arms LAR-8M Comprehensive Review

what's going on folks today we're going to take a look at a new semi-automatic precision rifle in 65 Creedmoor from rock river arms let's take a look so first off this rifle is completely unloaded nothing in the chamber and no magazine now I don't really show myself unloading rifles on on the review table they're always going to be unloaded unless I'm pulling it out of a carry system in which case that's fine and I'll tell you that but that aside this rifle is part of Rock Rivers LA r8m series and that whole series is kind of their ar10 platform of rifles I'm a little bit hesitant to call this an ar-10 because ayrton actually refers to the Armalite model 10 and when people say a are 10 typically what their meaning is an ar-15 style rifle scaled up to a 308 so you've got you know standard ar-15 type of controls but in a much bigger platform to match the 308 Winchester or 762 by 51 so Rock River has been making this type of rifle for quite a while and obviously has lots and lots of 308 versions of this rifle new for this year are the 243 and the 65 Creedmoor which is what I tested now this was a tne gun I'm not being paid or sponsored or anything like that for this review video this is a te that I requested and that Rock River generously provided for me to test out just to get my thoughts on it so like I said before it's an AR style rifle kind of the purpose semi-automatic precision rifle maybe you want to use it for hunting maybe you want to use it for target shooting maybe you're getting into PRS style matches maybe not super uber custom PRS but you're wanting to get into that long-range competition you're just wanting to shoot far you wanted to take a gas gun you're familiar with the air 15 and you're wanting to say okay instead of hitting two 300-yard targets let's go out to six seven more which you can do with the 65 feet more now prior to this rifle I didn't have a lot of experience with the 65 I'm kind of a dork about studying ballistics and I like kind of the ideal calibers and that's why you know whenever there's a new caliber that's supposed to be that ideal cool thing I get excited about it like the 300 blackout I was probably wanted I was shooting the 300 blackout before it was super popular and I still really liked that round but it's a bit of a special purpose round kind of the same with the 65 Creedmoor it's not gonna be nearly as generic or versatile as the 308 but it does one thing really well and that's long-range precision so I was pretty excited when I saw that Rock River was building an AR and 65 Creedmoor now lots of people are starting to do this but Rock River is known for making very accurate rifles so this one caught my attention now I've obviously shot lots and lots of a our rifles before but this is the first AR platform rifle in 6.5 Creedmoor that I've really put a lot of trigger time behind and just for the short story it was a great experience this was a fun rifle to shoot it was pretty reliable and the 65 is definitely a cartridge I'm going to be using more it's it is a very efficient round a very accurate round it just a lot of fun to shoot so one of my first impressions about this rifle that I ultimately ended up completely changing my mind about was the fact that it included a case at first when I went to go pick this out from my FFL and I saw that it came with a molded hard case I was like hey that's pretty cool that's pretty cool that a rifle manufacturer is doing that now all handguns come with a case and recently a lot of shotgun manufacturers are now coming with the cases that you know you take off the barrel so it breaks down a little bit a little bit smaller I know beretta and Benelli and Stoeger and that group has done it for a while but now we're seeing Browning's and Winchester's and those shotguns come in with cases and a lot more are coming with those so when I saw an AR that did that I thought that's cool I haven't seen that before and it's kind of funny that it's you know the stereotypical bright blue case I think either FN or yeah it's prepping somebody did it first but I know know that you know if you're cool in the gun world you gotta have a just annoyingly bright blue case Walter does it Smith & Wesson does it FN does it everybody's got their ridiculously bright blue case and it's got stainless steel latches on it that are pretty cool so when that first arrived I thought that was pretty cool it's already got a case but then when I opened up the case and saw that the rifle basically they just use the takedown pin and open up the hinge pin just to fit the rifle in two different halves inside of this case I mean that makes sense that's how they can fit it in there but it means after you take the rifle out and put it together you can't put the rifle back in this case if it's got a scope on it and I think with a 65 Creedmoor with a 20 inch barrel you're gonna be running a scope on it so this case was kind of an oversight that it didn't allow room for a scope so ultimately I would rather save the money on this ABS case I'd rather save 40 or 50 bucks to put towards my own case that actually would accommodate the rifle with the scope and then to pay for this one so that's a feature that at first I thought it was really cool but now I'm like yeah that's kind of a waste I'd rather save money on the rifle then pay for this case that is now just gonna sit in my closet useless until I decided to sell the rifle or whatever any again that I have this guy glass on it especially a precision rifle needs to be able to fit in a hard case and since rock river's case doesn't work with a scope on it what case did I go with I went with this Plano gun guard this is actually their double rifle case it's super durable really heavy-duty it's a glass filled nylon which makes it really rigid really tough makes it pretty heavy though now this is a double rifle case so it's designed to fit to standard bolt actions or to shotguns even but as you know with a ARS if you're running a pistol grip hanging off the bottom and a scope hanging off the top on top of a long rifle it takes up a lot of room so you pretty much have to use a double case like this to get it done now while this case is really rugged and really durable and frankly when after I flew with this thing I always get so nervous about flying with a rifle just because this thing gets tossed around but after I flew with this the rifle was right on so I was really impressed at how well this case held up but it's a pain in the butt to haul around the airport this thing is heavy and clunky but there's nothing super convenient and light and quick about it although the case Rock River provided with their gun was a bust because it didn't fit the scope I do liked it in the case they provided stuff like this like these little swab bits or no gun sponge and like a pack of LPS wipes and like just some cleaning chemicals to try and now while the case adds extra expense that I don't think is really recouped most of these are provided just kind of as promo supplies by LPS or by these other manufacturers so it gives you a chance to try other products that they recommend that they know work well with their rifle just guys a freebie so I think it's cool that they include this now of course it also comes with the instruction manual the warranty card and you know the the stupid little lock they come with every gun but I like that they throw stuff like this in there as well just to give you more things to try that's I think that's good on Rock River for just kind of throwing stuff like that in there just because they can so let's talk about my setup on this rifle really quick and then I'll go into all the features kind of working from the back end just working from the buttstock all the way up to the muzzle device just so we can kind of cover every part of this rifle so my setup I feel is pretty characteristic of how this rifle is intended to be used it's a long range or a medium range precision rifle so of course pretty much everybody's gonna you who's gonna use this it's gonna use a scope I don't think anybody is going to buy a rifle like this spend $2,000 on a 6-5 that offers really good accuracy and then put iron sites on it so this is the new trullo M&S for 216 it's a 30 millimeter tube it's got an MOA illuminated reticle and MOA blocking target turrets now this isn't a $3,000 competition scope it's a sub $500 scope but it is a very accurate very precise scope and works well is a good testbed optic now the mount is the Aptus mount that comes with the scope and it actually comes with this quick throw lever - so no modifications to the rail or anything like that just mounted the scope very carefully directly onto the rail now since this is a precision rifle I think a lot of people are gonna be running this with a bipod just for increased stability and so that's what I did this is just a hair style bipod what I really like is that this is it's got the pivoting lock so you can lock it down or you can loosen it up so the whole rifle can actually tilt and pivot a little bit this means that if you're shooting on ground that's not perfectly level you can actually compensate for that angle a little bit to level your rifle so if you're looking at a mount like this I would highly recommend going with a pivoting model and this even has stepper legs in it meaning the legs have different increments you don't have to extend them all the way out or all the way in they have little half-inch steps so that you can use it at a variety of levels that combined with the pivoting feature makes a pretty stable bipod to kind of make the two together I used a Yankee Hill machine swing swivel adapter now some of the bipod is the mount directly to a Picatinny rail aren't quite as stable in my opinion and with a rifle that's fairly heavy like this I wanted to use a big solid adapter so that's why I went with that Yankee Hill I didn't have any problems with that it was a very stable adapter but this isn't a review about the bipod or the adapter just identifying what I put on there and that it was pretty solid and pretty successful so let's talk about accuracy because I think that is a really really important reason as to why somebody would even consider a rifle like this especially in the 65 Creedmoor there are lots of ar-10 style Falls in 308 that are quite a bit cheaper and much easier to find and in the ar-15 profile there are tons of options that are still pretty accurate but way cheaper and heck I even build my own a lot of times and they shoot pretty recently so six-five is known for its accuracy so somebody looking at a rifle like this is definitely going to be looking for an accurate gun if you're not familiar with the six five there's tons of info about it but the short story is it's basically a 308 cartridge neck down to a 260 Remington and because 65 was designed pretty much as a precision round there's no plinking 65 ammo pretty much all the manufacturers are fighting over kind of the same piece of the pie everybody wants to create that decently affordable but very accurate round and because of that competition that means there are an increasing number of very accurate and surprisingly affordable 6-5 cartridges on the market now what I was shooting was this Hornady eld match ammo and I found this ammo to be very accurate they make it in several different way to think they make it into 123 129 and a 140 and I was shooting the 140s I also shot the 129 I have not shot the 123 so rock river says that this rifle is one minute of angle just right out of the box no break-in period right out of the box one minute angle now there's a lot of myths about the break-in period of rifles some rifles supposedly require significant break in periods of time with maybe even a hundred rounds of ammo some require a box of ammo or less and rifles like this claim that they don't need any break-in period at all and I actually found that pretty much to be true on this gun and that's because it's got a lap barrel so by lapping the barrel they take out any inconsistencies in the rifling basically they go ahead and just smooth that out and get it where it needs to be ahead of running any bullets through it because by breaking in the barrel that's really all you're doing is you're just lapping it with a bullet so I found there to be no real break-in period it was pretty much very accurate right out of the box now Rock River claims that this rifle will shoot 1 MOA just right of the box no alterations just as it is as long as you have good quality match grade ammo or similar good quality ammo it should shoot 1 MOA and did I find that to be true well actually yeah pretty much I was shooting just over a minute but I think some of that might have been me but in terms of the rifle could I see that this rifle is capable of one minute with factory ammo yeah and with hand loads I would say even even less than that it was surprisingly accurate for a gas gun I would say for the same just dollar the dollar bolt actions tend to be a little bit more accurate or are at least capable of better accuracy but out of this gas gun I definitely would say that this is a mo a capable rifle I was shooting about an inch at a hundred yards and I shot this out to four or five and six hundred and you know my groups did change a little bit and a lot of that gets into wind not necessarily the rifle so the shorter ranges are a little bit better gauges of how the rifles really gonna group but for a gas gun when I shot a five inch group at 400 yards I was pretty excited about that that's pretty good for an AR Profile rifle starting with the buttstock this is a pretty standard ar-15 style design it's definitely Rock river's own brand but it looked very familiar to me I don't know if you recognize it but this is what I immediately thought of you see that side-by-side comparison this is the Magpul MOA rifle stock the angle on the comb is very similar the length is the exact same the height is the exact same and even the plastic material feels like the same same substrate there this is a little bit they've cut a little bit more material away from it and some of that is because it does not have the folding compartment like the Magpul magazine has now do I stuff a bunch of crap in here usually not the only thing I'll keep on there is maybe my tax stamp for a suppressor or maybe some extra batteries if I'm using an illuminated optic but I tend not to put a whole bunch of stuff in there so in terms of the profile of the stock pretty much exactly like the Magpul MOA rifle stock but it's rock river's own brand I don't know if they manufacture it or somebody makes it for them now there are two different stocks that can come with this rifle there's this one that's the fix comb then they actually sell another one that's got an adjustable cheek riser I didn't have a whole lot of trouble using that one but I generally default to more adjustability especially in a precision rifle being good so I would have liked to have tested that one no errors with this one the stock seemed really strong really sturdy but if you want a little bit more it's probably worth it to go to that adjustable stock now if you really know that you want a PRS stock or a luthier or something like that I would say go with the cheapest option so you can take this one off it's just a standard milspec tube under there so you can take it off and put any AR style stock on there so if you know already that you really like a PRS stock or a lute they are something like that then go with the cheapest one so you can take this off but I didn't have any issues with it it seemed to be a pretty sturdy pretty reliable I'll be a plain stock but it worked well for me next feature we're gonna look at is the charging handle nothing fancy here just pretty much a regular AR design it's got one unlocking tab not two I'm a lefty so I always like the ambi ones but I've grown so used to using these that it's not not a big deal for me I wish they had gone with an extended one like the Raptor or one of those other designs that sticks out a little further just because I think everybody's always gonna be putting a scope on this gun so anything that can help you reach around the scope is always better now this this is definitely usable and I've got enough I really fund this scope that it's not hanging way out so it's it's definitely very usable but nothing particularly interesting special and maybe they did that just because that's what most people are used to and anybody who wants something fancy is gonna put their own in there it worked I have any problems with it it always walked up when it needed to and it always charged effectively but nothing fancy it just works next up is the pistol grip now I don't know if Rock River manufactures this component themselves or they outsource this to somebody else what it reminded me of was a Hogue rubberized grip which in my opinion is a good thing it's got that that really tacky rubber that helps you maintain a really good grip and it's even got some texturing on here if you want to grip it really well now most precision shooters aren't gonna have a super aggressive grip they're gonna just very lightly hold this in fact a lot of shooters will even run their thumb on the other side I don't have any problem with this grib seem to work just fine for me now I do want to note that this grip unlike some others doesn't have a little secret compartment in the bottom it's just hollow but I think that's fine on a precision rifle I'm not gonna be sticking crap in there because I don't want anything rattling around so the grip was comfortable work great for me easy to use no complaints there this rubberized texture I actually really like it on pistol grips but I don't like when it's applied to the buttstock because when when your face gets all sweaty it tends to rub weird and it tends to grab my beard and I don't like it on the buttstock but on the pistol grip it's it's actually a desirable feature in my opinion I like that they also included an extended trigger guard so in case you're trying to shoot this gun with gloves or you just want a little bit more breathing room there's definitely more than ample room in there and it's very friendly very easy to reach the trigger comfortably and very important on a precision rifle is the trigger itself now this is Rock river's proprietary two-stage trigger this is their own manufacturer they sell this as an individual component that a lot of people put in a lot of other rifles frankly because it's good the trigger was definitely one of my favorite features of this rifle it a very little travel very little take-up and it was very crisp there are definitely lighter triggers on the market but I would not replace this trigger if I was buying this this rifle no in a lot of my ARS I've got a guy's Li s si enhanced I've got a rise armament three pound single stage I've shot several chew chip McCormick's I've shot milspec triggers the milspec ones I get them out of there pretty quick but I've shot a lot of nice triggers and this is one that I would not replace Rock River does a very good job with this two-stage let's charge it just so I can show you the trigger itself now again the rifle is safe verified that there's nothing in here so the trigger it's a two-stage so it's obviously got some take-up put that few to that take-up it's just a complete brick wall and then just a little bit of pressure with hardly any over travel [Music] let's look at the reset pretty firm reset quite a bit of movement in the reset but it's a very positive click it's really obvious when you're there it's not as long as some others but for our precision trigger you know you're not gonna be shooting superfast with this so I think it's very appropriate for the function of the rifles that's a great trigger and it was a great experience shooting that and I found that trigger definitely helps my accuracy because it's an accurate rifle the trigger itself doesn't make a gun accurate or inaccurate but the trigger interfaces with the shooter so it really determines how you are gonna shoot the rifle next up is the magazine well I would say all that's pretty standard fits your mag just like any mag should go in there works works just great and the buttons in my opinion where it's supposed to be one interesting feature about this gun that I actually really like is that the magazine release look at that it's ambi so that's pretty nice now I'm a lefty and so I appreciate features like this but with an ar-15 I'm so used to reaching for this button with my right hand and finding that with my offhand then I'm pretty familiar with that so it's not a huge deal if it wasn't Andy it wouldn't be a deal breaker but I really liked that they did that so that's great The Rock River put an ambi mag pitch in there so everything in terms of how the magazine went in and out seemed to function just fine the only issue I had was on my very very first magazine I had a failure to hold open everything cycled just fine but the last round it did the bolt didn't lock back it closed and I don't think that was any fault to the gun I think it was more fall to the magazine but sometimes stuff like that happens in the first couple rounds of a new gun just while parts are starting to get lubed up and certain to move around so I can't really fault the gun for that not a big issue I think it was more of a magazine issue if it was any issue at all so let's talk about the magazine itself so one thing I kind of can't get over is the choice of the magazine for this gun now this is based on a 308 it's in the lar 8 series so it makes sense they'd use a magazine based on a 308 gun all of the lar eights use an FAL style magazine an FAL metric pattern magazine there there are even variations within the fa outline now I really wish this has actually come with something a little bit more common for this type of shooting again it's based on the 308 rifle so it makes sense that using a 308 base magazine would be a natural choice I would say in the world of precision shooting the accuracy international magazine is very common but mostly for bolt actions but in gas guns it would have been nice if this use something like an SR 25 magazine a regular just DPMS magazine or my preference would probably be a PMAG just a 308 Winchester PMA I think that would have worked really well with these FAL magazines yeah they're definitely some of them out there and you know it's a fairly friendly choice for this gun but it's a little bit weird to me just because there's not a lot of innovation in F magazines there's nobody making new clever designs of fals in fact this is an old thermal design you know it's stamped with rock River but I can absolutely tell that this is made by thermal manufacturing and I've had some bad experiences with thermal in the past now I didn't have any with this but just in previous previous range sessions of using ar-15s the thermals have not been super super nice to me so the magazine choice not a detriment if you like everything else about this rifle they worked fine but in terms of finding these you pretty much need to go with thermals or order some weird surplus magazine that's probably been sitting in a warehouse in Europe for a long time so a little bit weird choice with the FAL magazines I would have preferred a P mag but that's my personal preference you might not mind maybe it's something I just need to get over now let's take a quick look at the one feature that makes the controls of The Rock River lar 8 series a little bit different than a standard AR platform and that is the bolt release and bolt lock so normally you would have your ping-pong paddle right here but it's completely smooth on this side so how the heck do you do you lock the bolt back or how do you close it when it's locked back so they've got an interesting design that again is ambidextrous and I think it's pretty cool so it's actually this little lever right here so you pull back on your charging handle just like you normally would and you push it up to lock the bolt in the rearward position and then to move it forward all you do is push down and it slams at home again it's ambidextrous that's found on both sides and so I think that's a pretty clever design now I definitely take some getting used to because like I said earlier I'm very familiar with air 15 rifles and so instinctually I reach for the ping-pong battle on the other side and it's not there and I have to think oh yeah Rock Rover does it differently so then I remember to go reach down here and it works just fine so I think that's a training issue if you want it to feel exactly like all your other ARS then that's negative for this but if this is your primary gun that you're gonna train on a lot which I think it would be for most people who are gonna spend this kind of bread on a rifle I would say that's a pretty interesting feature I didn't have any issues with that it seemed to work well every time the only the only issue I had with the bolt was that failure to lock back on the very first magazine but I don't think that was because of this I think that was because of this flimsy magazine or because parts were still getting lubed up because it was the first couple of rounds but that's an interesting control that makes the wreck Rock River just a little bit different than some other rifles all the other controls on the upper and lower receiver seemed to be completely standard which is just fine by me so standard dust cover it worked just as it's supposed to standard shell deflector which I really like because again I'm a lefty if it doesn't have a good shell deflector guess where those rounds are going right in my freaking face so I really like that the shell deflector works well now the ejection from this gun was very very consistent I had a nice neat little pile of brass about six inches wide about six feet away from me so the ejection from this rifle absolutely perfectly consistent and of course it's got the forward assist and do you know how many times like I punched on that thing yeah none I think the forward assist tends to keep people into trouble more than it tends to help people out of a bind now where I find this most useful is if you don't actually close the bolt properly if you're a little bit gentle with it and you don't slam it all the way home then yeah you got you got to push it forward but this bowl it seems to find its way home pretty well and and I didn't even need to do that at all pretty money pretty much everything else on here from the safety to the takedown pins everything else is pretty much standard next up is the rail slash four end of this rifle now a little bit of a mixed opinion here and most of that is just personal preference so first off I can't knock the construction of this thing 7000 series aluminum really really freaking rocks this is a very very well-made handguard now I'm calling this whole thing I use forend handguard and rail kind of interchangeably but this section is what I'm talking about so this whole thing is made very very well my minor tweaks my if it were a perfect world type of complaints are more with the design and less with the implementation so when I first saw a picture of this I thought that these were in lock slots and that would have been cool if they were in lock slot so you could kind of put anything anywhere I've got several rifles that are either in lock or keymod I actually own more keymod which I kind of regret it seems like em lock has kind of won that battle and it's taking over the future but key lock is two key mods excuse me is still pretty good but these are neither these are just ventilation slots so I kind of wished that you know if they were cutting out all these slots anyway that they had made them said that they were compatible with something if they were compatible with em lock that sure would have been nice but nope they're just there for ventilation now they do have a beveled edge on there which I really like so there's no chance of you know cutting yourself on I'm there nice and smooth it provides a comfortable grip and they're really large so it provides adequate airflow and on a precision rifle keeping your barrel cool well that's really important because you don't want your gas block heating up and you definitely don't want heat building up in your barrel so these are primarily for cooling and I don't mind that this handguard it's also pretty big around if if I had you know all my druthers I think I would have liked it to be a little bit narrower but if you're gonna set this on a barricade or anything like that you probably want something big and sturdy so it wasn't a huge issue to me I would like to see it just a tiny just a tiny bit narrower but it was still very comfortable in hand and this octagon design is generally a good one in my opinion it helps you get a good grip on it as you're moving the rifle around now when you're shooting it you're probably not gonna be using this type of grip on you know precision rifle you're probably gonna be laying prone or shooting this off of the bench so really you don't need to put your hands on here when you're shooting it's just when you're carrying it and that grip that was just fine now this rail is completely smooth down here which I like but up front it's kind of a quad rail so it's got your main rail that runs the whole length of the top I think that's pretty standard I think most rifles of this design are now going to that just because people like the ability you know if you wanted to do a clip on night vision or something like that you could do it if you wanted to and you've got options just by having this full length rail here and it doesn't get in the way of anything what people tend to not like is the quad rail around here so I like that they kept that bear kept that nice and smooth and clean good call up front they actually provided rail panels so that you can make it a quad rail really in the only place that you would need a quad rail so two short sections here which are adequate for a flashlight if you wanted to run like a Steiner d-ball laser anything on there you absolutely could and the one that everybody's going to be using in my opinion everybody should be using a bipod for this type of rifle they actually included a longer section here so you've got lots and lots of different choices as to where you wanted to mount that thing so great great design on mounting these rails it's two screws and each of these small ones and they were hex head which I really like I got a big fan of all the Torx bits just because I found them easy to strip so I like that they stuck which is a regular just friendly easy to use hex head it's got two screws in these smaller sections and four screws in this bigger one and these rail sections ten they feel very very very solid and I like that a lot so I think overall the rail design is is pretty good I wish it was a little bit thinner and I wish these were in lock but other than that this thing is really really sturdy it did a great job next up is probably the most important component on any accurate rifle and that is the barrel man this thing has a very good barrel 416 stainless steel bead blasted matte finish I really like that matte finish for being a stainless steel barrel no shine to it at all I really like that especially for tactical applications or if you were going hunting with this thing it's not some shiny highly reflective finish it's a fluted barrel which they were really really aggressive with their fluting they took away a lot of material but they've got you know the fins that they left are very sharp so I think that helps make it very rigid helps it cool really really fast now there's some debate on how how effective fluting is obviously if you had this full diameter and didn't take away any material that would be your strongest rifle and if you had this inner diameter with none of these fins that that would be your weakest rifle barrel in terms of the rigidity and how much it's gonna actually vibrate with your harmonics so fluting is always a balance of those two things how much can you make it act like that larger bull barrel by taking away material to make it the weight of that smaller thinner barrel in terms of the accuracy and balance they did a great job on this barrel it's a 24 inch on the 65 which seems to kind of be the right length it's a 1 and 8 twist so it's a pretty aggressive twist rate and that's why I went with those heavier 140 grains I think this was a slower twist rate something like the 123's would have been more accurate but being that this is spinning it pretty quick heavier bullets are gonna tend to be more accurate and I found that to be true with this barrel and that one 1/8 twist on a 24 inch barrel means you get three full rotations within the barrel so it really really helps you establish a good spin inside the barrel and that kind of seems to be the formula for most of the precision six 5s that I'm seeing that 24 inch length with that one and eight twists is a very common formula used by a lot of manufacturers now my only real complaint about this barrel is that for a stainless barrel it's not as stainless as I would have liked shooting this out in the humidity there is some very very mild rust I don't even know if you could call it rust but you can tell a slight discoloration on these fins on the flutes now it's not bad binge gun shooters are gonna tend to over clean their rifles they're gonna be meticulous about cleaning them but a lot of tactical precision shooters I think a lot of people actually do more harm by over cleaning their rifle than by letting it build up the right amount of copper fouling and all that so I think a lot of people in this category of rifle you know aren't going to clean it every time they use it so for a stainless barrel I wish it had a little bit more corrosion resistance that would have been nice not something that is a huge you know turnoff but it's something that kind of surprised me it's something that I would definitely want to be aware of if I was running this rifle in any sort of serious capacity knowing that yep after I shoot this I definitely have to take some you know LPS or something like that something that will just wipe this down after I use it because there was a little bit of a buildup there so in terms of the accuracy of this barrel I love it in my experience I have not shot an AR barrel that I would definitively say is absolutely for sure more accurate than this one yeah I can't say there's any any AR barrel that's more accurate than this it worked great for me and I also liked it down in here you may or may not be able to see in there probably not but they used a really sturdy steel gas block because that's important because you want very consistent and reliable gas pressure on the way back so you want something that's gonna mate on there really tightly you're not gonna have any escaping gas I don't think there was any issue with that but it's really durable I have no concern about that wiggling loose or melting or anything like that now there's not an adjustable gas key if you were gonna run this thing suppressed you might want one now with this long of a barrel you're definitely going to get a lot of gas pressure and it's a rifle length it's not a mid-length system it's a rifle length gas system so you're gonna get a lot of gas pressure so we made it to the end not quite the end of the review hang in there for just just a little bit more but the end of the rifle now this muzzle device I actually like it a lot it's kind of a combination device it's a four chamber break reverse porting so it this rifle really had no recoil but the 6'5 not an aggressive rifle it's it's a little bit less than a 308 so not any significant kick coming from a 65 to begin with but you've got a four chambered break in here you've got kind of a flash hider top and you've even got some holes in the end to act a little bit like a comp to and they even added this you know aggressive sawtooth type interface kind of like a breacher barrel I think one of the most important features of a muzzle device our precision rifle is purely protecting the crown of the barrel this way you've got you know after your crown you've got all this other space around here so really there's no chance that you're gonna bump into a barricade or something and and put even a tiny little ding in that crown because that target crown is is very important for accuracy so overall I think this was an effective muzzle device this rifle I wouldn't spin it off I would keep it on there and I've replaced most of the muzzle devices on most of my ar-15 now most of them come with just a standard a tube birdcage which is not a bad muzzle device but there's nothing particularly special about it so a lot of times I replace those with something that's a little bit more effective either as a break or as a flash hider but this one I would keep on there it tend to work pretty well I think they offer it with or without this break I'm willing to pay a little bit for this break it's nice but on a 65 you know that's not incredibly important this thing isn't gonna kick a whole lot so reducing recoil is always good I think any time a gun kicks less you can shoot it better and people are going to you know these huge guns these fifties these three 3:8 stuff like that generally a smaller gun you'll shoot it better so that's what a muzzle break does right it tames done that recoil to make it a little bit more friendly so it's never a bad thing unless you're shooting with a spotter right next to you and you're gonna blow their ears out with a really loud break but I think this did a very good job of taming recoil without being excessively loud so I would leave it on there and I actually like this break a lot let's talk about the price of this weapon system so the Rock River obviously without the scope without the mount without any of that just talking about the rifle itself the MSRP on this model is about $2,000 now that's MSRP street price is always going to be different and whether you get it you know with this plane stock or if you get with the cheek riser stock and then also if you choose to get this kind of combination comp and break muzzle device or not if you just get a regular flash hider on that that affects the price a little bit but $2,000 is a lot of money for a lot of people and for you know for competition shooters that's that's just getting started but for a lot of people you know buying a rifle there are a lot of rifles that are very accurate for less than that but gas guns that are this reliable and this accurate you're not getting a steal of the deal but I think it's appropriately priced I think you're paying for quality I don't think you're just paying for the name I think you're paying for a lot of really quality features so at that price would I say you know save your money get something cheaper and you know try to try to you know tweak every bit accuracy out of it or what I say go with this I'm more inclined to say go with something like this in an ar-10 in an ar-15 components are very common and very very modular and something that may work really well on one AR 10 may not work as well on another AR 10 so I'd say if you're looking for this platform a rifle you know MSRP $2000 which means street price probably 1,600 or so that's that's an appropriate price and I think you're getting good quality for that price it's not cheap but it's a great quality rifle all right thanks guys for hanging in there I know this is probably one of the longest gun reviews I've ever done but this rifle has a lot of interesting features and I want to cover it in depth I want to really you know give this rifle my due diligence and really take the time to cover all these features because you know it performed well and I think there's a lot of stuff we're talking about here so let's kind of back up a little bit and talk about just overall takeaways so first accuracy great for a gas gun frankly I couldn't expect any better they said one a my way out of the box it pretty much shot that way for me I generally think I'm a pretty good shooter behind a rifle there are folks who are a hell of a lot better than I am but I shot this thing just over 1 MOA out the 400 at 100 yards it was definitely MOA so accuracy it was great there was nothing to be left to be desired in a gas gun in terms of accuracy reliability no failure used to fire no failures to eject no failures to chamber it was a very reliable rifle in fact the only issue I had was that one failure to hold open on the very first magazine that shot and like I said earlier there's lots of things that could cause that could have been magazine could have been just the lubrication still moving around so I would say reliability was excellent I can't knock the rifle for that that one thing features I would say pretty standard the one feature that I would say is out well the two features I would say that are outstanding are that barrel and the trigger Brock River did a great job with both of those in terms of the receivers and all that stuff you know it's pretty standard that that different bolt hold-open that's cool that they did that but that wouldn't really influence my buying decision if I was gonna look at a rifle that had that if everything else is the same had that or had a regular one I probably wouldn't care either way it's nice that it's ambi but I'm gonna get used to a regular one so that's not a huge issue the stock was pretty good I would suggest going with the one with the adjustable stock or if you want to throw down a little bit more cash get the cheap one pull it off and then put you know who they are or something like that on there the one thing that I didn't really like about my experience with this rifle is the weight and I think some of that was this big chunky handguard because the receivers you can't really take much more off of there and it'd still be rock-solid I don't think and the barrel I wouldn't touch the barrel I believe that just as it is maybe making it a little bit narrower in terms of the overall outer diameter and maybe even thinner material machining a little bit more out of there would reduce that weight a little bit because this thing is 9.2 pounds naked no scope no bipod anything like that so all set up here it's about 11 pounds and a little bit more by the time you have a fully loaded mag now for what it is that's not super heavy precision rifles can get crazy heavy I mean there are like PRS shooters running 25 pound guns and that like they're using not only bull barrels but they're using the barrel blanks so for to get that kind of crazy accuracy yeah a guns gonna be heavy like is just how it works but for me being used to running gun ARS moving up to something like this 20-inch bull barrel that's quite a bit heavier that pretty much forces you to use those big 20 round mags yeah it's a little bit heavy for me and that's a part of my kind of final decision on this rifle so if you're looking specifically for a semi-automatic precision rifle for $2,000 or less is this one I would recommend yeah yeah I would if that's what you're looking to spend this is a very accurate very reliable rifle it performed great and so that kind of me too my final decision on this gun it's a T&E gun so usually how that works if you're not familiar TN e stands for test and evaluate manufacturers supply equipment to riders or viewers industry folks just to say hey what's your opinion on this and that's not always for videos or articles a lot of times that's for you know if a police department wants to test out again and see how they feel about it something like that so they'll send a tne model that you can test you can shoot whatever they say don't tear it up but test it how you need to test it so they'll send the teen a model and then usually at the end there's an option to purchase the gun usually a slight discount not anything huge and so that's a pretty good test after after all my experience with this am i buying this gun and unfortunately the answer answer is no because the discount is not significant so I mean obviously if the discount was incredible yeah I'd buy it because we all love a good deal right but the weight is one of the biggest biggest things and I've got a lot of ARS they can shoot really really well really comfortably at a much much lighter weight and so my purpose is not necesary running and getting shooting fast I want accuracy and so for this same weight and the same accuracy I can get a bolt-action well for the same weight I can get a bolt-action that's way more accurate even though this is a my way I can get a bolt-action that's easily half that half MOA but I can also get a gun that's cheaper in a bolt-action then this is with the same accuracy so if you really want a semi-automatic rifle is this a good one yeah yeah absolutely but if you really if your goal is just to get that accuracy which mine more is since I have a bunch of other ARS I'm personally going with a bolt-action but if you're looking for a semi-auto they can absolutely run with most bullet actions this is a good one so I hope that kind of helped I'm not gonna end up purchasing this rifle but I kind of wish I was it was it was a hard decision it was very hard decision because this thing is awesome so I hope you learned a lot about this from a rifle I hope you found the review interesting I hope you're open to considering six five in the future cuz it's it's a really cool cartridge and this just got me excited about the 65 and about rock river 2 because they did a great job on this gun and I appreciate them letting me review it they it's it's a solid rifle so I hope you learned a lot I hope you had fun go ahead and hit subscribe down below so that you can see my other videos see some of my other product reviews my other gun review stuff like that but also make a point to actually check out the adventure videos because all my experience you know my channel is not primarily about reviewing gear I do a lot of gear reviews but I'm I'm out in the field a lot I'm camping I'm hunting I'm shooting and that's why I feel equipped to be able to talk about this stuff because I actually use products thoroughly so make sure to check out some of those those fun videos to where we're just getting out camping all that stuff so I appreciate you paying attention for this very long review I hope it was fun I hope you learned something until next time stay safe be free and never stop seeking adventure [Music] [Music]

Channel: Adventure One

Views: 9,716

Rating: 4.7974682 out of 5

Keywords: Rock river arms, 6.5 creedmoor, 6.5, ar-10, 308, precision rifle, prs, tactical, magazine, case, bipod, scope, rra, review, footage, long range

Id: ncwtG2C4e-s

Length: 49min 11sec (2951 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 11 2017