Smith & Wesson M&P Sport II Review (Part 1: Features & Accessories)

this is the first in a two-part series of our review of the Smith & Wesson M&P 15 fort to rifle or we're going to be talking about today is the various features of the sport 2 rifle as well as the different options I would recommend for the rifle and then the second part of the series we'll be going through our accuracy testing using various different loads out of this rifle to determine what are the most accurate loads to fire within this platform now the reason why we're talking about the MMP sport 2 right now is it is arguably one of the highest value rifles on the market today the reason why it's of high value is because of its combination of price quality and simplicity it is an excellent excellent AR platform both for new shooters that are getting into owning their first AR as well as seasoned shooters that want a more simple platform based in comparison to what they're currently operating today so looking at some of the features of the sport 2 rifle first off is we have the standard a2 socking grip again perfectly adequate for this rifle a lot of times people will change out the furniture on their AR rifles but in this case it's just not needed these are perfectly adequate for what people are going to use the rifle for the only exception on the pistol grip might be is if somebody had very large hands and want to have a little bit more setback from their trigger pole onto the trigger they might want to change out the the pistol grip but again the reason why the military issued these is for a reason it works and so does the stock so again I keep these on the rifle and do not change the mount you also have a standard baseplate back here a lot of the high end rifles will have a baseplate that will usually have a QD or a sling attachment mount that this one lacks that which is not uncommon for a entry level to medium grade ar-15 and we'll talk about this in a moment but people will change these out to put a sling attachment but you don't need it and we'll actually talk about that in a moment as well the trigger one of the reasons why I really like this rifle is most entry-level to medium grade ar-15s have terrible stock triggers they tend to be creepy bad trigger pulls bread bad break points almost every ar-15 I've owned I've changed out the trigger because they are so poor this rifle is the exception I actually like the trigger on this rifle it's a little bit spongy but it has a 9 nice clean crisp pull to it and because of that I'm not changing the trigger out in this rifle because this trigger is perfect for this rifle normally I use Rock River Arms two-stage triggers and on almost all of my ar-15 but this trigger one of the reasons why I bought this rifle is I didn't need to change this out so at a minimum just changed saved you a hundred to two hundred dollars just in the trigger up upgrade along the difference between the sport to model is they've now added the forward bolt assist as well as the dust cover which is nice to have a lot of people claim hey you don't need it well maybe but there's a reason why it's on the rifle it adds more value to it and in those certain situations that are very rare where you might actually need them it's nice to have them on the rifle you also have the mbus backup sight system a lot of times on the budget low budget rifles you're going to have flat tops and flat fronts where you have to buy your a sighting system this comes stock with the rifle and one of the things I really like about this is supposedly Smith & Wesson bore sights these are iron sights before they leave the factory what makes that important is that this is your first a ar-15 or you're planning on using it just for home defense don't have time to go to the range to sight it in and what-have-you what I found with most of the MMP sport 15 or sport 2 rifles is that these sights are almost always on the couple small adjustments at let 50 50 to 100 yards at close range these are on and you can literally use the rifle out of the box without having to worry about initially sighting it and Smith and wasn't does that for you which is a great feature to have moving forward onto the rifle are the front hand guards the front hand guards are the slim profile which I tend to prefer the Smith & Wesson uses these as well one of the things that was interesting about this is this model lacks what are called heat shields that you would typically see in one of these rifles so in other words to save cost and save weight they actually the heatshield so you just have the plastics around now is that a big issue is that going to be a problem well it depends and 98% of the time I would tell somebody no it won't the reason why is most people who are going to own this rifle are not going to fire it that much that consecutively to get this to the point where this becomes really uncomfortable to hold on to the other part of that is since this is a carbine length most people's hands are going to be sliding up and touching in many cases the front sight post assembly that's going to get very hot much harder than this is going to get and that's going to be uncomfortable so by the time you ever got to the point where this can be uncomfortable and to change this out the reality is what I always recommend is that you get a good pair of tactical shooting gloves if you're going to be shooting any one of these AR AR rifles it just makes it a lot more comfortable these are a pair for mechanics that I use again it makes a moot point of having to change this out whether or not it has an aluminum heat shield it doesn't really matter that the fact of the matter is if you're really going to do a lot of shooting in that in that capacity you're probably going to have a forward vertical mount and then you'll probably change this out anyways to a mag poll or any other types of BCM forward mounts that that will take these as well as a quad rail but again for simplicity reason I don't change this out I actually like it looking forward to that you have the a2 sight post front the more ARS that I shoot the more than I own the more I appreciate the a tube front sight post a lot of people will claim hey I want the the flat front sight post I don't want to obscure any of my optics yeah okay but the reality is if you're going to have unless you're going to have a dedicated high optics platform which really this rifle isn't designed for it's always nice to have this even as a backup capacity for your sighting system so the bottom line is I like the a - front sight post glad that's on the rifle and obviously it's built into the gas block system and then on the front of the rifle you have your standard a tube birdcage which again perfectly adequate now we're going to get into an issue that creates some controversy for this rifle and that has to do with the barrel first off the barrel is a one-in-nine twist armorknight coated barrel so armorknight I believe is the melon coated they just had to rename it for Smith & Wesson people who have fired this this rifle and have used many different rounds including myself I found zero problems with any part of reliability with these barrels they are simply excellent whatever they're doing with the coating whether it be mellow night or what-have-you it's excellent the other part of it is it lacks what's called chrome lining internally within the barrel which again historically has been put in the combat rifles for greater reliability but it doesn't peed your accuracy just a slight bit however 98% of people wouldn't even know the difference on this rifle the the bottom line is I've fed everything through here including Steelcase ammo I know people who have done the same with thousands of rounds of Steel KS animal 100% reliable absolutely fantastic barrel wouldn't change it does it lack remaining find who cares the final that a controversy here is the twist of the barrel now the first sport one versions that came out for the Smith & Wesson's had a couple different features in the sports - first off they lacked the forward bolt list and then they lacked the dust cover but what they gained was they had a one-in-eight twist 5r rifling barrel that Smith & Wesson put out a lot of people love the sport one model simply because of that barrel they claimed that it's very accurate barrel and the one-in-eight twist is a nice compromise between the military twist versions of 1 & 7 the civilian twist versions which are typically 1 & 9 they find that the the 1 & 8 twist is perfect to stabilize all types of bullets from 50 up to 77 grain bullets however one of the things you're going to see is in the part two of the series is I actually went out and tried all these most popular bullets through this one a 9 twist barrel and I think people will be very surprised as the type of accuracy I got relative to the different loads that are out there now would I preferred that Smith & Wesson keep the 1 & 8 twist 5r rifling barrel in the sport 2 version even if I had to pay for a little bit more money for it absolutely but is the one a9 twist barrel that's currently on here the six groove barrel is it sufficient yes it's actually an excellent barrel 98% of people wouldn't even know the difference and when you get the second version us in the series of these videos you're going to find that you're going to be very surprised at the type of accuracy and the load set that received that accuracy out of this barrel now let's talk about the accessories for this rifle because one of the things people tend to do when they get ar-15 so they tend to over-accessorize rifles and and I often tell them keep it simple that's one of the beautiful things about the ar-15 platform is you can keep this simple and it's still going to work for you in many different ways so the first thing I want to talk about is cleaning if you're new to shooting an ar-15 get what's called a bore snake it's the easiest way to clean your barrel you're gonna get a cleaner Lube combination you're gonna spray it down the barrel you can disconnect it the top upper and then you just pull the snake through and your barrel is completely clean of course you'll have to clean the other components of this by hand but it makes cleaning the barrel very easy to do and it also prevents you from potentially damaging the rifling in the barrel the second thing I want to talk about is sighting systems so three most common sighting systems people are going to use are gonna either be the iron sight systems we have now which is the mbus is a great backup system but it's not really designed to be a primary system if you're gonna have it in a beat up situation these things can break so if you're really married to having a good iron sight backup I typically recommend the Troy battle site backups are exceptional they're made out of steel and aluminum and there's a higher quality than what you have here but again this will be sufficient for 98% of people that are you can use this rifle the reason why is most people aren't going to be just firing the iron sights in this rifle at some point they're going to be mounting either a red dot a hybrid or they're going to be putting on a scope onto the rifle and this brings me to an important point about the rifle first off when you have a red dot this will allow you to ko it no sue the red dot so keeping the iron backup sights on here is important because a lot of people people always say well if your batteries go out of how are you going to be able to fire through your red dot well the reality is you if you can co witness through that you can fire through the red dot when the red dots turned off by using the backup sight system with the red dots the other part is you can have a system like this Spitfire from vortex this is a optic system as the three three power optics similar to our red dot again I can Co witness through it and it actually has X plus or that if the lights go off I can still fire this through again another excellent system so for the red dots I typically recommend the aim points in the vortex or are usually the highest quality you're going to put on here for the hybrids this is usually a good answer to that to that equation without having to spend a lot of money very expensive system and then you have your your scopes so in this case for example most people are going to mount the scope give or take that costs around two hundred dollars which is what you have here with the Nikon p-223 one of the benefits of this scope which I really like it is it's already got bullet drop compensation onto the ass so you know where the holdups are at various different distances when you shoot a 55 grain bullet out of a 223 rifle like this so excellent excellent optic the other thing you'll notice is this is what's called a quick mount and what I suggest when people buy optics is they buy good quality quick mounts with their optics and there's a reason for this first off time I take this scope off the rail system I can immediately put it back on tighten up the actual screw and then hold 0 again so it'll go back to where I shot it before this allows me to shoot the rifle if I have ever go out one it have a light time on with the rifle I can simply shoot my iron sights through the rifle or I can shoot a red dot and take the red dots off with the rifle and I can shoot my scopes and rifles what this allows you to do is to avoid one of the biggest problems people have with the ar-15 platform which is they tend to buy their first air 15 they put an optic system on there and then they want to shoot another optic system so they buy another air 15 and they create dedicated platforms for each optic you don't need to do that one of the benefits of getting good quick detach systems which will cost in the range of what the scope costs is it allows you then to have modularity with your platform so that I can have for example a red dot that I can use and I can have a scope I can use all with one rifle so you might in the long-term end up spending more money by having good optics and quick mount platforms for your rifle but it also allows you to only need and only use one ar-15 for your use so again excellent options for this but again remember to spend money invest in the quick and quick-release mounts this for example is one I use from Wilson combat I know there are other ones out there as well but you can expect to pay about the same price for the scope as you will for this mount and then the red dots will typically run anywhere from two to six hundred dollars depending upon what you want to spend for it but again it's a lot cheaper in the aggregate to have these than it is to have to buy multiple err 15s for your usage now I want to get two slings because this this gets into an issue of how people want to carry the rifle most people carry the rifle across the front side and what you'll commonly see a lot of tactical shooters do is they'll have attachments on their rear plate either a QD or what-have-you now you don't have to go to that extent a lot of people who shoot a ARS you'll notice they're gonna have a lot of different slings mostly because they just don't know the right slings to use and they're always playing around relative to the rifle that they're shooting this is a sling that I recommend for this rifle it's affordable and it's excellent and is from Galco and what it is is on the back side it has a loop and on the front side it has a latch and what this worked perfectly for this platform is is you can take this run it through your sling attachment so on the back here you can run it through the buttstock feed this sling through here and then what I can do is I can clip this for the front sling attachment and also and I have a perfectly good sling that I can tactically run on this rifle it works exceptional and I can take this off I can use this on any other air rifle because almost all of them that have these standard if you type stocks will have this this sling feed right here and then you can run this so that you can run it down across your body in the front you can make quick attachments and you can even do a single point option so again very good sling option from from Galco so if you're looking for a great sling for this without having to change up your base plate or add different things on to the rifle again this is a good option for you as well the final thing I want to talk about is the rifle itself the application for the rifle again if you're a new shooter to ar-15s and new if this is going to be the first ar-15 you're going to want to buy it's hard to argue that there's any better value in the market there are others out there such as the Ruger and in Springfield make of rifles now that are comparable to this they those rifles have a one-in-eight twist this is the one in nine twist but Smith & Wesson has been making these for a long time their quality has always been well known within the industry so this is an excellent rifle for the cost coming in for a new buyer now if you're have existing ar-15s what I find is a lot of people tend to doctor up their air 15's and they overdo it and they're missing the fun of the simplicity of the platform and one of the things I found in my own experience is I like this platform the way it stands now even though I change out some optics I don't change out anything else and I really enjoy firing this rifle even though I have better quality ARS out there with better features on it I still find the simplicity of this rifle to be excellent and this is one of the main reasons why I own this and I highly recommend this because this is arguably one of the highest value rifles on the market today so make sure that you watch the second part of the video where we're going to be going out and firing a number of different butts through this the sport 2 model to determine what will be the most accurate loads through this type of rifle barrel and with the 109 twist and I think of many people who already have a preconceived notion as to what will fire the best out of this rifle we'll be very surprised about what they see alright so if you like this video please watch the second in the series like our Channel and thanks for watching

Channel: AZ Trigger

Views: 286,847

Rating: 4.9059772 out of 5

Keywords: M&P Sport II, Smith & Wesson, Accessories, Slings, Optics, M&P Sport 2, rifle, review, AR-15, AR15

Id: ruDmd6V46ns

Length: 17min 28sec (1048 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 13 2016