Monday 24 November 2014

N-Strike vs Elite Round 6: Nerf Elite Strongarm vs N-Strike Maverick REV-6

Today's comparison is that of Nerf's N-Strike 6 dart revolvers. One, the seasoned veteran the Maverick, and the other, a very popular revolver from the Elite line, the Strongarm.

Aesthetics: The Maverick has a classic big revolver style design, very popular for all kinds of aesthetic mods.
The Strongarm has a far more sleek and practical design, lacking the bulk of the Maverick. I personally feel that the Strongarm has the better paintscheme, but as usual for aesthetics, it's all personal preference, so no scoring here.
Accessories: Both the Maverick and Strongarm come with themselves and 6 darts (suction for Mav, Elites for Strongarm). It's an obvious draw here.
Range/Power: The Mav is one of the worse performing N-Strike blasters, getting 8-9m with its included suction darts. A grey trigger Strongarm, averages 11-12m ranges, though it's quite inconsistent.
The Strongarm wins this round.
Accuracy: Though the Mav's rotating mech causes its shots to be less consistent, its use of suction darts gives it quite good accuracy. The Strongarm uses Elite darts, which are much less stable and accurate, even if the Strongarm's rotating mech is better.
The Mav wins this round, primarily because of its inclusion of suction darts.
Usability: The main issue we'll address here is reliability, as both blasters are fairly comfortable to use. The Maverick is notorious for being an all round terrible design, prone to misrotation, misfires and jams. The core of the Maverick's flaws is its rotation mech. The rotation is directly linked to the trigger, with a half rotation on the trigger pull, and the other half on trigger release. The problem is that the rotation mech is very unreliable, often slipping or getting caught.
The Strongarm's rotation mech has no such problem. Instead of rotating with trigger movement, the Strongarm rotates on plunger return. Because the plunger return motion is very consistent, the Strongarm is very consistent in rotating, and so suffers far fewer misrotations and misfires than the Mav.
Naturally the Strongarm wins this round.
Rate of Fire: The Mav can get up to 3dps, though chances are you'll end up with some misrotations and misfires. As the Strongarm has slam fire as well as a far superior rotation mech, it can produce a much higher rate of fire. I've achieved a solid and reliable 5dps, and much higher seems to cause misfiring.
The Strongarm wins this round too.
Capacity: Both the Mav and Strongarm hold 6 darts. Another obvious draw.
Value for Money: Both the Mav and Strongarm, in their peak availability times, were available for as little as $10, and often less, so the value round comes down to the blasters themselves. As the Strongarm is the far better blaster, it wins this round as well.

The Strongarm has won 4 rounds, the Mav 1, with 2 draws. Therefore I declare the Elite Strongarm the superior blaster, which is not surprising at all.
After the 6th round of N-Strike vs Elite, the score is:
Elite: 4.5 -- N-Strike: 1.5

10 comments:

  1. the strogarm will stop firimng soon. the barrel will not rotate

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    1. I currently have about 10 Strongarms that have been heavily used at my Uni's Tag Recon games, and none of them have shown any signs of any problems.
      Maybe yours is a lemon? Almost every blaster has had reports of at least one lemon.

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    2. I also have a strongarm which rotates inconsistently. About half the time it will go through all 6 darts fine but half the time the rotating mechanism "twitches" and fails to rotate the turret. It's unmodded, just opened to see the internals and to make painting easier. I should open it up to try to isolate the problem. Strangely i have a modded maverick which has shot perfectly for years. Sad, it really put me off the strongarm

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    3. Same, this problem put me off the strongarm. I still like my firestrike better.

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    4. Retaliator Retaliation6 December 2014 at 11:25

      May I add that I have about 7 Strongarms, all bought from almost when they were released, and they are still not broken. In fact, when I engage in a Nerf War, I probably would use it before i engage into my Rampage and my Retal. But, of course like P13c30fch33s3 said, there are lemons in this world.

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  2. I have painted 3 strongarms now and all of them operated far better before painting. I belive this is partly to do with how complicated the gear system is to re-assemble and because of how tight it fits together. Painting the shell will make it about a millimeter thicker, which causes it to sticka fair bit.

    All three of mine were perfect before painting, all three struggled to turn over after reassembly and now (after working through it for a week or two) the first one i painted is working perfect again. The other two are also getting more consistent, the more i just sit there and dry fire them.

    Try 'wearing them in' after painting and see how you go

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  3. I have used a blue maverick(that is the nice original paint scheme) for years and it is a much better blaster to me personally. It is one of the most iconic nerf weapons. Anyone who wants to know about the strongarm go to blaster labs

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  4. I have had the Strongarm since it came out and it is perfectly fine. Maverick sucks cause it jams frequently so i suggest to buy the Strongarm because it performs better, it has a good price range, and it is just way superior than the Maverick.

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  5. The Mav shoots faster, and is way more reliable, I should know I tested them.

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  6. One time i shot a nerf dart over my 2 story house with the strongarm i two of them there both in blue. The nerf maverick is ok for me and i have 4 nerf mavericks in the yellow n strike color.

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