Aesthetics: The (orange) Stryfe and Demo look quite similar, both with the sharp lines typical to Elite. The stryfe is a much slimmer and more compact pistol/SMG type blaster, where the Demo is more of a carbine/assault rifle. I (and many others) am not a fan of the orange, I much preferred the standard Elite blue.
As usual I don't score on aesthetics, but even if I did this would have been a pretty tough round, I like both styles a lot (if not the colour).
In fairness, the Demolisher is in many ways just a bulked up Stryfe with some extra parts.
Accessories: The Stryfe comes with itself, a 6 dart clip (mag) and 6 Elites.
The Demolisher comes with itself, a 10 dart banana clip (mag), a stock, 10 Elites and 2 Elite missiles.
Naturally the Demolisher wins.
Range/Power: This is probably the saddest round of the lot. In my grey trigger Demo review, I complained quite a fair bit about how bad the range was, being 7-8m at best. I'm sad to say that the grey trigger Stryfe is no better, 7-8m is what I was getting with 4 fully charged AAs.
Going into modding just for a second, the grey trigger Stryfe's motors are incredibly horrible. The Demo at least performs respectably with a rewire and 2 IMRs, being on par with Barricade motor'd blasters. The GT Stryfe with a rewire and 2IMRs performs about on par with a stock grey trigger Retaliator.
This round is an all round depressing draw.
Accuracy: Accuracy is surprisingly decent from both blasters, primarily due to the lack of power. I'm going to call it a draw because both fire darts so poorly range wise that accuracy is actually quite hard to compare.
Usability: The main thing here is going to be the effectiveness of the locks in both blasters, since the Stryfe just doesn't come with a stock so comfort in that regard is not comparable, and both blasters use essentially the same firing mechanism and so feel pretty much the same. The biggest difference between the two comfort wise is that the Stryfe can be held underbarrel a little awkwardly, but still in a good place. The Demo's underbarrel grip is the firing grip for the missile launcher, which is quite far below the barrel, making it somewhat awkward and uncomfortable. It's not the worst, so I won't focus on that.
Lock wise, both blasters have essentially the same (clip [mag] detector, jam door, etc) with one key exception. The Stryfe has a dart checker just above the magwell that the Demo lacks. Now in concept it seems like a decent idea, lock up the trigger if there's nothing loaded so as to tell the user the clip (mag) is empty. Sadly it doesn't work as well as it should, frequently locking up the trigger even if the blaster is loaded, as well as during rapid fire. I heard reports of people struggling to use anything besides an Elite clip (mag) and good condition Elite darts because of how bad the dart sensor is.
The Demolisher simply doesn't have this lock, and neither do any other flywheelers that Nerf's made. To put it bluntly, the Stryfe's dart sensor is a total failure at its job and threatens to completely ruin the Stryfe
The Demolisher wins this round naturally.
Rate of Fire: ROF is a little bit of an odd category. Both blasters are semi auto flywheelers and have very similar internals, so they should have similar ROFs right? Well when modded, yes they perform very similarly.
When out of the box however, the Stryfe has a terrible dart sensor that frequently causes trigger jamming, limiting your ROF to about 3 darts a second, where a stock Demo can fire at about 5 darts per second before it starts jamming from flywheel deceleration.
Modded Stryfes and Demos can put out darts extremely fast, I've recorded a video of the Demo firing around 9dps, and the Stryfe not far behind at around 8.
If you're willing to remove the dart sensor in the Stryfe, this round is a draw. If not, the Demo wins this round.
Capacity: The Stryfe comes with a 6 dart clip (mag), the Demo comes with a 10 dart clip (mag) and holds 2 missiles.
Demo wins obviously.
Value for Money: The Stryfe is available for 25AUD from Kmart only, and occasionally goes on sale for 19AUD. The Demo retails for about 60AUD in various stores, and regularly drops to 50AUD or less during sales.
The Demolisher is the more complete blaster and more usable blaster out of box, however the huge price difference allows you to buy a Retaliator alongside a Stryfe, giving you more accessories and a higher overall capacity.
I'm giving this round to the Stryfe on the basis that the massive price difference easily allows you to cover the Stryfe's lack of accessories compared to the Demo.
At the end of this comparison, the Stryfe has won 1 round, the Demolisher 3 (or 4 if you ignore modding) with 3 draws (2 if you ignore modding). Therefore I declare the Demolisher to be the superior out-of-box blaster. Do note that if you take into account buying a Retaliator alongside the Stryfe, it will win the Accessories and Capacity rounds, however the key deciding factor here is the Stryfe's dart sensor piece.
If you are absolutely against removing that piece, the Demolisher is by far superior purely because of how much of a pain that one lock is. If you're fine with removing the lock, then the Stryfe and Demolisher are functionally pretty much the same blaster and so your choice will come down to personal preference.
Posts have been a bit scarce recently because exams, but they'll end next week and I hope to pick up a Crossbolt and Rapid Red in BigW's upcoming sale, so there's that at least.
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