Quick Review: Lightake/NFstrike 18 Dart Mags

Lightake contacted me, offering to send some products for me to review. I requested their 15 dart banana and straight/angled mags, as well as their 18 dart straight mag. I actually ended up purchasing the aforementioned 15 dart mags anyway, and those arrived before this review package did. This post therefore will just cover the 18 dart mag.

Disclaimer: These mags were sent to me for review by Lightake. Despite their contribution, I will do my best to ensure that this review remains as objective and unbiased as possible.

The Lightake/NFstrike 18 dart mag is essentially just a direct copy of the Nerf 18 dart Elite style mag. It is of the exact same length and design, with only a few differences that I can tell.

One of those differences is the printed design on the feed lips, which is slightly different to Nerf's printing. The second main difference that I noticed is the clips along the sides of the mag that hold it together. The ones on the Lightake mag are a lot smaller than the ones on the Nerf mag.

Like the Elite style mags, the Lightake 18 mag has "18" embossed on the side, and a stylised bottom. The last major difference I noticed between the Lightake and Nerf 18s is that the Lightake mag also lacks rubber bumpers on the bottom of the mag.

In actual use, I found them to have a slightly tighter magwell fit than Nerf 18s, though not enough to cause any issues. They also tended to be less smooth during loading, especially when loading in the last five or so darts. Besides that however, they worked pretty much just as well as regular Nerf 18s, loading and feeding just fine in the blasters that I tried (Rapidstrike, Stryfe, Retaliator). I cannot speak for their longevity as I have not had an opportunity to combat test them.
These knock-off 18 dart straight mags are available from Lightake for around 5-6USD depending on discounts, excluding shipping. If you particularly like the 18 dart straight mag and want more, these Lightake/NFstrike mags are a decent budget option that are only slightly inferior to Nerf ones.