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Specifications PRICE:
£80 Here's one you don't see much. The SA80 or L85A1 to give it it's proper title. This is the springer version of the SA80 and is not really of much use in skirmishing, so it stays in the house to do a bit of plinking from time to time. The model in pretty accurate and even has the NATO numbering down the side of the foregrip. The SA80 is an all plastic construction, but the plastic doesn't look too bad, in fact the green plastic looks better than the real thing. The only metal on it is the cocking slide, mag lever, trigger, trigger guard, gas eject port and sling rings. The cocking lever pulls the spring action back for each shot. It does feel quite stong so I'm not to worried about snapping it off while cocking the spring.
There is a safety switch that work and has a nice feel to it, by this I mean you get a nice response then setting and unsetting the switch. Basically its a bar of metal that goes through the gun and has to be pushed one way to make safe and the other to be live. This is above the trigger and just behind the green foregrip.
The mag release lever is on the left hand side of the gun and works just like the real thing, in other words if you hold it to close to your chest the mag drops out. The only real problem I have with this is the fact that it is BRIGHT silver and spoils the looks a little. There is a difference in that the L85A1 has a shroud around the mag lever, so the replica is from the L85 (not A1).The mag drops out and inserts quite nicely with a good solid clipping feel.
The Mag itself is all plastic and unfortunately has to have the bbs inserted 1 at a time. One nice thing about it is the fact that it has a small plastic rod for you to push the spring down, when the spring is down it clicks to stop it springing back up to make loading easier. When finished you just wiggle the clip at the bottom to unclip the spring. The rod then fits neatly back in the mag. An odd thing I found was that the Mags which are suppose to be STANAG are not the same size as the Marui M16 STANAG mags, not that the Marui ones would work anyway.
The SUSAT scope looks very nice, and is a great replica of a real SUSAT but is pretty much useless as the plastic lenses actually de-magnify everything. Suprisingly it is adjustable for range but that's not very useful if the sight is useless. There are some iron sights on top, a hole and a post. But again these really are much use for aiming as they are too close together (the real thing suffers from this too)
A few nicer point are that it is incredibly comfortable to shoulder and has very good pointability because of the Bullpup design. One nice touch is the bolt dust cover slide behind the cocking handle can be slid back and springs down to open. It doesn't actually do anything useful, but it's still a nice extra when it could have so easlily been glued on.
Conclusion This is a nice cheap replica of one of the most vilified guns in the world. So if you want to do some plinking in your back garden and don't want a pistol, this is a really good alternative. For the money it is surprisingly well built with a few touches you would not expect from a springer. Note There are people out there that can customise the springer SA80 and turn it into a full AEG by using the internal parts from a Marui FAMAS. The SA80 as an AEG is great for skirmishing, and always impresses fellow Airsofters.
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