Elite Paintball Guns

The Inferno paintballs are by far one of the best Diablo paintballs. They do come at a pretty high price – around $60.00 for 2000 count – but unlike the Blaze they totally deserve it. Inferno fuels more top Amateur A, B, and Scenario Teams, plus many of the fastest guns in the Pro ranks. Inferno’s shiny SpeedFeed Shell is super-glossy for anti-friction, high- speed feeding. With the Inferno you get pretty much everything you expect from paintballs – they’re accurate, nicely shaped and equally sized, great fill and break nicely in target hit and rarely into the barrel. They’re pretty available, too…in most of the big stores. Also they come in variety of colors you can choose from – all of them bright and hard to wipe out. The only problems you an experience is if you come across some old paint. And it can happen to everybody, but we can’t really blame the paint about that. Everyone knows that when the paint gets old it gets pretty much useless – lots of dimples causing lots of breaks, lots of bounces, not too efficient accuracy…in the end all you get is a ruined day of paintball. If you get a fresh box of the Inferno though you don’t have to worry about crappy paintball days – you’ll have a blast shooting those. If you can afford them don’t hesitate and get them – as I already said they’re by far the best Diablo ever made.

The Blaze paintballs are one of the pricier Diablo paintballs. They’re somehow better than many of the previous Diablo products mentioned, but not quite deserving the price they’re labeled. Yes they’re accurate and least likely to break in your barrel, but the weather conditions problem stays. Once it gets cold out there you can say goodbye to target breaks and hallo to plenty of bounces. The filling is definitely better though. If you’ve read most of the Diablo paintballs reviews you’ve probably noticed the comments about the watery not staining enough fillings. No such luck for the cheaters with the Blaze though. Even the white filling is thick enough and definitely stains enough. This of course can bring you trouble when cleaning your gear after the game, but there’s always a bad side you know. Good thing is that those work great with most of the stock barrels…we can’t say that for too many paintballs. But still, as I said for the price they’re valued they’re not that good. For instance the 2000 count goes around $50.00 which is about 10 bucks more than most of the other Diablo paintballs. They’re simply not that good. If you stumble on some sale though definitely chose those before something else. You won’t regret it.

Diablo Dusk paintballs are again one of the good Diablo products. There are things to be said both on the good and bad side, but I put them in-between the good paintballs on the market. One of the best things when talking about those is their availability. You can find the Dusk in almost every big store you can think of…and they’re probably gonna be the best paintballs you can get from there. Another good thing is that they’re cheap – coming at prices around $15.00 per 500 counts, $25.00 per 1000 count and around $40.00 for 2000 count you can take advantage of the price don’t have to worry that you’ll be getting some crappy paintballs. There are 4 shell/fill colors that you can chose form, but my advice to you is to avoid the white fill ones as it’s kinda hard to see and easy to wipe out. Those with pink fill work much better. The shell is pretty good making the paintballs very durable when in the barrel and although you may get some bounces barrel breakage is a rare occasion. Some of the flaws that I should mention are that those paintballs are not made for cold weather conditions. They become too bouncy when the temperatures drop. Another thing is that although most of the time they’re pretty accurate once in a while dimples may cause you problems with that. But overall those are some good paintballs. You should try them for sure and if they don’t work perfectly for your gun just keep trying…there’s plenty of choice.

Contrary to the Diablo Crush the Formula 13 gets pretty steady reviews and mostly on the good side. Diablo’s always been a respectful name when it gomes to paintball goodies and I don’t know what went wrong with the Crush and the Heat paintballs. Still the Formula 13 clears their name for as much as that’s possible with some steady performance. The balls are said do be very durable and no problem causing. They are nicely made with nice filling consistency and bright fill colors, break when they hit the target, stain just enough so they don’t get whipped right away, are pretty accurate, less to none barrel breaks, good in all weather conditions, nicely shaped with no bumps or odd shapes. The only thing that may bother you is the paintballs size, as some players say that they tend to be a little small, so you better try them in your barrel before you buy them. But overall the Formula 13 cover all of the things you can expect from good paintballs. And they’re not pricy, too. You’ll be surprised that they cost less than the Diablo Crush - $48.98 (a buck is a buck). Still if you didn’t get the message from the first two reviews – you can never say which paintballs are the right ones for you until you try as many brands and types as possible. So don’t jump right on these ones without any reservations. We can’t guarantee you’ll get the best performance with them.

The next Diablo option you get is the Crush…the whole review of those paintballs can be gathered in only one word – inconsistent. Why? Because when getting a case of Crush paintballs you don’t really know what you’re gonna end up with. The player’s reviews of this product vary from one end to another. You can only wish you’re lucky and you’re getting a good batch of those or it’s a horrible, horrible day of paintballing that’s expecting you on the field. The good reviews say that the balls are great with very thick filling, nice breakage on target contact, pretty good sized, and no dimples on them. Bad reviews on the other hand find those very unreliable. Lots of bounces, lots of barrel breakage, high difference in the sizes, lots of egg shaped balls, thick shell, horrible in cold and very hot weather. Told you the reviews differ from one end to another. What I recon is that the problem it really in the batch of paintballs you’re gonna end up with. If you’re lucky you’ll be giving good reviews…if not…bad ones. But that’s not really in your interest. And Diablo should really start working on their quality control. But once again those are not one of the priest paintballs on the market. They cost $49.94 for a 2000 round. So you should probably try them, as they may just the right ones for your gun. If not just switch to something else.

So you’ve got almost all the gear – the pants, the jersey, the gloves, the mask and the gun…overall you’re all set for the game. Except now you have to choose the paintballs that you’re gonna be playing with. I mean for sure you can’t skip that part, right. There are many paintballs you can chose from and in the next series of reviews we’ll show you the most popular brands and what they have to offer. But since paintball choosing is a matter of mostly tries and mistakes, until you find the ones that suites you and your gun the best, we can’t guarantee that our reviews will be absolutely helpful. What we’re saying is that it highly depends on the gun specifications whether the paintballs are gonna work for you or not.
We’re randomly gonna start with the Diablo Heat paintballs. What we’re dealing with here is probably one of the cheapest paintballs you can find. Unfortunately in this case the price does determine the performance. See what the given specifications for these paintballs are:
“Created for game fields and Recreational player’s enjoyment. Diablo Heat has the characteristics that Field Owners demand; Non-staining, easy to clean up, breaks on impact, but seldom in the rental gun. Quite simply, the paint the Pro’s use. Winner of NPPL events all year long, Heat’s intense, heavyweight fills won’t wipe away. The brittle shell formula guarantees breakage on impact when used with high performance, low pressure guns. Various colors available.”
And now we just have to bash those vaunts completely – probably the only thing that is true here is the non-staining and easy to clean part…yeah, but sometimes those are things that can be put on the negative side. I mean paintballs should stain a bit in order to actually leave a mark of impact, right. As to the breakage…that’s not always the case…there are multiple complains that the shell of these exact paintballs is pretty thick which causes a lot of bounces…and I mean a lot. That’s not the case if you’re using a bigger barrel, though…surprisingly they bounce with a target contact, but tend to break easily in bigger barrels…go figure. There are also some color problems…sometimes the colors of the shell and filling tent to mix…like if you’re playing blue/yellow the break color is kinda greenish…or pink/white…kinda pinkish…you know what I mean…not that that’s a big problem, but still. And we highly doubt that this is the paintballs preference of the Pro players. But we can’t skip the good parts …yes there are some – the price – as mentioned already…very, very cheap paintballs – cost only $39.98 for 2000 count or only 14 bucks for 500 round. Shape is also good. In 95% of the time the paintballs are equally shaped and round which is good. They are also pretty accurate (but that doesn’t always depends on the paintballs you know). And there’re plenty of colors you can chose from. So for cheap paintballs those are not that bad, but we don’t really recommend them for competitive games…for practice though they work just fine. And once again there’s only one way for you to choose paintballs – to try them. Try as many as possible and see what’s best for you and your gun.

Even though the lenses that come with most of the JT masks are good one it happens that they at some point (after a direct hit for instance) break. Or if you’re playing under really extreme condition they can sometimes fog. Something like that can ruin your day of play completely, especially if you don’t have spare lenses to replace them. Unfortunately that’s the only way of getting out of situations like that – spare pair of lenses. My advice to you is when you get the mask, spend some more money and get yourself another pair of lenses right away. Not that you can’t do it if/when your stock ones fail, but you know precaution never hurts. You can find the JT lenses easily in every paintball store, or hunting store or you can buy them online. The ones I’m gonna show you now are replacement thermal lenses for the Spectra line of masks and they differ only in their shade. Other than that they’re almost the same. You have a choice of yellow, clear, smoke or amber orange for the price of $22.94 a piece, or a pair of prism chrome mirror ones for $27.99. I know they don’t come cheap, but once you get it you know you’re ensured if something happens with the stock ones you have. The JT Spectra Thermal Replacement Goggle Lenses are more durable than the stock ones; they don’t fog at all, have no glare form the sun and are very easy to clean. The only problem may have is the change which is not always easy. But you know that’s a problem with every JT mask. With some practice you should be ok.

Now this is the real Flex-7 upgrade. This time all the things that should’ve been done are done and the final product is amazing – when speaking about the performance anyway as the design, although slightly different from the Flex-7, still makes the mask looks dull and boring. But other than that, whatever people were complaining about with the Flex-7 has been taken care of. I’m not gonna compare this one to the ProFlex 8 as they’re miles away from each other, I’m gonna compare it only to the Flex-7, because as I already said this is what a real update should look like. So to start with – the ProFlex is even more comfortable than the Flex-7, has greater protection as the soft rubber is now strengthen, but still soft enough to bounce off balls. You’ll experience absolutely no fog problems, but that has never been an issue with the JT masks. The ProFlex it’s even lighter than the Flex-7, which absolutely does not give up on the protection side – you can count on that thing to protect you well throughout the entire game. The field of vision is still the same – huge. It’s one really great mask. But still nothing is perfect, and there’s just no way we go without at least one flaw. And it is indeed only one – lens change…nothing has changed in the way lenses are changed, but that’s not a problem for this mask only as you know so let it not ruin your opinion about it. Colors are a little scanty – black and red, but if you do some more searching you might just get lucky with some others. As to the price – if you’re gonna spend more money to get a better than the Flex-7 mask, don’t waste them on the ProFlex 8, get the ProFlex. It costs $65.00 and is worth every penny of them.

So here’s the Flex-7 “upgrade”. Well, actually it is an upgrade, but one that people tend to like less (if that makes sense). So they took the Flex-7, paid attention to what people don’t like about it and tried to change it. That’s the reason why the design looks so much better. Believe it or not that’s the only good thing they’ve done to this mask…so what went wrong? Remember the soft rubber I mentioned in the previous review – yes people were complaining that it hurts when you get shot in that area, but it was also helping about bounces – they’ve changed that. Now the lower part is much harder than it used to be. Some will like it, but others will just miss those bounces. The solution is to decide which one’s more important to you – bounces or protection, and get either the Flex-7 or the ProFlex8. Now I don’t know why, but people complain about this mask being uncomfortable. With the Flex-7 there were no such complains. And also – with the design change some of the lower part of your ear is left exposed and if you get hit there…I don’t even wanna think about the pain you’re gonna experience. Again, no such problems with the Flex-7. Oh, and the lenses you see in the picture don’t come stock. The mask comes with clear ones. Also…the lens change is kinda difficult…but that’s not something new with the JT masks. On the other hand they didn’t even bother to change it. and will I surprise you when I say that the ProFlex 8 is pricier? It is an “upgrade” after all. So the thing costs $59.00 that is just a waste for me. Being cheaper and better the Flex-7 is definitely the mask you should get. Still let me tell you the colors the ProFlex 8 comes in, just in case someone demands the latest. So the colors are: blue, green, camo, black/grey, red, sand camo. There is a mask called JT Flex 8 Full coverage Paintball Goggles that is practically the same thing except it solves the ear problem, but with somehow ugly design change. It costs $54.95 and comes only in camo version. There is also the JT Flex-8 Thermal Special Edition Paintball Goggles that again is the same like the ProFlex 8, but being special edition guarantees you’ll be the only one wearing it…if you’re willing to pay $64.99 for it of course.

Although JT Flex-7 Thermal is not the latest JT goggles they definitely deserve your attention. This is not one of the prettiest masks on the market, but looks are not everything and JT Flex-7 is doing its job (to protect you from those nasty head shots) perfectly. It is one comfortable mask that’s not gonna give you any fog trouble. The range of view is very wide and you don’t have to worry about echo or the thing falling off your head easily – JT got all of those covered. But what really put those goggles over the others are the bounces you get from them. Thanks to the soft rubber it is made of it is probably the only mask that gets so many bounces off. Check the features:

• Tournament level paintball goggle
• Dark tint lenses
• Provides superior face protection using JT’s unique insert molding technology.
• Rigid upper mask for ultimate protection with a soft lower to conform and move
• Accepts Spectra lenses
It is really a nice mask, but it also has its flaws. Starting with that same soft rubber it is made of. It does help with the bounces, but you know it can’t be all good, right? Sometimes it happens the ball to bent the rubber in a level that it hits your lip or chin and although it takes some of the hit strength, it still gonna hurt. There are some other minor negativities the mask is getting, but I find them more of a personal preferences than being common ones – like for some the mask is kinda wide, or the others don’t like the visor, but you know that what’s bad for one is good for someone else so let’s skip that part. As to the price – we’ve seen cheap, but we’ve certainly seen pricier, so I got to classify this one as middle priced mask (meaning that the newer ones after it I put between the pricy ones). The price is $49.98. The colors you can find it in are: olive green, clear and black. Not too many, but the basics are covered. It is a mask worth buying, but still check out the next couple of reviews before making your pick (if not for something else just to be sure that this one is better).