I first saw and handled this gun in Airsoft Adventures Reading showroom shortly after its realease. My initial impression of this gun was that of quality, this gun has to have been the best marui had produced to date.
The first AEG I owned was the Marui XM177 and I was very interested to see exactly how Marui had improved upon what was an already excellent design. First off after eagerly getting my hands on it was that it was definatly front heavy, but there are quite a lot of metal parts which more than make up for this and also noticing that the hand grip was slightly smaller than the XM's. The M4 has the been built with the same reciever as the M16A2 so it shares the metal cocking handle which opens the Hop-up adjustments which is quite a nice addition plus also the metal sight click adjustment for elevation makes the detail just that more special.
Firing
The EG1000 doesn't make all that much difference to the speed, it helps a bit but not a great deal. The range was quite good with the hop-up. There were to "best" settings on which makes the bb fly fast and straight and the other which makes the bb float up a little and the drops this gives better results for a longer range but is slightly slower and less accurate. Hop up unwind is definatly apperent in most M4's but just resetting it at the beggining of each game doesn't take much effort really. The small battery is quite good but getting it fast charged doesn't do it much good, so a battery bag with a larger battery is reccommended. I have a 9.6v 1500mah battery which makes the M4 alot faster giving me a slight edge and also an increased playing time for upto a days play on a single slow charge.The four point stock is very usfull depending on how long your arms are and what situation your in. Field stripping the gun is very easy and quite quick it just involes taking a pin out at the back which alows the gun to pivot on the pin at the front of the reciever or if both pins are removed the gun can be split into two!
Accessories
This is one of the factors that makes this gun so popular to many people is the huge amount of ways of adding and customizing the Colt M16 series. The RIS (Rail Interface System) and M203 grenade launchers are always popular choices. I myself have the marui pro-scope while not cheap it is a high quality and all round good scope. I now also have the Marui M203. The hicap mags are well sized at 190 or 300 rounds. Also available for those trigger happy people are the drum & betaCmags.
All in all a good gun 9/10 with just a few small faults holding it back.
