Review of the ARES M4A1 17 AEG:
The bland cardboard box it came was packed tightly in nice, solid foam rubber. None of the pieces were out of place or jostled. Included was small manual with basic instructions and an exploded view of the weapon. It also came with an inspector's card that showed that it passed QA and it's performance. My only qualm was that I had heard everywhere that it came with a replacement black flash hider. Mine did not.
Upon initial inspection, all the parts were well lubricated and I had no problems operating any of the moving parts. I had heard/seen issues with other AEGs that there is some wobble in the stock, receiver, and barrel, but it was very solid and was very satisfied with it's rigidity.
Out of the box it was shooting about 380 fps. It did take me a while to figure out the Hop-Up. It's one oft the units that doesn't have the gear set on it just the one wheel. Once I got to siting it in the elevation was good, which can be adjusted on the front and rear sight. The windage, however, needed to be adjusted all the way to the right. Later after replacing the inner barrel, I found out that the stock barrel must have had a bend in it since it was consistently shooting left of where I was aiming. With the stock inner barrel It was shooting well for a stock gun: effective range ~75 ft and I was able to hit a man-sized target pretty consistently whilst at medium to long range. The only problem I did run into with the functionality was that when repeatedly firing on semi-auto, every once in a while nothing will happen when I pull the trigger. I had to switch the selector to full-auto, pull the trigger, then back to semi. The stock magazine feeds perfectly (so far) every time, and my seven extra mags only needed a slight modification in order to get them to keep from falling out. I'm not sere about the quality of the "fancy plastic" hand guards, because when it was standing on the butt stock it slid down my wall in the kitchen and landed on a softwood floor and cracked one of the hand guard pieces. Overall I'm very satisfied. I now have a longer inner tight bore barrel and a faux silencer to cover it, as well as a red dot sight mounted on the carry handle. With all the modifications and a full magazine I'm glad that the full metal body is made from aluminum alloy and not steel. For $230 I'd say it was a pretty good deal.
