Echo 1 Zombat Stryker
Echo 1 Zombat Stryker review by Booligan
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Table of Contents:
Introduction
Real Steel History
Ordering
Basic Gun Information
First impressions/Packaging
Included
Gun Specifications
Externals
Trademarks
Magazines
Performance
Internals
Modifications
Pros/Cons
Overall
Introduction:
Zombies! Who doesn’t love having tools designed for bashing the brains out of the hordes of undead roaming the world? Well, Echo 1 has put together a very nice package for zombie slaying, and I think it can be considered their new flagship model. In all reality, it’s a very unique CQB oriented M4 replica that you most likely won’t run into on the field.
Real Steel History:
There’s an M4 at the heart of this beast, and we all know that story, so I won’t go into too much detail there. The really fun bit is the short RIS and strike face, which I’ll go into detail in the “externals†section.
Ordering:
I received this gun from Echo 1 USA to give it my normal review treatment. It is available at several retailers, priced about $290, which considering what it would cost to build one of these yourself with the same parts actually works out to a pretty good deal. It also includes Echo 1’s 30 day AEG warranty against manufacturer defects.
Basic Gun Information
So… what’s a zombat?
Is it related to the wombat?
Or perhaps the TV series “Combat!†that ran from 1962-1967?
Nope. It stands for “Zombie Combatâ€, and it’s designed for bashing in skulls. It features a metal strike face that can be used in a pinch to tenderize some steaks before tossing them on the grill (ok, seriously, don’t bash skulls or meat with your airsoft gun.) It’s basically a CQB M4 that’s super maneuverable and ready to take on your normal human opponents.
First impressions/Packaging:
The Zombat Stryker (let’s just call it the Zombat from now on) comes in a grey box with images of the gun, as well as a picture of a zombie, who perhaps was once a pimp, due to the blingin’ gold tooth.
From here on, click all pictures to enlarge
The inside of the box is very nice soft foam, not the normal white styrofoam that we’re all used to. The soft foam holds everything very securely, and is just plain nice to look at.
Included:
Included with the gun is one 300 round metal hi-cap magazine, a rubber coated vertical foregrip, a 10.8v (!) battery, enclosed in a very nice battery box, a 12v 300 mAh “dumb†charger, cleaning/unjamming rod, manual, and 30 day warranty card. Everything has its own little section in the foam base.
The manual has a lot of good information, so read it sucka!
Manual
Warranty card
Gun Specifications:
Weight: 7lbs
Length: 24â€-27.3â€
Width: 2.15†(3.5†with side mounted battery box)
Height: 7.75†(Folded sight to grip), 10.15†(unfolded sight to mag)
LOP: 10.25â€-13.6â€
Sight Radius: 9.5â€
Externals:
This could be considered a “full metal†replica, as everything that should be metal is made of, you guessed it, metal. I’ll start at the rear and work my way to the front, highlighting the finer points as I go.
This model features a basic LE 6 position retractable stock. The stock itself is made of plastic, that is nicely textured, and has a very mild seam line that can’t easily be felt. The buffer tube is metal and mounts securely to the receiver using the normal screw.
Stock retracted
Stock extended
Sling point
The receiver is made of metal, and is of the tabless “slide-on†type, that is secured by a single pin in the front and by sliding over the gearbox. Mine had upper receiver, which I tried to remedy by tightening the front pin. Unfortunately, this resulted in the head of the screw shearing off, so I had to replace it with a spare, and the wobble went away. There is a design flaw with the pin, because it’s set up to use a larger than normal allen head wrench to use it. Unfortunately, this design means that there’s not very much material securing the head to the rest of the screw, and it can easily be broken right off. I also had an odd gap at the rear of the receiver, but it was not present on the two other Zombats I was able to handle.
Sheared off pin screw head
Receiver gap
The rest of the receiver is very nice. It has very even paint application and nicely laser engraved trademarks. Everything else lined up like it was supposed to, and I can see no other flaws in the casting or design. Pulling back the charging handle opened the dust cover, exposing the hop-up adjustment point. There is no mock bolt carrier on this model. The trigger pull is nice and light, and the magazine release is easily operated. The selector switch is a tiny bit loose, but it clicks into each setting nicely.
Receiver
Dust cover open, showing hop-up
The pistol grip is a normal M4 grip, and is plenty comfortable for right or left handed users. The motor base is non ventilated and uses a small allen head screw to adjust motor height.
Grip
A unique short RIS is attached to the front, flush with the receiver giving you a nice “monobloc†upper rail. It seems to be to spec as it mounts my variety of airsoft and real steel accessories with ease. You can rotate it to match up with your receiver if it’s crooked by loosening he appropriate screws located underneath. There are laser engraved numbers on the top rail, to ensure consistent mounting.
RIS
Mounting screws
The real reason why people will buy this is for the strike face. It’s basically one big piece of metal, with a rail mounted on the top and some nasty pyramids on the front. It also serves as this model’s orange tip, which I painted over for picture purposes. It’s a big orange tip from the factory, extending about ½†from the tip. It is attached using a set screw at the bottom, which grabs into a metal tube that threads onto any 14mm- muzzle. It can easily be removed if so desired.
Strike face
Strike face removed, mounting cylinder shown
14mm-(ccw) threading hiding under the mounting cylinder
Aiming is accomplished by flip up front and rear sights, which are designed to be very low profile when folded. The rear is spring loaded, and will pop up when you pull back the little retaining hook. The front must be flipped up manually. They are both made of metal, and offer a decent sight picture for CQB use. The rear sight is adjustable for windage, and the front is adjustable for elevation using a front sight tool, which is not included. The entire top of the gun, RIS, and strike face form one big long 20mm rail to mount any optic of your choosing.
Rear sight
Front sight
Big top rail
Usually, the battery wouldn’t count in the external section, but in this case it does. It’s housed inside a very nice looking laser box with painted on markings and rubber “lens†covers. There is no laser inside, just the battery, but it’s supposed to come with a rail to mount your own if you wish. Unfortunately, mine did not come with the rail. The box is made of plastic with metal mounting points and is designed to have the battery charged while inside. The battery can be removed by unscrewing the knurled knob at the front and twisting the two knobs at the rear to remove them. You can now slide the back of the box off, and remove the battery setup from the outer box. There are no markings on the cells, so I don’t know the mAh rating of this battery. It is, however, a 10.8v box, which is very high, and lends to the high ROF that this puts out. No word yet on how it will effect reliability.
Battery box
Mounting point
Opened up, inner box shown
Overall, the externals are very nice, but do have a few small issues, namely the gap on mine and the bad pin. Otherwise, I was very pleased with the overall external package, and I hope Echo 1 releases more metal bodied AR replicas.
Trademarks:
This gun features very unique trademarks that appear to be laser engraved, consisting of zombies and radioactive symbols, as well as the model name and caliber. It has a serial number that I do not believe is unique to each gun.
Magazines:
Being that this is M4 based, it uses STANAG magazines. The included mag gets the job done, and is a metal 300 round hi-cap. It includes the side mounted butterfly key for quick windup. Fit is good with just a little bit of mag wobble.
Magazine
I tested it with the normal range of AEG M4 mags, with none coming up incompatible.
Performance:
Baseline performance after a 1000 round break in period is as follows:
FPS (Tested using TSD .20g BBs shot through a Madbull V1 Blue Chrono):
Low: 354.8
High: 358.2
Average over 10 shots: 356.7
ROF (Recorded using Audacity/stock battery after 100 round break in):
20 RPS(!)
As a replica designed for CQB use, I was pleasantly surprised with its long range accuracy. I was very surprised to find that my shots were able to hit a torso sized target 90% of the time at ranges out to 155' from a bench rested position. The inner barrel is short, but when combined with Echo 1's special hop-up setup, it ended up being quite consistent and accurate at range.
Internals:
Disassembly of this beast is fairly complicated, and requires the removal of quite a bit of parts. You'll need to remove the strike face by unscrewing the allen head screw at the bottom and pulling the whole thing off towards the front. You now need to remove the RIS by unscrewing the four screws at the bottom, and sliding the whole RIS off towards the front. You can now unplug the two heatshrinked connectors on the wiring. Now, disassembly is fairly simple, and just requires you to remove the front pin from the receiver, and slide the upper receiver off of the lower, carefully guiding the wiring out of the front.
Once you do that, it's all pretty basic, pull some pins, take off the mag catch, etc, and you can free the gearbox. The gearbox shell itself is the standard "SB" stamped black V2 shell, and this model has 6mm metal bushings, a metal spring guide, and a chrome type 1 cylinder. Everything else is standard Echo 1, with decent quality gears, piston, and a halfway decent shim job. Reshimming this gun and adjusting motor height gave me an extra 2 RPS, making the final ROF without changing any parts 22 RPS on the stock battery. The trigger switch had some arc burns on it, so a MOSFET may be in order to use the big battery.
Gearbox
Metal spring guide
Metal bushings
The motor is a gray colored medium torque "long" type motor. It seems pretty smooth running and doesn't have too much motor noise when firing.
Motor
The hop-up is a metal one piece unit, and this gun uses a Madbull blue hop-up bucking. The nub is a standard type, so an H-nub or Madbull spacer would work well here. The inner barrel is brass and is 300mm long.
Inner barrel/hop-up
Barrel length
Tasty blue bucking
Modifications:
Really, there’s not much that you would NEED to do to this to make it unique. It’s quite unique on its own, but it does offer lots of rail surfaces to mount various accessories, and at its heart, it’s an M4, so you can tweak it to your desired look.
Pros:
Full metal
Unique combo of parts
Very nice battery included
Great CQB performance
Madbull blue bucking equipped
Metal bushings, spring guide
Cons:
Mine had odd receiver gap
Very fragile body pins
Very large painted on orange tip (kind of messes up the look of the strike face)
Has to use a battery box, which was missing the rail on mine
Long term durablity on the 10.8v battery is questionable
Overall:
It’s a freakin zombie themed M4, what’s not to love? It has the right combo of metal, good performance, and sharp pointy bits that makes me very happy. Yes, it’s expensive, but the sum of the parts makes it worth it in my opinion. The receiver gap was certainly a red flag for me but I know that on other pieces of this model that I’ve seen, the gap wasn’t there. The body pins can be an issue though, and are generally just poorly designed. Consider having spares handy if/when they break. Overall, I like the gun, and think that the later runs of it will have these few wrinkles ironed out.
Many thanks again to Echo 1, Deadrag Airsoft Radio and of course, AirsoftRetreat!