It didn't take long for this to go from a cool looking but suspect YouTube video of a super-fast winding high-cap M4 mag to a spot in my test lab. Next summer there will be a place for several in my regular load-out!
There's nothing special about the box. It's cardboard and has a drawing of a magazine on it. The magazine itself is a pretty good looking mag, but longer than a standard high-cap. It feels solid with no wobble. The plastic top is pretty well formed, with no flashing or defects. The bottom has a metal hatch cover that releases properly, stays closed and doesn't wobble when in the open position. Have never needed a hatch at the bottom of a magazine, but this one seems like it's well made. The edges of the inside of the magazine where you grab the pull cord are a bit sharp, so be careful.
Inside the hatch is the guts of the magazine. It looks like the mechanism of a regular hi-cap has been pushed farther in, and the "pull cord" mechanism has been added to the side. The cord is metal, and feels like it's securely attached. The cord pulls out between 1 to 2 feet. I'd seen videos of the mag's in action, sometimes suggesting one pull is all you need, sometimes showing many short pulls...time for a test.
I loaded the mag fully and pulled the cord once. It will not feed a fully loaded mag with one pull. I reloaded the mag and did 3 pulls. It almost fired the full load, so I tried again, pulling the cord fully 5 times until the wind-click noise changed, suggesting it was fully wound.
My Magpul PTS Masada ACR fired until the mag was dry, or at least as dry as can be. There were a few bb's in the tube, but nothing rattling in the magazine. I think that's about as much as you can expect from a non mid-cap magazine.
Load the magazine, pull four or five times, top off if you like and fire the mag dry. That's a pretty sweet set-up if you ask me. This one came to me as a birthday gift, but if other tests continue to impress I'll be ordering a few on my own dime for my load out!
Feed Testing
I tested the LONEX M4 High Speed Flash Magazine in a JG MK36C with a factory installed M4 converter, a JG MK36K with a SOCOM Gear M4 converter, an AGM custom CQB M4, an AGM 614 Carbine and my Magpul PTS Masada ACR. Click the links to see the results of the testing for each make/model.
Final Thoughts
This is a good hi-cap mag. It feeds the entire run of bb's once wound, and fully winding it is much faster than with the thumb wheel on a standard hi-cap. It's a little longer that standard. I've seen some 450 round high-caps on the market, and I suspect this one is about the same size. I can't speak to durability, as I only have about 3500 rounds thru it, but so far I've experienced no problems. I normally run with MagPuls on my magazines, and the hatch arrangement won't work with these, but I'll probably run this one as my starter mag for skirmishes, so that may not be a deal breaker.