Nerf blaster review: Magstrike AS-10

The N-Strike Magstrike
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"I may look like a freak, but I am awesome."
         -Magstrike




The Nerf N-Strike Magstrike AS-10 has been available worldwide for several years.
Nerf released the Iron Man inspired red and yellow colour schemed Magstrike, and apparently before this it was even considered as part of the Dart Tag
line in a blue and red color scheme.  It's reminiscent of the old Super Soakers of the 90's, using pressurised air as its firing mechanism, but instead of shooting water, the Magstrike fires off 10 rounds of foam dart goodness in super fast succession.The Magstrike is a midsized powerhouse that allows for fully automatic rapid fire without the use of batteries.We're talking 10 rounds in under 2 seconds.
It's quite a solid, nuggety looking blaster that works quite well with either one or two hands. (Being an automatic blaster, it would be good for
dual welding...) Out of the box, you get the Magstrike, the removable clip and 10 micro sucker darts (apparently in the old days you got two clips from the dart tag Magstrike... lucky).The Magstrike can you all types of foam darts. It isn't limited to just suction cup darts; you can load it with whistlers, streamlines and dart tag darts with no problems.
Although it has been around for several years, the Magstrike AS-10 isn't the first air pressure blaster Nerf have released sometime in the late 1990's and the early part of the decade Nerf did release numerous blasters such as the Airtech line (personally I find them ugly as h-ll).  and the more relevant Powerclip DX-1000 and the DX-500 which incorporated very similar mechanisms to the Magstrike AS-10. The Magstrike features the unusual form design of putting the air pressure bladder on the OUTSIDE of the blaster. Priming the blaster takes about 15-20 pumps of the neck at the front of the Magstrike, just like with a Super Soaker. There's always a danger of over pumping and bursting the bladder, rendering your Magstrike effectively..busted.. so be conscious of this and pay attention to how many pumps you've done; use common sense- if it's feeling pretty full... stop. After priming, a squeeze of the trigger and you're away. If you're good with the trigger, you should be able to fire off single shots nicely, whereas if you're a heavy trigger like me, you'll end up emptying your mag pretty darn fast.  The Magstrike is loud as while you pull the trigger back, the clip "slides" up the shaft as the darts fly out, allowing you to replace the empty clip with a swift grab and replace with...um... an imaginary replacement clip (that you'd have..in an ideal Nerf world). Performance-wise it's very cool-it's hard NOT to laugh (or at least smile big) when you watch a sea of foam just fly out of your blaster. Still, for the price, it's worth picking one up, and maybe two, if you want to dual wield, or put one away and take the clip. An expensive clip but, if you need one you'd probably do that.


Usability: 7/10
Out of the box performance: 9/10
Cool factor: 6/10
Price: 7/10