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Hello and welcome to my first review. Hopefully I'll be able to provide you with some whole and un-biased information if you're close to purchasing a VFC weapon yourself, or if  you're just fielding your options. I'll start you off with a little background to reassure you of my solidity as a reviewer. I've been playing airsoft for a long, long time. I started out with a humble UHC M9, graduated to the outstanding UHC MP5 which served me well for two complete years in friendly backyard skirmishes, and then progressed to a Tokyo Marui M4, a TM G36, and finally, for (I think) my sixteenth birthday, recieved my favorite AEG I ever fielded, an SRC AK47 (which was excellent, especially at its price point). Sadly however, I opted to sell all of my airsoft stuff to padewongs so I could persue my career. I've since been away from the sport for about eight years as I've been in the Navy for six of them. Well as men are wont to do, I recently found myself in a conundrum: I needed a hobby to get me out of the house, what with college approaching, and my soon-to-be-Wife's deployment (she is also in the Navy) deployment looming over the horizon. What am I to do with spare time, as I am so accoustomed now to always being busy, now soon to be forced back into lazy civilianship? Well...I like guns, I LOVE gear, and it's even better that I'm an adult with money to spend on whatever rifle, pistol, and MOLLE-ness that I want!? So I did a little searching and as fate would have it, the largest dedicated airsoft field on the East Coast just so happens to be 20 minutes away from me, and there was much rejoicing. After a LOT of research, and being TERRIBLY tempted tempted to go down the AK road (I have a real AK74 and thought it'd be fun to train with one), I opted for a boring old American M4-style primary, solely because I hate hi-caps with a burning passion and this platform offered me the best market of accessories and magazines. So, somewhat defeated, I started looking at manufacturer track records, and decided (after some drinking) to go with a VFC over a KWA, but barely just. By the way, you should probably know that I am one of my Ship's armoers, so I am intimately familiar with the real M4, M16, M14, M500, and M9. Also, I own a Smith and Wesson M&P 10, which is a 7.62x51 AR "10". I do not own a real M9 as I think theyre junk. Let's move on to the review!

 

Initial Impressons

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The rifle comes shipped in a rectangular-in-nature brown cardboard box, with Elite Force trades and some rather foolish-looking dudes pointing AR's every which way...*shudder*...Included is the rifle of course, one hi-cap magazine,some promotional leaflets and a very good manual. The rifle had these little inserts holding the stock and barrel in very securely; this made me smile. After a quick inspection, I noticed no falacies from shipping and handling, and tore the rifle out of the plastic sleeve that it comes wrapped in. Kudos to VFC for the obvious care they put into their packaging. Not included are any cheap accesories (such as a sling you'd instantly discard anyways or a battery), a cleaning/unjamming rod (a little discouraging to perhaps some newever players who don't already have this type of thing), or a cheap 50 or so rounds of seamy BB's. Nope, none of that; just a high-qaulity, *albatross*-kickin, full-stocked rifle with a 9" picatinny rail, and a pretty badass flash hider.

Picking her up, I almost through it into the ceiling like when you think there's a lot more milk left in the gallon in the fridge. This is no discredit to the rifle; like I said, I handle real M4's all day long, and while the weight and feel of this rifle is solid, it's still considerably lighter than a real one. My face got a little sour when I noticed just a tiny bit of, well I can't really say "wobble" in the barrel; more like flex. However, it's pretty hard to ask for perfection from airsoft replicas, but this thing comes pretty close. The rail system free-floats the barrel, and it only moves ever so slightly if you're actually trying to make it do so, so I let it go. No forward sling attatchment pooint, that's a con for me. The barrel has a simulation gas block with floding front sight post (both removable) and bayonet lug (yay!). I'll touch on the sights later (spoiler alert: awesome). The rails are of high quality and wil accept and standard attatchments, no complaints here. Moving back, the lower and upper recievers are married in the traditional way providing a somewhat realistic field strip. No visible gaps or wobble here, that's a big win speaking from my old Takyo Marui expirience. The trigger gaurd is one of those super gucci tactical ones that allows for gloved usage, and I actually appreciate this tiny little upgrade as I think it adds more cosmetically than anything else. The pistol grip is your standard AR affair. I don't have a micrometer, but I think it's a bit thicker than a real one to house the motor and such. No heat sink plate on the bottom. I hate standard AR pistol grips, but this one did me just fine unlike the one that came stock on my Smith and Wesson and has snce been replaced by a Bravo Gunfighter 2. 

So the top part of the gun is a rather nice monolithic rail with the appropriate "T#" markings in a nice white engraving all throughout. In fact, all of the trades are nice and crisp. There is no wobble about ay portion of the stock. The charging handle comes back (about a third of the travel of a real one, but like I said, can't ask for perfection) to reveal your usual hop-up chamber and rotary dial. The hop-up is pretty nice, as the wheel is etched to allow turns, but clicks solidly into place and won't move on you. More on this is the skirmish report. The bolt catch/release is functional (YAYYY MILSIM!), so slapping it slides the dust cover forward to cover up the hop-up. Of course it doesn't lock back on your last round, as this model doesn't feature any kind of blow-back system. The safety selector clicks postively and reassuringly through it's postions, with no wiggle or wobble in semi-auto as I've noticed on lots of other replicas. Again more nice white lettering here, even though the real Colts are just etched in without color, this doesn't bother me at all. What DOES bother me is that on the right hand side of the magazine well resides an entire scroll of scripture about safety and what-not and blah blah blah that looks like the DMV put it there. Now, it's still nicely done, however, I really wish they had used a sticker, or maybe even just not put white in these letters. I'm gonna see about removing this.

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The full stock has your standard real sling attatchment point and of course has plenty of room for a ridiculous battery inside. No tools are required to access the compartment however it also will not fall open on accident. The rear of the stock is checkered in the appropriate fashion fro solid purchase when shouldering. If you haven't picked up on it yet, I'm overall extremely pleased with the quality that this thing oozes. One minor gripe however is that the wiring setup comes with a mini or Tamiya connector. I had so foolishly and Americanly assumed that large stock = large battery, so I was a little tiffed that I couldn't test her out the same day she finally arrived with the battery I'd ordered. No big deal and by no means VFC's fualt; boguht a back-up min battery and later the correct adapter and she was good to go to the field the next weekend. Even with a 9.6v full battery and extra wiring from the lovely adapter, there was STILL room in the stock, so she closed up no problem. I would definitely reccomend this route, as I nticed the smaller nunchuck battery bounced around when sprinting at opening whistle a-la Battle Field 4.

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Also, this is an all-day worthy gun. Unless you are horribly out of shape, running this on a Magpul MS3 and in full gear was no problem to me; not too heavy and just the right length. Some of you may ask why anyone would ever want a carbine-lentgh barrel with a full stock? Well because I did, damn it. 20" is a LOT of barrel, and I knew I' want to add the G&G Tracer to it. I also knew that I wanted big battery capbility, and even though telescoping stocks and battery technology have come a long way in my hiatus from airsoft, I still feel more comfortable with a full-sized battery compartment. So here we are with the 4CRL. Onto what you're waiting for, performance!

Field Report/Performance

After a few test rounds at the annoyance of my fiancee in my small appartment into some brave voluntary cardboard soliers just to make sure she'd actually work, I packed all my kit up to head on out to Ballahack Airsoft in Chesapeake, Virginia for some July 4th action. By the way, the G&G tracer unit brought an enormous smile to my face. I went to bed confident with my newly aquired rifle and VFC /Elite Forces 1911A1 Tac and a ton of .25 and a whopping 8 Echo1 "Dogs of War" midcap magazines all bundled up. I scooped up my nephew and 40 minutes later we were runnng and shooting and medic-ing people left and right and I was prone and this one guy didn't even see me and!...Ok, well before all this, we chrono'd our weapons. The VFC 4CRL running 9.6 bone-stock internally came in at a SOLID 396 FPS with .2 gram rounds. This is PERFECT for me as this field restricts FPS on non-bolt-action rifles to 400 or less with mandatory .2 gram rounds. Someone smarter than me can tell you what that converts into for .25 gram; I'm guessing somewhere in the neighborhood of 360 or so FPS. She ran strong all day. I played for 7 hours with zero failures to feed, zero double-feeds, zero semi-shooting-full-auto anomolies, just nothing wrong at all; she just wouldn't quit. This being said it's worth mentioning that I really run semi-auto religiously (blame my real life traning), but that's just fine, because this thing flung rounds downrange in the same damn spot straight and true every single time. The hop-up required minmal adjustment; just once all day, but I will say it was very stiff. I rather prefer this as it makes me feel warm and funny about not coming off the desired setting, however, can be a little finicky to adjust under fire, jsut putting that out there. The sights (I promised I'd hit them up) are so great on this thing; probably largey due to the fat that they're just so simple. The rear sight reminds me of a SCAR post, and the set as a whole are MUCH MUCH better than standard AR sights. While both flip up, the front sight has a small lever allowing you to lock it in the stowed or up position. Nice! Both are also adjustable. The rear sight has nice white lines with tool-less adjustment. Front sight adjustment is standard AR affair, however I found unnessecary. Side note: They allowed PERFECT co-witness with my Vortex Strokefore II red dot sight.

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This thing truely, honestly IS very accurate and consistent out of the box. I was grinning all day and taking shots and getting hits at ranges I'd never even think twice about with my middle and high school AEG's. If you're like me and prefer midcaps, the Echo1's ran flawless through them. I really ran this thing hard; I really wanted to give it a full torture test to be fair and revealing for you guys so I could attempt to give back to you, the community which has given so much to me. My ONLY complaints about this gun are the lack of a front sling point and the Tamiya type connector it comes with. So maybe you don't want a carbine barrel with a full stock, but if you're in the market for a new AEG that's a GREAT upgrade platform yet ready to compete at top-level right out of the box, give VFC a real hard look, I sure am glad I did. Sorry I don't have moore pictures, especially of the chrono results, but I promise I'm not a 12 year old reporting that "THIS AM BEST GUN EVER" just because it happens to be the one that I own. I'm an adult, I'm a 25 year old, 6 year Navy vet, and I am VERY hard on everything I buy gun-wise, real steel or airsoft, and I was honestly EXTREMELY delighted by this weapon's perfomance. 9/10. I really hope this helps as the reviews here on Arnie's have helped me for years.

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