Okay, so I admit I’ve been a little slow off the mark with this one (especially since I’ve known about this for a week now), but a new Chinese Airsoft manufacturer by the name of Real Sword have popped up on the radar.
Nothing too interesting there you say? Well, here’s where it gets interesting. Instead of just churning out clones of existing main Airsoft players (Marui, etc), Real Sword are offering some distinctly Chinese rifles to the market:
You may notice that a lot of these rifles have a high steel content. This is because quite a lot of the components appear to be actual real steel components. It is rumoured (and I emphasise the word rumoured at the moment) that Real Sword is a a division of a certain well known Chinese defence contractor who shall remain unamed for now, but if there is in any truth in this then I think we can look to expect great quality to the exteriors of Real Sword aegs in the upcoming months.
And it gets better. As we all know, most aegs have slight differences in dimension to their real steel counterparts, due to the necessity of housing the aeg gearbox. Real Sword appear to have gone one better with claims of having ‘100%’ accurate dimensions, through the introduction of a new, thinner gearbox:
The bad news however is that Darklite and Billymak visited Airsoft Heaven (aka Kwong Wa Street in Hong Kong) yesterday, and despite asking around, none of the major retailers (including specialists such as Gunner Airsoft) had heard of Real Sword.
Further bad news: one of these retailers stated that if, as we suspect, these rifles have a high steel (and indeed, real steel) content, that retail prices can be expected to be around the price of a Classic Army rifle.
Regardless, it appears the days of Chinese rifles as just cheap imitations may be numbered!
