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Knight's Armament PDW Sport AEG Carbine Airsoft Rifle by Lancer Tactical (Black)
[13309 / LT-PDW]
$115.00
by K POIRIER verified buyer Date Added: Saturday 14 March, 2015
Product Information:
The mandatory PEQ box -- mandatory since the gun is too compact for any type of internal battery storage -- is made of a less durable plastic however, and is limited to the 8.4V NiMH mini battery it comes with -- well, unless you're okay with a 7.4V LiPo rattling around in there, but I wouldn't recommend it since the gun isn't equipped with a mosfet.
Anyways, due to it being made of plastic it is almost completely incapable of accepting any external modification: no aftermarket mock suppressors, rail kits or stocks will work with this thing.
The only external parts that can be replaced are the trigger guard and motor grip.
The top rail is not to Picatinny spec: the spacing between rail segments is too wide, which can hamper your efforts to find an optic for this gun.
The rail segment on the rear sight, while small, is Picatinny though.
The other rails don't offer a lot of rail estate. The right rail is truncated to make room for the stock (a feature of the real PDW), and the bottom rail is shortened to make room for a few hex screws to keep the rail kit on. The
The weapon is designed with a couple of QD sling points built into the lower receiver, but both of them are too shallow for a regular sling swivel. They do, however, work with the QD swivel made for the Action Army AAC-21 sniper rifle.
The selector switches cannot swap places with each other, as they use two different sized pegs to go into the receiver. Fire mode selection at first was fairly sloppy, and after opening the gun up twice for upgrades they don't even click into place anymore.
The gun's left-side magazine release is a lever that, upon pushing, acts on the M4-style mag release seesaw-style.
It keeps in-line with the real PDW's design, but in its polymer form it's also a design flaw: sometimes when inserting a new magazine the left-side release will pop up and away from the gun, leaving it prone to getting snapped off. Hasn't happened yet, but it could happen.
Another design flaw comes in the form of its stock. It locks to the lower receiver by a chess pawn-shaped pin, but this pin prohibits the use of coupled magazines unless you're using Lancer Tactical's fairly wide magazine couplers.
Speaking of the stock and rounding out the craptastic conga line that is this gun's externals, it's made of a slightly cheaper plastic than the rest of the gun and padded with a narrow piece of rubber that has the texture of a meat tenderizer. In other words, it can be very uncomfortable to shoulder without some other kind of padding on it.
The magazine it comes with is terrible, and while it can take M4 magazines they will all suffer a lot of wobble.
As far as internals go, the PDW has a few rough spots. The motor it uses -- on top of being fairly bad -- is a medium-type, not the long-type that most sites say it uses. It can be swapped for a long-type, but you also have to swap out the motor grip along with it.
The motor grip itself isn't good either, as throwing any aftermarket motor into it will result in a very tight fit and having to fight with it to get the pinion and bevel gears shimmed correctly.
The compression system wasn't very airtight: the piston was okay, but the factory cylinder head and nozzle both leak heavily.
Performance-wise, mine shot very hot for CQB out of the box: ASGI's chrono sheet listed the gun as firing at 390fps with .2g BB's.
Fire rate with the included 8.4V battery was very poor thanks to the terrible motor and strong spring, never climbing out of the 9rps range after the battery settled down.

That's not to say LT's sportline PDW is entirely bad, however.
Knight's Armament has the gun fully licensed, and while my gun didn't come with trademarks it did come with a holographic sticker stuck to the chrono sheet with a registration number.
The use of plastic for the externals might make the gun fragile, but it's very lightweight and easy to shoot one-handed.
The PDW design is very compact, making it easy to store. It's about the size of an MP5, so you could easily fit this in an SMG holster if you wanted to.
Despite it coming with a KAC PDW-style magazine, it's compatible with M4 magazines, and every mag I've thrown in the gun has worked perfectly.
The PDW is very easy to disassemble, needing only a small screwdriver and a 2mm Allen wrench to take it down.
As advertised, the PDW uses a metal V2 gearbox, but it features a couple rarities for its price point: a factory ball-bearing spring guide and sector gear clip. Both of these geartly help with the gun's reliability.
The V2 design also lends to it being very easy to upgrade internally. A set of 16:1 gears, an M100 spring, a Lonex Titan motor and a few durability upgrades later, and the gun runs in the low 20rps range with that old 8.4V battery while being within CQB limits.
The weapon is ambidextrous, with a selector switch and magazine release on both sides of the gun.
The top rail has a portion of the middle scalloped out, which makes for a perfect thumb hold if you're into the whole Magpul thumb-over-bore technique.

Overall, while it does have its merits for such a cheap gun, you do get what you pay for.

Pros:
-compact size
-compatible with M4 magazines
-very easy to take down for tech work
-metal version 2 gearbox, as advertised
-ambidextrous
-VERY lightweight
-scalloped top rail makes thumb-over bore grip more comfortable (if that's your thing)
-decent internals for the price (factory ball bearing spring guide & sector gear clip are very rare for $100 price range)
-stock locks in place
-Knight's Armament licensed (came in the form of a holographic sticker that was stuck to ASGI's chrono sheet)
-CHEAP. It's a lot of gun for its price.

Cons:
-lots of mag wobble
-factory magazine is junk, trash and crap
-no internal battery space: have to use some method of external battery storage
-PEQ box is very fragile
-external plastic is not the cheapest I've come across, but still pretty cheap
-stock is uncomfortable to shoulder
-left-hand magazine release button can flip up after inserting a magazine and easily be snapped off
-slow fire rate out of the box
-shoots hot for a CQB-oriented gun (ASGI's chrono sheet said mine clocked in at 390fps with .2g BB's)
-medium-type motor, not a long-type as some descriptions state
-factory motor grip barely fits aftermarket motors: makes for a tough time shimming the bevel gear to the pinion gear
-very sloppy safety/selector switch (especially after opening the gun up twice)
-sling mounts are too shallow for regular QD sling points (takes the AAC-21 sniper rifle sling mounts though)
-spacing between rail segments on the top rail is too wide for Picatinny: can limit your optics choice
-not a lot of rail estate
-pin to lock the stock in place blocks the use of coupled magazines unless using Lancer Tactical's couplers
-almost no external customization
-fake bolt does not lock back

Rating: 3 of 5 Stars! [3 of 5 Stars!]
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