Nerf Elite Triad and Jolt review

Battle of the mini side arms: Elite edition? Today I've got the elite Jolt and Triad for review, both have very similar styling and operation, and both pack a punch in a tiny package. What do I think of them? Well I'll start with the Triad.

When I first saw pictures of the Triad, I thought it looked like some kind of franken-jolt. In person, it's larger than I had anticipated, and not nearly as ugly as I first thought. The ergonomics are a bit off though, it is definitely not the most comfortable blaster I've held. There are many edges that jut out  in to your hand, the main one being the base of the plunger tube where the screw port is. I feel like this could have been avoided if that area was smoothed out some more.

The function of this blaster definitely makes up for the poor ergonomics however. The Triad features 3 barrels, which cleverly utilise the air restrictor system to fire one dart at a time, and block off air flow to barrels that don't have a dart loaded. This means you can stick a dart in any barrel and it will fire with full power first time no matter what. So, unlike other barrel loaded blasters, you do not have to load another dart for each shot or twist a turret or barrel selector, you just cock the blaster via the rod at the base of the handle, pull the trigger and repeat for the next 2 shots. Drilling out the air restrictors would make it a pocket shotgun, making all 3 darts fire at once with reduced power.

Ranges aren't bad, considering this is a grey trigger model, it still makes 50-60 feet with elite darts, but the accuracy seems to be a little lacking when compared to the Jolt or Firestrike for some reason. Still, the Triad makes a great side arm based on range and refire rate. if it were coming up against any other barrel loaded blaster, it would stand a good chance.

On to the Elite Jolt. I'm not really sure you could actually call it an elite Jolt, to be honest. compared to the original Jolt there has only been cosmetic changes, most notably the colours, and a barrel tip. The elite jolt I have hits the exact same ranges as the original and functions no differently. I would have liked to see a dart holder or something, but I guess that defeats the purpose of being the most minimalistic blaster in the range.

But, the colours are really nice and there has been no price change. True to the Nerf Elite styling, the blaster is mainly blue, with a white stripe and grey and orange accents. What I found strange was that the Nerf logo on one side of mine was painted black, but not on the other side.

To answer something I always wondered, yes, the Triad's plunger tube is indeed bigger. This means that turning it in to a single barrel blaster would make it a kind of "super jolt", although I'm not sure anyone has attempted this yet.

Although Nerf does not make any accessories for either of these blasters, Slydev does. These include dart holders and rail connectors. Holsters for these are also available from various third parties from what I'm told, I'll update when I find these.