Review: Modified Nerf Stryfe

Kicking off another review today, we have a Nerf Stryfe. Released a few months ago in the U.S (but not yet here?) this blaster has made some waves, being touted as the ultimate SMG style blaster. I was pretty impartial to it as I already had a few flywheel blasters, so I never sourced one out when they were first released. But that changed. I picked up a modified Stryfe from Brisbane Nerf Group's Clem, and started having my eyes opened to why this blaster is so great.

So what's under the hood? nothing too extreme. The wiring has been replaced with thicker wire to handle a higher voltage, safeties removed and Clem also provided me with 4x 3.7v Trustfire rechargeable batteries and charger to boot. A lot of people run this setup and do very well with it, however, using all 4 trustfires tends to kill the motors early, so I run 3 to be safe.

Externally, this blaster doesn't come with much out of the box. It's just the blaster, 6 elite darts and a 6 dart elite mag. pretty disappointing that Nerf keeps going down the road of having tactical rails on their elite blasters without actually providing anything to put on them, but it has potential. It's a kind of a large pistol size, with a rail on top to fit anything and one below the barrel that really only fits a foregrip or something like a Slydev Jolt holder. additionally, there is a barrel adaptor and stock adaptor, which makes this more versatile than the Recon/Retaliator. It features a rev-button below the main trigger and directly forward of that is the mag release button, very sensible. The right hand side of the blaster from the rail is wider than the left to fit the flywheel system in. While this does reduce the overall width of the blaster, it looks a little strange, and the left hand side looks a bit bland by comparison. There's also 2 loops for a bandolier strap, one above the barrel and one at the base of the grip. Jam door is located on top and is a front hinge style. Overall, it's not the prettiest blaster I've seen but the build quality is great, and it does follow the Nerf Elite styling and allows for a wide range of customisation.

Customisation did you say? There is a ton of different options for this blaster, you can turn it in to an SMG, a full rifle, there's even a mod out there that allows you to fit a Nerf Rough Cut as a masterkey shot gun under a Retaliator barrel. BAD ASS! Personally, I like the foregrip, 25 dart drum and Lightning Storm stock. I do wish I had an Elite pinpoint sight for it though.

Performance? well, mine's modified. but the performance out of this is fantastic for a flywheel blaster. it's not as crazy loud as I thought it would be, but it is still pretty noisy. It doesn't bother me though since I've got other blasters that I go all sneaky-ambushy with. range tops out around 100 feet but at that range it's pretty inaccurate and is really best used as suppression. close range accuracy is good, especially when you have a drum mag and a rate of fire that could match a slamfire or full auto blaster. Semi auto fire does make your finger a little tired though. Really, the roles that this blaster excels at are CQB and suppression. There is not much you can do when you're stuck behind cover and you have someone coming at you with a screaming Stryfe, raining down a torrent of darts. You either run away, or... yeah that's pretty much it. The video below will give you an idea of what it can do modified with 3 Trustfire 3.7v batteries.

The Nerf Stryfe has a ton of potential as demonstrated by Clem's work on this blaster, but out of the box I'd say it's pretty disappointing. If you're thinking of purchasing one of these, be prepared to do some modding and have a few parts to put on it to make it your own.

Edit: sorry about the lack of light in the video, I will try to do another video to replace this one some time this week.