Nerf N-Strike Elite Strongarm Review
The Classic Design
The Design of the Maverick REV-6 was a classic and there is little which Hasbro could do with it. But they did make a few changes with the Strongarm. At first appearance it appears bigger.
Its colour scheme is also in line with the whole Nerf Elite Series. We were happy with the colours. The barrel looks a lot better and now it pops out completely, which is great. However we wished they made a variant with a different coloured barrel, but that is just a personal requirement. Overall the colours are nice & bright.
Users who have never played with the Maverick before will love the design of the Strongarm. It has strong resemblance to the pistol. You can play only with the barrel for hours.
Hasbro has made some design changes too. There is a lot of engineering that goes behind it. The most significant is the gap which was present in the Maverick between the gun and the barrel is now gone, and it helps in the overall performance. There few other changes that a fan will easily notice. For a first timer there is hard to find a flaw.
The handle is fine, the grip is also good. The priming action is fairly smooth and it goes all the way back. The weight is balanced and it does not feel heavy even with single hand use.
Overall, the design still remains iconic and there is absolutely nothing you can complain about it.
The Performance
The use of the Nerf N-Strike Elite Strongarm is fairly simple. You pull back the hammer and then the trigger. The barrel can load 6 darts. You can also operate this gun in Slam-Fire mode. To do that simply hold on the trigger and pull the hammer back. Unlike the bigger guns you don’t have to push it to its original position. Once the priming action is complete the dart will be fired. Hasbro did this right and we loved to use the Slam Fire on this gun.One significant change is that the Nerf N-Strike Elite Strongarm does not Jam. We have played it with a lot and we experienced zero jamming issues. Once you pull the trigger, the barrel rotates and automatically lines up the next dart. All this happens within a split second. Hasbro has mastered the engineering with the rotating mechanism.
Talking about the numbers, you can easily expect your dart to travel a distance of 50 feet, if you fire parallel to the ground. Firing it an angle, the maximum distance we could achieve was 70 feet. In the slam-fire mode, you see a significant drop in the ranges, but this is universal with all the guns having this feature. At best you can easily fire 1 dart per second.
The only little complaint we have with performance is the accuracy. Some darts went in wayward directions and we rarely saw the darts travelling a straight path the entire distance. But we were able to ignore this and many won’t even encounter this problem because, the dart is fairly accurate at small distances, barring few rare cases.
Overall, Nerf N-Strike Elite Strongarm has a better performance than the Maverick REV-6 and we give full marks to Hasbro for doing that.
The Price Factor!
The retail price of the Nerf N-Strike Elite Strongarm is 12.99$. At this price it an amazing deal. You get near perfect performance and its resemblance to a pistol is uncanny. But for some time there is an unbelievable deal going on. You can now get this model for 9.88$. This is insane and it’s a great bargain. If you get this gun for under 10$ you have nothing to complain about.
The Final Verdict!
The Nerf N-Strike Elite Strongarm lives off the huge success of Maverick. There were few flaws with the latter and Strongarm has rectified them. It even comes at a slightly lesser price now, which makes it a complete steal. The performance is top notch, the design is iconic and there are no jamming issues. What else can you expect from a gun right? The combat experiences you can have with this gun are innumerable and that is up to your imagination. The maverick was a classic and the Strongarm is its bigger and better brother. We give it 8.5 out of 10 stars.
