Board Thread:General Nerf discussion/@comment-27306930-20180806044815

Finally got a chance to unbox the Infinus. Physically, it's a beautiful blaster. It's big and fairly heavy. The ergonomics and balance are quite nice. The 30 dart drum is awesome. (Seriously, they should sell this separately) I even tested it with a CS-25 and an old CS-35, and they fit too. But just barely. I know there are some variants of the CS-35, so heads-up, there might be issues with certain clips. Don't know for sure.

By far, the best feature is the auto-loading. You can stuff darts into the loading port as fast as you want, and it inserts them into the drum with a loud thunk. It works perfectly. But stealthy, not so much. After using it, I can tell this feature is a battery eater. So be prepared to replace the four D cells a lot more frequently. It also has an idiosyncrasy that attempts to load a dart when the clip is initially inserted. It's not really a bad thing, but it is weird. Also, you need to press the clip release to insert the clip. That's a little different.

As I was installing batteries, I also noticed that the plastic Hasbro used for the stock is stiffer and more brittle than the normal plastic used in Nerf blasters I've bought over the past few years. I'll bet if you drop the Infinus on its butt, you'd shatter the stock and the battery tray. The blue and orange parts of the shell are made of the traditional ABS we all know and love. But the stock is noticeably different. Just a heads-up.

Now for the really bad news. The performance isn't that great. It probably shoots about 1 dart per second. Maybe a little less. And the range is terrible - maybe 25 feet flat. Maybe. I should probably grab some fresh D batteries and retest. But the set of D cells I'm using is probably representative of typical mid-life cycle batteries. Not brand new, but not old.

In any event, I was taken aback on how poorly the Infinus fires. Based on the performance of all the other 2018 blasters, this one is the worst. Loading is absolutely no problem. Firing, gawd, is just aweful. I'm not ruling out bad batteries or a possible lemon. But in its current form, some dude with a Jolt is going to smoke my ̶ ̶a̶s̶s̶ donkey.

I need some time to process all this and decide if a mod is worthwhile. I dunno, I might just prop this one up in the corner of the Proving Ground next to my MKII. Stay tuned ... 