30317  Which AR Magazine To Buy

30317  Which AR Magazine To Buy

How to choose a 30 round mag for your AR 15.

 

There’s a lot of debate out there about who makes the best AR 15 magazine. What we’re going to try to do is tell you which one is the one that might most appeal to you. We’re not going to tell you which one you should buy, we’re simply going to point out the differences between the modern and most popular AR 15 magazines on the market today.

 

There are numerous manufacturers of AR15 magazines, and you need to pay attention, as it’s not a good idea to just rush out and purchase one of these magazines because it says 30 round capacity. All magazines are not created equal. What we did is take four the most popular that range in price from $15 to $20 each and compare them. The magazines we chose are the Magpul PE, the Hex Mag Ajax 30, the Mission Tactical First Response, and also the brand new Daniel Defense mag, to see how these compare against each other.

 

For many people, the standard all metal G.I. 30 round mag was the item of choice. The advantages to this type magazine is that it doesn’t flex and it doesn’t swell when subject to extremes of temperature. And because the metal is tempered, it’s extremely resistant to bending and denting. The only negative is that it is possible for the feed lips to bend, and this, of course, becomes a reliability and feeding issue. The primary downside to polymer magazines is that if you drop it on the feed lips, you can potentially break them. This especially becomes a problem in low temperature. Polymer magazines have come a long way, and the feed lips tend to be just as strong as the old G.I. metal magazines. Apparently, the science behind the resin and molding processes for the polymer magazines has improved tremendously over the years, and now the result is consistent high quality magazines.

 

The first thing we need to do is take a look at the thickness of the feed lips on the various mags. The first one we’re looking at is the Magpul it’s 0.46” thick. Next we have the Hex Mag and these feed lips are 0.30” thick. Then we have the Mission First Tactical, and these feed lips are actually 0.73”. And finally, there’s Daniel Defense where the feed lips are 0.53”. We are pointing out these dimensions just for reference.

All the magazines claim to be able to be disassembled without the use of tools. To put this in the right perspective this would mean disassembly with your fingers and hands only, and without the use of any tools, or even a bullet for that matter. The Magpul does require a little bit of extra attention for the disassembly, whereas the Hex Mag comes apart rather easily with just use of hands and fingers. First Tactical is a little bit more difficult in that it has two buttons on the bottom that need to be pushed in, which makes the disassembly process a little bit more complicated. Basically, you press the one button, and then kind of push the other one at the same time, and then you need to find something to press against to push the floor plate out of the way. On the Daniel Defense you need to have the point of a bullet to press into a small hole to depress a spring so you can relieve the floor plate. Anyway, disassembly is not a big deal as generally speaking, you’ll be doing this at your workbench and at your leisure when you have a full range of tools available.

 

All the magazines tested use a non-corrosive spring. All of them had good spring tension. Which brings us to the followers. They all worked in our testing, so it’s simply a matter of preference and possibly an issue with an individual gun. The Magpul and the Hex Mag both have more material on the front and back of the follower, which gives them a very positive and level rise without any tilt. We found these to work exceptionally well. On the Hex Mag, if you pushed down on the follower, the entire follower pushes down, not rocking and it’s not tilting. This is a very positive feature for the feeding of ammunition.

 

One of the most critical things to look for when looking at an AR 15 style magazine is one that will release cleanly and positively when you press the magazine release. You do not want to use your support hand to pull the magazine from the receiver. All of the magazines tested dropped freely when the magazine release was depressed. The other thing you have to pay attention to is the magazine catch notch. We found that the Hex Mag and the Daniel Defense Mag have a slight ramp or bump that exaggerate the travel of the mag release. This is a very positive feature because it ensures better engagement with the magazine catch. The other thing you want is to have positive insertion of the magazine. You want to make certain that a particular magazine reacts favorably with your AR15 style weapon. It’s important to try several magazines and find the one that is the most compatible to your gun. Regarding the magazines we tested, all of them worked flawlessly at the shooting range across three different model AR 15 style guns, a Colt 6724, a Daniel Defense, and a Smith & Wesson, so we have no criticism of their performance as far as insertion, feeding, and dropping out of the gun as they were 100% reliable, and that really is the point of the issue.

 

Now that we’ve discussed AR15 magazines, we recognize that most people who have one AR 15 style gun, probably have two or three others, and invariably a range of magazines, maybe even 20 or 30 of them. Generally speaking, as mentioned before, one particular type magazine may work best for one of the guns. In addition, the tendency is to load different types of ammunition into different magazines but when you do this the question obviously has to come up. Which magazine has the ammo that I want to use today, and which magazine properly fits the gun I want to use today? In which case you need some type of system for organizing and indexing the magazines, so that you can choose the correct magazine with the correct ammo for the correct gun every single time. There are several types of magazine storage devices, but the one we found that handles the job the best is made by Hyskore www.hyskore.com  and this is the Hyskore 30317 AR15 Magazine Organizer and Storage Rack https://hyskore.com/products/30317-modular-magazine-storage/. It holds 12 magazines in banks of four, has an integral shelf that is angled to match the base of an AR15 mag with a backer that is drilled at 16 “on center so it can be mounted directly to studs. Each magazine gets inserted into its own protective foam slot so it can be easily inserted and retrieved. This is clearly the best device on the market for organizing AR15 mags.