This year at Toy Fair, Zuru showed off their entire product line, with much of it in the new blue and white color scheme. All colors, range claims and shells have been updated. The Reflex 6 has a slightly larger shell with better internals, which is a significant improvement on previous iterations.
Family Ties
The Reflex 6 has a proud heritage, starting with the Bug Attack Rapid Fire (sometimes abbreviated online by the unfortunate acronym BARF). The Excel Reflex Tk-6 came next, with a slightly larger grip and more serious shell (no bug splat pieces) but identical internals. At the same time, range claims have increased. Original Xshot ranges were set at 55, increasing to 80 with more recent packages. Reflexfeatures 90 claims are the most recent version.
The shell of the Reflex 6 is longer, and has a longer priming pull. The blaster’s plunger tube is also longer when opened. Its diameter is approximately 27.5mm, but it has an additional 20mm. Its enough space to fit a proper spring inside, should you choose to do that. The cylinder rotates as before.
The shell is less detailed than offerings from Hasbro, and its only in solid colors (no paint). The plastic is strong and looks great with the whole paint scheme.
Power And Performance
The Reflex 6 actually shoots as well as its 24.4m range claim predecessor. Most shots fall into the 75-80fps range, using the included Xshot darts. Theyre lighter darts, so theyre easier to propel to high speed.
While accuracy with these darts at distance is highly lacking, some shots do reach 90. I would consider the 90 range claims the same as Nerfs XD, until further notice. Although the blaster fires exactly the same, cherry-picking data allows you to claim greater ranges. To confirm, I will have to try other Xshot blasters.
I see the main benefit of the new version as the extended plunger tube, and dart cylinder. This versions cylinder actually comes apart, with the center screw holding the barrels onto the base. Using longer barrels (of a different material) as well as a properly strong spring would be enough to make this a worthy NIC secondary.
There is no slam fire, but I can comfortably fire two darts per second just pulling back the plunger and immediately firing.
Conclusions
The Xshot Reflex 6 performs roughly as well as its immediate predecessor. The insides have many improvements that could potentially make the design more powerful.
