JinMing Gen 10
The first new model of 2019 in early January was the surprise release of the JM Gen 10.
Being not long after the M4 gen 9, it was a mild surprise when the rumour pictures and videos started circulating out of China. Just before the JM10, the HE ACR hit the street, in its self, its quite an innovative piece of kit, but the JM is definitely a step above.
The Gen 10 is JinMings first factory all nylon build. While the Gen 9 M4 was all nylon exterior, but polycarbonate gear box, the gen 10 is pretty much all nylon including gear box housing, gears and trigger.
The weight is right up there, not far short of the short but stocky Lehui Vector V2 but about 30% heavier than the M4 gen 9 and well over double of the early gen 8 variants.
Initial thoughts when opening the box was “wow it felt great”. Days later and after a short game with the ACR, it does still feel great. Very solid and super stiff. Definitely game worthy!!
In the box the fore end is not attached, it slides on with relative ease, line up the lower front “gas block” and the locating pin can slide through at the receiver end.
Off the bat I noticed the battery compartment is to be really quite small, barely capable of fitting a small 60mm long pistol battery. A short 3 cell 11v li-on tube battery just fits in the cavity, but its a fraction to tight so it really doesn’t feel the best pulling the battery out with just the wires to hold on to. Keep reading for battery compartment mods.
The but stock extends and folds, has a small cheek riser, which doesn’t raise enough to achieve anything (bar……. Keep reading), the folder has a spring and ramp on the hinge to hold it firm in the folded position with the push button to lock in firm when out straight, The extension in the stock is taught and strong, a really great asset of the toy. Certainly a massive improvement over the older gen 8 powered but similar looking Scar V2.
Fire controls are visually ambidextrous, but the fire selector for Safe, Single shot and auto is only working on the left side, the right moves but doesn’t actuate the sliding switch of the gearbox.
The tan colours are consistent through the nylon over the whole thing, which is superb as nylon can waiver in shades for lighter colours. The pop up sights that come fitted leave a lot to be desired, they are bin worthy for sure. Nothing some cheap Magpul MBUS style copies cant fix. The top piccitinny rail is moulded within the receiver, so is super tuff, no floppy optic rails like the Vector V2 and UMP here!
As mentioned earlier the battery compartment is small…..really small. Half an hour with the dremel, grinding away material to make th compartment wider, but it didn’t suffice being just too tight. Ultimately it became a cutting session, opening up the battery compartment top edge to complete expose the battery – but don’t worry it is still completely covered with the already mentioned adjustable cheek riser on the stock. Now with the top panel opened up and the inner edges of the compartment opening worked to be more square cornered than rounded, my preferred battery, the Turnigy Nano Tech Airsoft 1.2mah 11.2v fit nice and snug. Any bigger and they wound not go in.
Out in the field mid game, a couple of times now I have noticed the fire selector gets stuck in single shot. When coming off safe the sliding switch spring binds up and the selector wont slide along to auto mode. I have found if I don’t use Safe mode, it goes from single shot to auto just fine.
The ACR magazines are a nice piece of kit, with a viewing window in the side allowing you to see how many gels were left in the mag, it also had a new means of taking the magazine apart for maintenance, no longer was it clamshell style, it is now an inner cradle that holds the motor and feed tube that slides into the outer magazine shell.
Out of the box the ACR chronographed at 265fps, with my 11.1v battery installed it ran with quite a decent rate of fire also. The only thing I found after a little while was the 2 peice outer barrel worked its way loose, which also caused the barrel support to rotate loose. The isnt a big deal...bar the fact that the barrel could now move around, making accuracy of the shots fired quite crap.
But it was very easily fixed, just keeping the the outer barrel and the support tight, the accuracy was on par with another.
With the ACR having a rather long factory barrel, I upgraded the stock plastic barrel to a heavy Super polished Bruisemaster barrel. Immediately the accuracy improved and the FPS increased around 10fps. With the Slimline Chainsaw/Azrael Armoury hopup attached range was consistently around 35m with reasonable accuracy. I covered the hop up with a Muzzle break style cover which not only looked cool but it protected the hopup. Unfortunately I don't have a solid way to mount it, so I have used a layer of tape to hold it firm.