A Beginner’s Guide To Shopping For Paintball Gear And Equipment

Paintball is one of today’s competitive sports most people are said to enjoy. However, if you want to fully experience its wonders, you’d need a complete set of paintball gear and equipment. Mainly, this package includes guns, masks, goggles, protection, loaders, and of course–paintballs.

For seasoned paintball enthusiasts, choosing their paintball gear and equipment may already be hassle-free. They must know the bits and pieces of their toys and tools by the book–what to look for and what they should ignore. Yet, for beginners, this could be challenging.

If you want to go shopping for your first set of paintball gear, gel rifles, and equipment, you may want to have a checklist of tips and tricks in selecting the gear that’ll work for you. For this reason, here’s an article that could guide you in your shopping: You can also check out Best Paintball Mask for more great options.

1. Find The Best Paintball Guns Available

A paintball gun or marker is the main piece of paintball gear and equipment. Generally, it has two types–mechanical and electro-pneumatic. Mechanical paintball guns use pump handles, cocking handles, springs, and sprigs. They’re typically fast. On the contrary, electro-pneumatic paintball guns use circuit boards, micro-switches, and spool valves.

Suppose you’re looking for affordable mechanical or electro-pneumatic guns. In that case, there’s a variety of the best budget paintball guns that you could choose from in different paintball stores.

Different manufacturers produce different paintball gun offerings that aim to provide the best experience possible to their users.

To understand the process of how to select the best quality paintball gun further, you may watch videos such as this one and others on the web to guide you.

While the types vary in terms of appearance, both have features that every buyer should consider. These include the following:

Trigger

When looking at a paintball gun’s trigger, you should consider the ease of use it provides. If you’re looking for a high firing rate, you may consider choosing markers with smooth triggers as the harder ones could affect the throw rate of paintballs.

External Design

The external design isn’t limited to aesthetic appeal. External design also includes an ergonomic appearance to make the gun easy to carry, point, and shoot in-game.

Bolt And Valve Assembly

A paintball gun’s bolt and valve parts are the technical portion of the gun that controls the airflow and the paintballs. In blot options, you may choose between the open and close types. Many paintball users select close-bolt guns because they think that they have better accuracy.

Loader Feed

Loaders, also known as hoppers, hold the paintballs before being fired. When choosing a gun, check whether the loaders are prone to moisture. This generally affects battery performance and the rate of fire.

Barrel Bore And Length

Check the barrel’s bore and length as they affect the trajectory and efficiency. As a rule of the thumb, the longer the barrel, the more accurate its course. Yet, because the paintball travels longer in an extended barrel, its impact is less powerful.

2. Check The Paintball Gun’s Air Tanks

smiling young male paintballer embracing female teammate in camouflage with paintball gun outdoors

Basically, air tanks power paintball guns. For this purpose, many paintball enthusiasts prefer compressed air tanks as they could continuously and consistently make every shot powerful. In other words, compressed air tanks lead to shooting efficiency.

In buying an air tank, you may also consider if it’s hydro-tested and could attach to various types of regulators and accessories for optimal paintball experience.

3. Choose From Different Paintball Options

Paintballs are generally gelatin-based capsules that contain biodegradable polyethylene glycol and other water-soluble and non-toxic dyes. Typically, paintballs break when hitting a surface impactfully. When choosing paintballs, consider the following:

  • Size and shape: the rounder, the better;
  • The thinness of shells: the thicker the shells, the harder they break; and
  • Contrasting color: the color of the dye should not quickly blend in ‘normal’ colors. Typically, they’re bright neon colors.

Aside from the qualities, you may also look into the three major types of paintballs, including:

  • Tournament grade: high-quality yet generally expensive;
  • Recreational grade: medium quality but could already be used for ordinary paintball games; and
  • Reusable grade: for practice purposes.

4. Have The Proper Game Gears Such As Masks And Clothing Ready

Paintball masks provide the necessary head protection when playing paintball. To have first-rate masks, you may prefer the types that are durable, easy to wear, and light yet thick enough to protect their user.

On the other hand, paintball clothing complements protection. Aside from this, it also serves as a basis if a player gets hit. Typically, paintball clothing should have colors that could indicate if the player is hit. It could also bear the team’s color, especially if the players are in a team-based competition.

  1. Look For Possible Upgrades

Typical paintball gun upgrades are available in changing particular specs of the markers. These include but are not limited to boards, bolts, triggers, grips, eyes, feet, necks, barrels, and regulators. Aside from the gun upgrades, paintball aficionados may also try other accessories and protection such as tank covers and barrel maids to up their game.

Wrapping Up

People who love games like nonogram and competitive sports and others would want to play paintball games. While new shooting sports such as gel blaster start to be popular, paintballs remain the go-to options for many shooting enthusiasts.

Whether they choose tournament or recreational paintball, they need the proper gear to fully enjoy the game. While renting is an easy option, buying one’s own gear and equipment is said to be an economically sound choice to go with.

If you’re looking to buy your own paintball gear and equipment, you may consider the tips and tricks included in this article. They may not give all the answers that you seek, but they definitely would provide insights to help you decide which to buy or not.