So seeing that i havnt seen anything on the forums about gel balls themselves.
What gel balls are the best performing.
I havent tested many gels due to just sticking with ultras. but with ultras a little hard to get atm due to stock levels. what is some good alternatives?
I have been looking at some Ihobby gels. especially the Extreme strength. but some websites claim its only for gas pistols. which is odd.
Black labels are good but i found they need to be grown for about 2 and a half hours otherwise they lose their shapes.
Ausgel ultra whites hates feeding through some blasters like my wells CQB and JG Aug A3. out of them, it either jams or explodes the gels.
Interested if anyone has reccomendations for semi-hard balls, can be left in water for months or grown overnight/stored dry for months for a 7.5mm barrel. Onviously not expecting amazing consistancy.
probably the best i have used is Ausgels ultra elites. They can stay in a air tight container for a while. but after a week like all other high performance gels. they will lose their strength.
It’s a pain , grow times, especially when the water quality is low, high in chemicals,I’ve had success with chem free water ,2.5 hrs grow thanks to the GBF team, ultra elites are a pain , wish they were consistent, aka tend to grow to expected size , how about goat balls .
I’m obviously unable to comment from any experience with the latest products here …. but I used to keep up to speed with Gels through watching @LowGuido testing all the latest gels and following his recommendations
I have the best results so far using Gladiators from command elite. The next best for me if i cant get the gladiators would be the Gelsoft ultra hard gels in the red packets from tac edge.
Has been some great opinions given about the IHobby hardened Gels in online discussions….but mainly through new people in the hobby, so don’t know if that’s reliable enough information for comparison to our industry?
I have watched Bradley Phillips’ video on the Ihobby gels vs Aus gel. But i’m unknown if its only the orange pack that works almost as good as ultras
I have tested a few different ones lately. I used to use the x-force black labels exclusively, but when they had the issues with their second batch and then couldn’t get more from covid I started testing others.
Xtac booms were alright, but I found them inconsistent and wouldn’t go through the pistols. I eventually got a sieve and there were a lot of larger ones.
Ihobby were better than the booms, but grew slightly larger so not ideal in my wells barrels and pistols. Had to control grow them and then putting them through the sieve they were probably 20% oversize. AKA tenacities are still great and had no issues with them, but have been hard to get. The best I have found consistency wise lately are the White Knights from CEH. They are slightly smaller, go through a pistol fine and I get only a few dozen that doesn’t pass a sieve in a packet. I don’t always have the time to control grow (often overnight) so these are great.
In terms of using them later I don’t find the white knights last great. The ihobby and xtac booms seemed to hold up better.
The black labels and aka’s I used to keep after a game and grow less the next time, when I ran out I would use the old ones, sometimes a month later. I found that keeping them in an air-tight, light proof container worked alright. They do dehydrate slightly over time and get a bit squashy, but I found re-soaking them for an hour or 2 before use rehydrated them and they would be more solid and not fall apart.
What people don’t realise is that a lot of these gels you’re comparing are the exact same thing just in a different packet.
Overall I’ve been using iHobby the most lately. If you want them to work in a tight bore barrel you will want to grow them for a short duration like 2.5hrs, if you have a 7.5mm barrel you can grow them the full 3-4hrs you normally would.
Just don’t leave them soak over night because some of them do keep absorbing water up until around 9mm sometimes.
Currently using 4 week old snowballs and even older AKAs without any issues. The Snowballs are getting better with age. Using 7.5mm barrels and grade all gels with 7.35 sieve.
Tried so many different forms of timed grow with Elites. iHobby, Snowballs, black packet AKAs, Gladiators, iHobby orange, LDTs, x-Force
Elites. iHobby, AKA, Snowballs perform with no discernible difference with 4 hour grow. Gas pistols don’t like Gladiators. Orange gels are OK for Gen 8 under 300fps but get destroyed above that. Batches, even of the same type, can vary widely - which just means that more gels above 7.35mm get tossed aside. AKA Tenacity have had the greatest variation in size.
Getting better results from grading gels, storing in smaller batches and allowing them to dry out for a couple of days before use.
Not sure on the differences between coloured packets, but there’s a limited amount of gel ball factories in China and the amount of gel ball offerings we have far exceeds it. I do know however that Ultra Elites are an exclusive deal so no other packs would be the same as them.
The second batch of black labels were a bit all over the place. The first lot I used to grow overnight and never had any issues in a 7.3mm ID barrel.
The black packets have been consistent in size, but I have only been through 1.5 packets. Accuracy was alright, but wasn’t pushing high FPS and was sorting through a sieve. Without sorting the odd big one will curve off.
