Seems odd reviewing such an old blaster and this won’t be anything new to most of us here, but might be handy info for some of our members new to the hobby. It took me five years to get one, and honestly I’m wondering why it took me so long.
This has to be the market’s cheapest and easist blaster to buy and upgrade. Hanke M97, been around for years. It was a good performer back in the day, and is still up there with minimal upgrading.
The unit itself will set you back around the $100 mark, give or take, Vipertac are currently selling them for $99. Stock performance is around 250-260FPS but an outlay of about $15 for an M120 spring, ten minutes work on the bench and you’re in 300FPS territory with no lipo batteries, gas refills or stripped nylon gears to worry about.
If you’re like me and put accuracy over FPS, another $20 will get you a longer inner barrel, the stock one doesn’t allow for a hopup. No shell mods required for the barrel swap, just pull the OEM barrel out of the fitting at the nozzle end, press it onto your new barrel and trim to desired length.
I found a $15 11mm hopup a perfect neat fit inside the removable barrel cap. There is a section in the bore of the cap that’s 9.5mm so I ratted that out with a round file to allow the hopup to sit well back and out of sight. Not necessary, just personal preference.
The 20 gel capacity hopper is a bit inconvenient, so a faux optic / hopper from a Sig Sauer hopper fed P226 does the job nicely for me.
It requires dremelling another hole in the top picatinny rail slightly forward of the original, but gives you a capacity of over 100 gels. Not exactly stellar but more than adequate for a manual pump action springer. The Sig hopper can be removed and a functional optic fitted too, handy with this blaster’s accuracy. Gels can be loaded through the original rear sight fill port with an optic fitted as normal.
Performance wise, upgrade the spring and 300+FPS is easily acheivable without overstressing the cocking mechanism. Accuracy without a hopup is surprisingly good, but with a dialled in hopup it’s laser accurate. With a red dot fitted I saw the tightest grouping I’ve seen out a a gel blaster at 18-20 metres range, gels were almost stacking on top of each other at times… even more impressive when you consider cocking it takes you off target, which you then have to reacquire.
Fitting an o ring between the inner barrel and the plastic collar will help keep shots to single gels, fast pumping also will. But pumping the action slower or holding it open for a second or two will give you two or three gel shots, at lower FPS obviously.
The overall nylon build is good, and although the pump handle is ABS and feels cheap the cocking is positive and solid. Removing the rear threaded plug allows fitment of a buffer tube and stock but as the thread is clamshell by design, it does seem to be picky about which buffer tubes fit tightly enough to be functional.
It’s definitely worth a look if you’re looking for a low cost low maintenance backyard plinker, or a good performer for a backup blaster for gameplay.
Total costs including the base blaster and upgrade parts should come in around $140. Sure, you could pick up a cheap AEG for that, but factor in magazines, batteries and maintenance and the cost of an AEG goes up. My local seller brought in 40+ units of the Hanke M97s about a month or so ago and sold the lot in about four weeks, so clearly they’re still popular.
Dropping FPS with a lighter spring would also make it very viable as a kid’s blaster. About the only upgrade I’d like now is a nylon pump handle. 3D printed ones are available but PLA wouldn’t be my material of choice.
Here’s a link to Low Guido’s review and teardown from all those years ago…
