QBZ 191 Review - Hopefully something New

Hi All! Long-time Lurker (Just made an account to start doing reviews and posts, but have been on here a while longer). Thought I would post a review on the new GQH QBZ 191 that I bought the other day from Cybertrigger. Not sure how, but they got some new goodies in, and I thought to make a nice review and in a few days a teardown on the internals of the new blaster to restore some hope in the forums aside from the past doom and gloom from the hit that the industry is taking.

But alas to the blaster … Arguably the most important part of the topic.

The QBZ comes in a box without much info, no instructions, just your basic:
1x QBZ 191
1x 7.4v XT 30 Lipo
1x USB Charger
1x Pack of Basic White gels

Being a cheaper style blaster, there are not many metal parts that I can see aside from an Alloy Metal Barrel. All externals are plastic, but not the cheap, crappy stuff. This is a nice, smooth, slightly upper-class plastic. Overall, a nice quality and standard for what you pay.


To access the battery compartment on the blaster, you have to move this little clip forward under the stock. This allows the pin for the stock adjustment to move further down past the “Buffer Tube” stopper to allow the stock to be completely removed and access to the compartment. Also, fun fact, the Buttstock Pad is rubber, so it’s not so hard on your shoulder.





The magazines are unfortunately proprietary, but they are actually one of the nicer styles of mags, not as much curve as an RX AKM Magazine and not as long either. I do love the hatch-style access, as filling the mags is a lot easier.(I’d assume that these are modelled after a 20 Round mag.) I did think an RX mag would work, but unfortunately not without modification. The mags rock in like a standard style AK magazine, but very easily, the … Honestly absurdly long magazine release does make ejecting mags easier and is quite light to move. I do mag drills when I’m bored (IM WEIRD, OK!), and this is quite fun, and you can get very quick to eject and insert more magazines. I just need to afford to buy some … Next Paycheck …




Somehow, this blaster feels good in a weird way, A mix of M4 Style with AK features. Flip-up sights don’t work too badly and are semi-accurate, but let’s be honest, who uses them? The cocking / charging handle also functions as a magazine primer feature, so you can pre-load before you unload! Being how I usually use metal blasters, this is quite light for me 1.3Kg but that is also a good thing as I’m not lugging around a Full Metal M4 or AK, allowing for quicker transitions and more running without my arms falling off on a game day.

My only gripe with it so far is the fire selector. One Side is functional, and the other is cosmetic, but that doesn’t concern me, the issue is the controls are backwards compared to your standard M4. So safe in M4 is Full Auto on the QBZ, Single is still single, thankfully, but Full Auto on your standard M4 is Safe on this. It’s honestly not a big issue, and maybe with modification, it could be changed, but going from a M4 to this does require some getting used to thats for sure.




So performance outta the box … 3.6 Roentgen … Not great … Not terrible. Just finished growing some Summer Cats, and she is shooting 180 - 210 FPS, also runs around 11 RPS on a 7.4v (11.1v is charging). Could be better. I can’t see an easy way to swap the spring, so when I pull her down to modify, I’ll let you know.



Overall, I am quite happy. Something different to the scene, and hopefully this is the start of new goodies to come! I do hope to pull it down on Friday / Saturday, but we shall see, it depends if I have to adult or not. If you do have any questions, let me know.

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Nice looking blaster :+1: Maybe a spring and o ring be first port of call :+1:

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Hey, welcome to the circus! :wave:

Nice review, I looked at those QBZs before and thought… hmmmmmm… something different :thinking:

Getting your FPS up should be easy with a check over of the usual airseal suspects, maybe a spring… should get it on about a par with an unmodified Gen 8. :person_shrugging:

Let us know how you go with it… interested to see. :+1:

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Welcome to the forum @Wasbob45
Good to see you on another gel platform!

Very nice write up. Might have to pick one up at some point. Great to see a “not an M4”!

I’m sure it can be made to perform better, newer blasters from China are low by our standards but often still have good potential.
very interested to see when you get to it.

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Welcome to the Forum and great job on the review.:+1:

Shame nobody’s making a gel version of the QBU 191… now that would make a decent mod platform for a different kind of DMR build. :thinking:

Check out the bolt bounce on that pos :rofl:

Be overgassed to the max at a guess to make sure it cycles. Heavy recoil, no wonder the projectiles tumble and go not where they are pointed :rofl: :rofl: :v:

Well, after a week of procrastination and work, I got some time to delve into the internals of the QBZ-191 this weekend! And it’s quite interesting.

First up, removing the “Buffer” tube reveals a single nut that is holding the tube onto the blaster, and a nice sizable channel for feeding wires through. Not Bad, but no easy way to access the spring retainer to allow for Hot Swapping the Spring. So this is kinda a set and forget blaster.


After looking at the rear, I turned my attention to removing the handguard to access the blaster. 2 Retaining Pins lock the handguard onto the receiver, and it simply slides forward a small amount before getting stuck on the gas block. After taking almost all the bolts off the handguard, I found a small screw under the gas block. Removing that screw and the whole gas block moved forward and slid right off the Alloy Outer Barrel, then followed the Handguard.




Now I can access the guts of this blaster, hooray… A few screws retain the receiver and a pin, and you can pull the receiver right apart just like an old Gen 8 M4A1. The Pistol grip and the Reciever are two different parts and held in by a single screw on the front and a single screw on the bottom of the pistol grip. Also, I don’t know if you need to, but I also removed the Top rail from the receiver by removing 3 Bolts.







So, straight up, the gearbox is Unique… Friken yippie! A mix of Gen 8 and RX AKM, still quite a solid build and feels good just upon first impressions. The barrel is approximately 330mm (33cm). The barrel is glued into the T-piece and is also unique to fit into the receiver, but can come out separately from the gearbox. The same can be said about the outer barrel. It comes out separately and again is also unique to the balster, but hey, it’s alloy so it’s not so bad, I guess. Standard 14mm counterclockwise thread on the barrel so you can fit all your standard Flash hiders and hop-ups. A small bit of barrel sticking out from the end allows you to fit some slimline hop-ups.





Opening the gearbox reveals secrets. So interestingly enough, the motor is a 480 Short Shaft Motor, and the gears were very familiar to me. To my surprise, the gears are RX AKM gears in metal. Very solid gears, and me being an RX fan, I was happy to see another blaster on the block using these solid gears. I don’t have many parts on hand to build stuff, but I seem to remember having a broken RX gearbox with upgraded parts on the inside. Pulled that sucker apart and scavenged a Slightly Better spring and an alloy cylinder head (With a Double O-Ring) and nozzle (again, double O-Ring).






The only Difference was that the Piston was 1 Tooth Shorter but missing 1 Pickup tooth from a Regular RX AKM Gear Set Piston. The Nozzle I had issues with. The old Nozzle had no O-Ring, and the piston was like a Hotdog down a hallway, in the cylinder. The cylinder head was weird also as it had a slighlty bigger O-Ring on it and the new one had smaller O-Rings but still felt like a good fit, I may open it back up to Swap 1 O-Ring and the Nozzle to the correct rubber and a Half Decent Spring to bump up the power a bit more but overall not too bad for A new green O-Ring and 1,2 Spring, Alloy Nozzle and Cylinder Head. Put her on the chronograph, and she is shooting around 250 ish Give or take. May need new gels also, but its definatley got potential.

Before I forgot, I also checked the shim job on the box, and it didn’t need any. The gears were made to fit the box and had overall good clearances around 0.1mm play up and down. The gears spun freely without any issues and felt good.

Overall, 8/10 I rate it, a little more tweaking and I reckon I could get this bad boy running like a dream!

5 Likes

Nice write up mate. Did not expect to see a sort of V3 RX style box in it. You are doing well to still have parts for them too.

Nice, interesting read. Looks not too shabby at all :+1:

Looking like a sweeeet Gen8 with 1890’s agricultural straight cut gears!

Love it mate, awesome write up👌

Reminds me of a now deceased mate. International Scout. International Harvester, straight out of Illinois. He’d lock it in low range, straight cut gears. Get the whine LOL

Then the cable shift buggered up, ah fk me boom selector is fkd. Then he twisted the front prop shaft off going over a sandune :rofl: :rofl: :v: Was too small anyway by the looks iirc about inch half. We made a bigger one, snapped that too haha.

What a character, must be them straight cut gears :rofl: :+1:

Yep, ol DocBob will be wanting his Non Synchro gearbox back next and cursing all the younger generation from his Straight cut, dog box cane wheel chair next!

As for this blaster, “Ripper reading and well put together”. I want one, BUT… I am going to sell what I have. I loved having my two QBZs before, they were great and I wish I kept them.
Thinking about the barrel, if you wanted to extend it as per the picture that Friendly_Fire put up, we used to be able to buy screw on barrel fittings. I think the smallest was 5cm and the longest was 18cm with a couple in between. I still have some left from my Blaster mods LoL.

I am giving it up here. Tired of giving the government my money and all our Southern SA Playing fields have either been refused operation or been closed down. With the cost of fuel, weather and health getting to me and DVA screwing the Veterans better than ever. The future has never looked bleaker. :grinning:

Seriously.!.!

They are refusing legal SA fields operation, and shutting them down.??

How many fields remain.?

Another way of banning them…

You can have em…but only to use at registered fields.
Close down all the fields…no legal reason to be able to own them…Banned…!!
:face_with_symbols_over_mouth::face_with_symbols_over_mouth::face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

The govt loses sight of the fact that they are supposed to work for,and serve us…not rule over us…!!

That’s fkd mate, killing whatever little bit of fun we have left in our lives for absolutely no reasoning whatsoever.:face_with_symbols_over_mouth:
I understand about the frustration of logistics, time and costs being so prohibitive that you need to reassess the whole situation and balance up the whole effort vs. reward balance in life.

The Gumbyment is very well educated on how to make things slowly disappear without actually making a big announcement about it, simply making life so difficult for people to force them into making decisions that they wouldn’t otherwise.:face_exhaling:

This has been going on since the Law changed the goal posts after they were going to lose the court case back when they made a plastic toy a firearm. I still have all the files and stuff related to then, they were losing it on every front. Medical, I had proof sent to the lawyers for GBA showing several point blank incidents of airsoft auto to the eyes, in all cases they never lost sight and we all know that they are hard and faster fps. There is by definition, no way that GBs are a firearm as they do not use any ignitable propellant to discharge a projectile. The only way they could beat us was on the looks and proportionate sizing of the blasters. That I will concede and as we were moving forward into the heavy Gas powered blasters it was more realistic looking. If someone came up behind you and placed a cold steel muzzle under your ear or pointed one at you and menacingly said hand over your money, I guess I would think twice :flushed:
The issue with the fields though, they were never keen to let the sport flourish and they do act like the “Sheriff of Nottingham’s” men. What I mean is, they are taught to be arrogant and bullying in training now and I got that from a retired instructor Sgt, who had a gutfull of this new way of policing. Yes, they do stand on their pedestals and think they are better than the community they are supposed to serve and protect.
when it comes to the Firearms Branch, they control everything from license to field operations. within the purview of these fields are paintball and Gel blaster fields. As with all their “Assumptions”, they have no basis to which they can actually determine a fields safety. While it may sound simple, such as range and fence lines you have to remember we are dealing with the mentality of people who are not able to think laterally! They deal with firearms and apply the same rules as much as possible to the other fields.
An example for one of our South playing fields was such; Private property, fenced off to the public. Completely native forestation from the fence line to the house and car park. I walked with the owner and we measured out an area of 1km square inside this, give or take a 100m. for a safety margin we made it 00m x 800m and the plan was to use natural terrain, enhanced with some features, such as increased mound size, a creek with recirculating water, and an ever growing number of buildings in some locations as finances permitted. This was going to be a member only use field, meaning there would be no stored blasters other than the owners, negating the need for a bunker armoury. No supply for visitors, and all funding comes from membership and special events.
this type of field does have its pitfalls for members naturally! A falling out with someone and they have invested in it, some doing more than others and who benefits more, but we had this covered by membership agreements. It had nothing to do with police approval. Their issue was it must have a bunker armoury, irrespective of being a member only use field. The cost of such a thing was prohibitive and whilst there was a necessary need for it in a place that hires a field to non licensed operators, this was not going to be one of those.
It was for use only by licensed firearm operators with registered blasters. In effect the SAPOL were saying that we were liars and could let anyone in. This is plausibly true, but the same can be said for any range in Australia. So they denied the application based on the single factor, no weapons bunker to place the plastic toys or the highly dangerous and volatile gel balls.
The other field I know of was already a paintball field and they were further south and one of the first in SA. They tried to get approval for Gel Blasters there, but struck the same issue, cost of building this bunker as they were going to hire out to non licensed operators, then they had to have fields that did not cross paths with paint ball, equipment was not allowed to be stored in the same location, it drove their boss crazy and he gave up in disgust with the future outlay exceeding his yearly income.
For me, just for a day out it is 120km+ drive across the city and back. Half my left leg is artificial from real army two way firing ranges and while I can run around on it for a bit, I rest between games, or I did. I have aged five years since then and even if my mind says I am still 30, my body does protest a bit from 30 years of Army, training and using Infantry skills all that time.
I loved Gel Blasters, they were a great release for my PTSD and helped me get out of the lone life I was living. It’s gone now, well for me I mean and if I keep my blasters I have to continue to have a license. Sort of a Catch 22 issue and I am tired of it now. I have fired weapons of so many different calibers that it staggers the mind, been shot at, shot, blown up and broken. I still shoot the real thing in some venues as it is easier than getting out to play a game with Gel Blasters, ironic really. But when you live in the “NANNY” State, what else can you expect from the Waffen Sapol!

They are not to my knowledge closing down fields, sorry if I gave you that impression. I meant they are preventing new ones from starting. As to how many remain, I don’t know but it is still going well in our Northern suburbs I believe. I also think there is possibly one in the Riverland, maybe Maiphut knows about those guys better. Marginally better than WA but for me, I have paid for a license for five years now, registered 7 blasters and only give them a run inside the house to make sure they still work. Not what I planned when I bought them. All 5 yr old new blasters LoL. :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

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Yep I’m in the middle and I’m on my way out. I went through all the rego shit as I am a LAFO. Every time I go in to the safe to pull the 5.56mm out for vermin control on my freehold private property. You know my fucking land. Not somebody else’s. Got a Fox Sat night on a YZ250 :rofl: :+1:

They just sit there as I haven’t got time to do a minimum 500klm round trip to fling gel balls. They are toys, but whatever, less revenue for the stupid gov. They are blind. Punish the criminals, not blanket ban the decent people like yourself I and many others.

Fine fuck em, they don’t want to listen, I’ve shoved a big nucluear bomb up their arse this year business wise and made the operaters aware that they work for me and I pay their wage. When I say I need help from my gov, I aint fucking around sleeping on a couch playing fucking playstation. They got the hint after 6 months. From Sydney an Indian lady :roll_eyes: :joy: so that was fun.

Good memories with a mate. Hang on got to lock the International Scout in low. Right, gate start straight cut gears, so funny. Straight out of Illinois International Harvester. Yank tank. Got it stowed on my private property as a memento, 345 V8 with a 350 Holley. Boom selecteor fucked out cable to get low range, on top of a sand dune and twisted the front axle twice haha But he was a sheety metal worker and double sized it at work made it 3" instead of 1.5".

What a legend, top friend. Still visit his grave 36 got cut short bugger. Blew me away on the KX250 flew past me sideways grabbing 40ft of air.

Ah fuk that haha

He was a tiger, ringing me at work on a Saturday come round, yea ok I knock off at midday I’ll pop in on my way home.

Arrived, knock front door, His mrs answered, yes he’s in their. He was butt naked I said wtf you are starkers you fkn clown. For fucks sake. Didn’t have a piece of clothing on him. Here have a Jack Daniels. What a legend. Miss him dearly. Went put him down the hole :slightly_frowning_face:

Had his younger brother with his 2003 KX250 at the funeral parlor popping monos down the raods etc and in the foyer chalking out that sweet 32:1 2 stroke. Even the Christians approved which was impressive, yea go the minister said. Oh well never forget, present arm :saluting_face: