Well G55 (Gas Blowback MP5k) Review

By Brandon
Feb 16th, 2009

So to be honest, I was born a hyper-skeptic.  When something sounds too good to be true, it is probably the opposite.  It was this overbearing disbelief that I had to fight back when I clicked the ‘Submit Order’ button at RSOV.  I mean really, a full-on GBB MP5k Maruzen clone, for 50 dollars.  Luckily however, curiosity is also a natural trait, and with only $50 on the line, curiosity beat common sense.  And the result, I must say, is quite alluring!

Real Steel History:

The HK MP5K is based on the successful HK MP5-series of submachine gun produced by the German-based firm of Heckler & Koch. The HK MP5K is a specialized shortened version of the base submachine gun featuring a short barrel and forward grip for added control when firing.

The HK MP5K is sometimes dubbed the ‘Room Broom’ because of it’s intended purpose. The compact size and man-stopping firepower make sure that the weapon delivers as advertised. The base system features only single and automatic fire capability. Three round bursting mode is available on variant models.

History courtesy of Military-Factory

Movie Appearances

The MP5k is an incredibly popular firearm in the movies, with a pile of notable appearances.  Prominently, it was used by Keanu Reeves as Neo in the ever popular first Matrix film.

Not to be left out, Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus picked up a pair of MP5ks with no foregrips and aimpoints in the third Matrix installment

Samuel L. Jackson, playing Zeus Carver in Die Hard 3 Joins in on the fun as well.

Ethan Hawke as Agent Valentine (an Interpol Agent) has a tendency to foil the main character at every turn with his trusty MP5k present

The MP5k has also appeared to garner a reputation as a henchman gun, with henchman credits in;

• Blade
• True Lies
• Air Force One
• Bad Boys 2
• Die Hard 2
• The list goes on…

The MP5k has a quite diverse film background, and as a result, its quite popular among the airsoft community.

First Impressions

Fast forward to yesterday, and my big brown buddies brought me an enormous carton of new toys.  I opened the box with my knife, and surely enough, the G55 was sitting on the top of the pile, begging me to play with it.

And how could I argue!  The gun actually came in extremely nice packing, with the very dense, solid foam, reminiscent of what a G&P gun comes in.  Inside, you find the gun, the mag, the manual, and (I thought this was excellent) a set of spare valves for your mag.  Awesome idea!

You lift the gun out to find it surprisingly light, weighing somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-3 pounds.  Not bad, with a very nice plastic finish on the lower receiver.  The upper has a bit of cheap plastic syndrome, and the writing on the magwell just looks silly, but these things are easily overlooked.

Unlike the various AEG MP5k’s out there, this one does not have to house a motor, and thus the grip is slimmer, and hollow.

The buttplate is the only useful sling point on this gun, unlike the TM which has an eye loop at the front of the gun as well.  Its alright though, as a one point sling setup makes this gun quite good as a backup.

The foregrip seems just as solid and well constructed as any AEG.

One benefit of this gun is that its very simple to take apart.  Pop the two pins at the buttcap, and remove the pin by the magwell, and the lower receiver can be slid off easily.  The whole bolt assembly can then be pulled back out of the receiver, and the trigger mechanism and barrel system can be slid out directly behind it!

The gun goes to bits in a matter of seconds, and you have access to all of the internals.  Shown below is the trigger group in the lower receiver.

Basically, those two posts poking towards the camera trade place as the fire selector is operated, allowing the bolt to either catch or not after each shot.  This whole assembly is made of metal aside from the grip-frame.

This is the sear/barrel assembly, and again, this is all made of metal.  One cautionary word however, is to make sure to baby this piece.  It contains a tiny little spring, contained below, and if you’re as stupid as the author, you will manage to shoot it off into the voids of your workbench by playing with this assembly.  All is well and it was found, but beware!

Next we come to the bolt assembly, a point of contention for Maruzen owners.  I’ve never owned the Maruzen, nor have I really read enough to understand where it breaks.  All I know is that the blowback chamber is made of metal, while the BB loading muzzle appears to be plastic, and similar to a GBB Pistol’s but shorter.  The bolt cover is also plastic.

This is the facing side of the bolt, nothing you wouldn’t expect to see

The opposite side, showing the BB stripping nub a bit better, as well as the bit where the recoil spring attaches.

The bottom of the bolt, already showing some wear on the metal from firing

The BB muzzle held open to show the blowback chamber.  These Next three were requested by Horsem4n on Arnies, and I was only too happy to oblige.

A poor picture of the top of the bolt.  The two screws to get down to the blowback unit are visible near the top of the picture.

The top of the blowback chamber, once freed from its fake bolt hanger-on.  The spring guide and bb-muzzle spring are to the left of the blowback chamber.

This is the fully disassembled blowback unit, down to its 5 component bits.  I was surprised by the build quality on this for sure!  In all, the amount of metal in this thing is impressive, and all I really intend on for the future is buying two or three of those Guarder reinforced loading muzzles.  Now lets move on to operating the weapon!

Operations

Naturally, the next step was to slap the mag into the gun and see how that felt.  It makes the gun a tad front heavy, but its easily overlookable when you realize that you’re wielding around an excellent little compact SMG.

Of course, the next step is to operate it!  Pulling the charging handle is not quite as much fun as you’d expect, think of it like pulling the charging handle on a Marui MP5k except it actually does something!  You get the feel of clackety plastic as you pull it back and let it go, but by the feel of things, at least the cocking handle appears quite well reinforced*.

*Disclaimer, results of all HK slaps are your fault. Period.

When you look over on the other side of the gun, you’ll see the bolt is now open, looking like the image below.  This gun, unlike the real MP5k, fires from an open bolt.  This is part of what gives it some functional ‘credentials’, by allowing an absolutely vomitous rate of fire.

The fire-select lever feels quite nice and substantial and clicks into place much better than a comparable AEG’s.  For those uninitiated into the HK cult (probably one of you… at most…), the selector is shown in the safe, semi, and auto positions below.  All 3 positions are fully functional, though I occasionally get a full auto burst out of the semi function.

You’ll also have to load the mag.  The mag is a simple sheet-steel mag, with silent fill valves (Nice!), and an easy to use follower.  The mag holds 21 BBs.

I must however mention that after one weekend’s use, I’ve noticed that it has left both mine and my friends car smelling distinctly of propane.  This means that some sort of slow leak has developed.  I couldn’t hear the leak, so I can’t tell which valve failed, but the leak is quite slow, as I left the gun charged in my car over night, and it still shot fine the next morning.  If the condition worsens, I will update my review.

Pretty standard GBB stuff here, not much to see really!

Now one thing that needs to be pointed out here is my rear sight.  The MP5k is equipped with reasonably standard HK type ‘drum’ sights.  The correct sight picture is shown below:

The problem that at least has manifested itself on my G55 is that the detent that holds the sight in place is off canter, and actually clicks into place between the sight’s apertures.  Not that this is necessarily a gun that one technically ‘aims’ with, but the issue must be brought to light.

Shooting Impressions

So now you’ve loaded a mag, and gotten it into your gun.  Set the fire select to what you’d like and brace yourself.  Note that the fire selector has 3 positions, safe, semi, and full.  The interesting bit is, the trigger stays relatvely limp, and only really catches when the bolt is opened.  As opposed to other GBBs, which tend to have much snappier and more mechanical feeling triggers, this one is spongy, much like (insert your choice of AEG here).

So now, the moment of truth.  I loaded my new gun up with .20s, and gassed with propane, and went to test the gun.  As an interesting aside,  the Maruzen MP5k (This gun’s clone twin) has been known to fall apart on use with green/propane.  It is my intention to run this gun on propane until it fails, at which point I will update the review and describe the failure.

Momentarily, I find myself behind my house, pointing the gun at a few cans, and wondering if I spent $50 on something goofy.  Then, I switched to full auto and pulled the trigger;  PAAAAAAPAPAPAPAPAPAPAPAPAPAPAP!  This gun’s rate of fire is absolutely astronomical.  It managed to chew through all 21 bb’s before I could remember to let off the trigger!  The shooting feedback you get from the gun is excellent for a tiny little gun, as the whole gun shakes in your hand and sends little recoil shocks up your shoulder.  Another important bit to mention is that the report from this gun is smegging loud.  When you fire at someone with this, I guarantee they will find cover and hide there.  This thing simply looks and sounds evil.  One downside however, is that the mag has no bolt catch, so you really have to pay attention to the BBs flying out the front of the gun, as once you’re out, the gun will keep on shooting until its out of gas or you let off the trigger.  Have a look at the shooting video below;

As the video shows, the gun was shot on full at 25 and 50 feet.  The 25 foot target:

As you can see, the gun holds a tight little group, with 16/21 bbs hitting on the paper.  Not super accurate, but at close range, not bad.  This all changes severely though at range.  Here is the target as shot at 50 feet:

At 50 feet, the consistency goes from meh to plain out bad.  That’s not a bad thing though, as really, the weapon is meant to simply saturate a small area with BBs in a very very short amount of time, and that it does.  Anyone attempting to shoot any further than 50ft with this would be a bit daft.

For what it was, the gun was an admirable performer.  Within 30 feet, I hit all 5 cans and left serious dents in them.  I was so impressed that I took my time today to go to the local indoor airsoft place.  Per the Madbull V2 chrono at the field, the G55 is shooting 310FPS, at an ambient temperature between 30 or 40 Fahrenheit.

As to long term durability, I cannot yet say, though I can say that I’ve used the gun today down at our indoor field, extensively.  Nothing is more fun than clouding BBs at people with this!  I spent most of the day today, which consisted of running the counter at an indoor airsoft field, letting people fondle it and have a few test fires.  Everyone seemed thoroughly impressed.  I’d estimate that so far, I have run 50 mags of 21 bb’s through this between my own use, and letting all the awed newbies play around with it.  I did give the gun a little silicone about midway through the day, but have not experienced any misfires, misfeeds, or problems of yet.

Of course, running the counter meant playing on dead-times.  At an indoor field with hi-cap happy youngsters leaning on the trigger, what did I do?  I walked onto the field with 21 rounds in my MP5k, and the excellent Meister Glock 17 to back myself up with.  In the first game, I’m not sure how it happened, but a little guy with a SAW popped around a barricade just so that I got to dump the MP5k at him, hitting him multiple times.  Walking back to the staging area after the game, he mentioned to me how scary the gun sounded, as well as a number of sore spots he had on his torso.  And so the day went…

Durability Alert!

I’ve had so many emails from you waiting with baited breath for my little MP5k to break.  Shame on you!  Under the crushing weight of your expectations, something finally gave out.  The first failure experienced on my Well G55 was the bottom valve on the mag refusing to hold gas.  Luckily, since Well includes BOTH valves spare in the box, this was a simple fix.  A touch of silicon grease fixed the original valve right up as well.

Sorry to disappoint with the relatively minor failure, but this thing lives to impress!

Overall

So, all in all, I’d say I’ve given this thing a pretty favorable review.  I’ve definitely had my skepticism slapped to the ground by this little guy, who manages to thoroughly impress, even through my bias against it when I first ordered it.  More detailed ratings are below!

Performance: 4/5

All it needs is a bolt catch when the mag is empty, then I would have no qualms

External Design: 2.5/5

This is where the gun really takes a bath.  Cheap finish, poor cocking feel contribute to low scores, as well as the issues with the rear sight.  A metal version of this would be positively stunning.

Value: 4.5/5

For under $100 shipped from RSOV, I wouldn’t miss this thing!.

Overall: 4/5

This little gun strikes you as a bit of a novelty or a parlor trick at the offset, but as you get to know it a bit better,  the gun proves to be fully skirmish worthy, even with a  capacity of a mere 21 rounds, its quite usable, quite scary, and out and out awesome.  Everyone should have one of these!!!!!!

The Final Verdict: A Keeper

This little guy is an excellent shooter at a fantastic price.  This gun was good enough to earn some of my (somewhat) limited wall space.  As long as it works, it will be up there as a gun I smile at using!  I am thrilled to own it, and thrilled to have reviewed it for you all.

As always, feel free to forward any questions on this review to the author (brgarst@gmail.com).  Also, come discuss the review on our forums! Finally, Be on the lookout for our upcoming video review for this gun!

Thanks again to RSOV for carrying the gun and shipping so quickly after I bought it.