Empire Mini GS opinions

[Drcemento]

My son has some birthday bucks burning a hole in his pocket and a new-found love of paintball which i'm thrilled about. unlike his dad he does not have a nostalgic love of old mechanical markers and wants to buy his own space gun instead of rocking the very nice Minimag I set up for him (go figure)

He's digging the looks and price point of the Mini GS. what is he getting into with something like this? solid choice? seems well reviewed. like the compactness, have a tank and reg (whats the input pressure for one of these?)

[homerj]

I used one most of last summer & i loved it. Never a single issue with it. Just a really nice shooter. No bells & whistles though. No tool less bolt removal, has to be broken down quite a bit to get to the eyes & changing modes = counting blinks. If he’s just playing rec ball then it’s not an issue. Set it at the field’s bps cap & leave it alone. They run between 180-200 psi. Mine stayed right around 180. I’d highly recommend it at sub $200.00. Above that & you might want to start looking at a used Axe 2.0.

[BrickHaus]

I have a buddy with one. He was having issues with his randomly turning off. I took it home, and found a cold solder joint on one of his main resistors. A little heat and that board has worked since.

They are overall decent shooters for an electro option.

[Cyberpyr8]

Our field is an Empire field and so there's a bunch of them at my field in rec play. They do great and hold up pretty well. If it ain't broke though, don't mess with it.Most of the ones I see with issues start with the statement, "I took it apart" or "I messed with it...." and there you go. They are pretty simple to work on and are great for younger kids due to it's size. I prefer the Axe but I also depend on the front grip and find the axe a little better but the mini is fine.

[Cdn_Cuda]

I picked up a Mini GS earlier this year to check out. I found it to be a great little marker. I like the quality of life improvements over the standard Mini (on/off ftw!). Found it shot nice and handled well. There’s a ton of them out there too so you can be picky on colours or be fancy and get one of the HK milled ones if you want something prettier.

[jetenginekyle]

Do not get the pink and blue ones. They have so many issues the field I work at no longer sells them, the other colors are fine though.

[zinger565]

Do not get the pink and blue ones. They have so many issues the field I work at no longer sells them, the other colors are fine though.

Weird. I wonder what causes that? Something with that specific anno process?

[Drcemento]

Thanks all for the input. Sounds like a solid purchase. dumb question.... I have a couple powerhouse regs and a ninja ...the powerhouses lowest rating is 450. so when you say 180 to 200 is that an internal reg taking the tank pressure down further? must be because i don't see any tank regs that go below 450-500

[jetenginekyle]

the mini has a reg built into the asa that takes the pressure down to ~200psi, it will work with any tank reg

[Myrkul]

I had a mini-gs for a few years. It shot fine and never gave me a single problem. Didn't have much of a soul to it, but from a price & performance perspective I had zero complaints. It very rapidly was pushed into the full time loaner slot after a few outings because it was just too much firepower for rec play. It hung around as a loaner for about two years after that and never received any negative feedback from the people I loaned it out too. It's a solid gun...just kinda boring.

[Drachen]

I don't use a electro much but when I do the mini GS checks all the boxes for me. Shoots everytime I pull the trigger and does it efficiently enough I can shoot 5+ pods and a hopper (most I ever carry at once).

It's pretty basic but it's miles above the ion days of cheap shooter. Plus if it's for a young kid or person on the smaller side the size is awesome. I have always really liked how tight it is.

[Price]

The miniGS is quite big in reality, if you prefer the axe2 I think its a better design

[jetenginekyle]

Mini gs big?? if im not mistaken its the smallest marker on the market.

[Price]

True and I think the ax2 is not much bigger for what it is. Long time I didint see my gs and it was my first marker so proportion might be off in memory but I can recall thinking that is not mini

[glaman5266]

I don’t like them, but that is mainly due to the ergonomics. I have long arms, larger hands & I like to wrap my hand all the way around a foregrip. If you like a stretched feel or have larger hands/longer arms you might run into issues. But I’m also picky about my ergonomics, so take that for what you will.

[Trbo323]

While it wasn't a gs I had a normal mini back in the day. Didn't like it. Too small. My left hand would interfere with the fingers of my right while trying to walk the trigger. I really didn't like the hall effects trigger, the activation point always seems to change slightly. My theory on that is if you pull it quick you are creating a stronger magnetic field and the board can register it easier therefore the activation point is further forward, pull it slower and it's a weaker field therefore further back. I have no proof just the way it felt to me.

While technically you can service the regulator, I'm only saying that because this is MCB. Empire never intended the end user to service the regulator and it's designed in such a way to make it extremely difficult. You need a few specialized tools and then even if you get into it, non standard o rings.

When I had mine the whole thing used non standard o rings. I don't remember if they are metric or something else and this may have changed over the years but it was really infuriating to me to have a whole case of AS568 rings and none of them would work for the mini.

Overall, I'm not a fan. I think they have their place if a player is looking to move on from a tippmann let's say and is fine sending it into a shop for any maintenance but as someone who does all their own maintenance it's a rather poor design

Sent from my motorola edge 5G UW (2021) using Tapatalk

[Drcemento]

We'll find out soon enough. El gringo had one up for sale at a good price. I'm getting bored tuning mags and cockers so it will be interesting to finally have an electro around the house.

[SR_matt]

The mini has been around for well over a decade and is pretty solid. Regarding the tank input pressure it will work with a standard 800 but empire recommends 450, just gentler on the reg and less potential problems if the HPR has a failure.

I am not sure about the issues that were mentioned with the specific color ways but I know the axes had an issue on one color for a while, specifically it would just all of a sudden have very low velocity and not cycle right. The issue on that seemed to be due to a slight tolerance issue in the body and could be resolved by simply replace the main 3 rings on the outside of the engine with 118-70 rings (ANS had a video on it).

The only issue people complain about on the mini is the grip being “too close” but frankly it’s what most old school markers are so any old school guys or kids probably won’t have much issue with it.

there is an new upgrade for the axe/mini that replaces the plastic poppet with a metal one that uses a standard o ring, other than that not much to tweak on it unless you really want a redline board to make programming easier.