Friday, July 22, 2011

Nerf Vortex disc blasters hands-on - Pocket-lint


Oooh. Optimus prime cyber blaster in the background...
UK Gadget blog Pocket-Lint have posted some very schmick hands-on photos of the new upcoming Nerf Vortex range. Excited yet?

(thanks to Jason for the heads up)

Nerf Vortex disc blasters hands-on - Pocket-lint

13 comments:

  1. do you good people have any Canadian release dates???

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  2. these guys have nice pics but seem kind of stupid, saying the nitron can shoot them out at a fair rate of knots??? then they say long range as 20-30 feet? they claimed to have handled nerf blasters before but i guess not, and then calling the praxis a pump action shotgun? just because something is pump action doesn't mean it is a shotgun, are the raider, Alpha trooper and quick 16 shotguns too??? and here is the worst comment: saying the vigilon is a hand held automatic pistol??? it doesn't use batteries??? then they say the proton can fire 2 shots? what they stuck a disk in the barrel, say good bye to range.

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  3. (from wikipedia) The knot is a unit of speed equal to one nautical mile (which is defined as 1.852 km) per hour, approximately 1.151 mph.

    dunno where they are located but yeah prob just where ever they are from that they say knots instead of other things. mainly they are saying they eject and fly fast. Personally, I think its lame that people assume others are "kind of stupid" for using different measurements than they are used to. pretty ironic actually :P

    and most stock nerf blasters get MAX 25-35ft. as in fall and hit the ground at that distance. They are saying vortex hit an "unwitting linter" (some unsuspecting person? lol maybe, not really sure) at 20-30 ft., so that means it was still flying fast, and not falling when it hit. or at least thats what im guessing it meant, since one of the first vortex videos shows the praxis firing reaaaaally far stock.

    (as a side note, all the vortex will be fired flat, straight on. not 45 degree angle to get a max distance like dart blasters. I imagine that like a real Frisbee, angled doesn't exactly equal farthest possible distance. Some angle may be good though, just not very much.)

    The reason they say the praxis is the pump action shot gun of vortex is because it is supposed to have the look of it, not exactly the effect of a pump action shot gun. the raider, alpha trooper, etc. don't look at all like shotguns, but the praxis does... well a little ish anyways. more so than other pump action blasters. they know its not a shotgun (can't very easily make one with a dart blaster, disc launcher), but yeah, they are giving an opinion on how it looks/feels.

    vigilon... yeah its not an automatic pistol... nothing to say about that lol, my guess is it will fire the same as the maverick. prime it, and fire. definitely not automatic (if im right.)

    Even if it does cut the range down, both shots still probably fly farther than stock dart blasters :P haha. and my guess is they didn't stick it in the barrel, though that might work and would be cool if it did (try to stick like 5 discs down the praxis or nitron barrel. prob get very low range, but hey theres a shotgun for you if it works!!!). I think they just squished two on top of each other in the chamber where you are supposed to load a single disc. It still would decrease range i think, but who knows. maybe both ways work lol.

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  4. weird... in one of the pics the disc looks upside down inside the vigilon lol. fail? or on purpose? dunno but it made me laugh :P

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  5. The most interesting thing is that ALL four of the Vortex blasters have an on switch. Which answers one of the main questions people have had... how the hell are they going to work, especially the ones other than the Nitron which people were speculating might be spring powered?

    Its now clear that none of them are spring powered. They are ALL electric flywheel powered. The cocking mechanisms are only for loading new discs, not stretching a spring to power the discs.

    So no up-springing these things. In fact I'm not sure there are many mods that could be done at all short of minimization. But on the other hand, overvolting will work on all of them.

    Very interesting.

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  6. Agree. Calling 20-30 feet as huge, they must expect toy guns to only shoot 10 feet at max. Someone at Oznerf forum (who is a bit more experienced with Nerf guns) has had hands-on experience on a Nitron. He said the range is inded quite impressive, like 60+ feet. BUT... the discs fly very slowly through the air, like a frisbee gliding. Meaning very easy to dodge. :(

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  7. I think what looks like an On switch is actually a switch to eject the clip/ammo slider thingy. On the Stampede it's a on off switch but on the Nitron it might look the same but its just a clip release.

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  8. @boildown if you are talking about the switches above the triggers, they are clip releases. but if you are talking about a red switch on the side of the praxis, about middle of the blaster ish, and on the vigilon. this is a disc release for if it gets jammed. Not an on off switch.

    Look at this picture from a previous UT post about someone uncovering the instruction manuals for the nitron and proton.

    specifically the picture for the disc ejection instructions for nitron- http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AodzFWZ0CI4/TdEAgLSrGSI/AAAAAAAACEY/68I1cPFDXu8/s1600/vortex_nitron3.jpg

    the full Nitron instructions post if you want it- http://urbantaggers.blogspot.com/2011/05/nerf-vortex-nitron-instruction-manual.html

    and then here is the one for the proton- http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jLpKH6UQGm8/TdEAiXGg5dI/AAAAAAAACEc/IAXI8u8KpLo/s1600/vortex-proton.jpg
    (there was only one page, so I didn't bother linking the entire post)

    what these show is how to clear jams on the nitron and proton. but then you need to ask yourself how would you do it for the praxis and vigilon. I see no other buttons/switches besides those two switches on them, and they need some way to clear jams as well. so my guess is that those switches are for clearing jams for the vigilon and praxis, since the proton and nitron both have a way (button/switch) to do it. Oh and this also shows the proton DOESN'T have an on switch, which leads to...

    They aren't all electric flywheel. first, look at the Nitron. you clearly see the flywheel areas protruding out the sides. On the other vortex ones, there is nothing. In fact, the praxis, vigilon, and proton (sorta) all have a big area right in front of the clip/disc loading area, and under the barrel, but the Nitron doesn't seem to have this. so this tells you they have two different firing mechanisms. Also, you clearly hear no flywheel in the first nerf vortex video when the praxis is fired.
    First vortex video link- http://urbantaggers.blogspot.com/2011/04/vortex-series-revealed-nerf-nation.html

    also in the second nerf vortex video when the proton is fired, no flywheel noise. and flywheels take a little time to get up to speed, so yeah you would hear them.

    @anonymous right under boildown
    I quote my previous post
    "and most stock nerf blasters get MAX 25-35ft. as in fall and hit the ground at that distance. They are saying vortex hit an "unwitting linter" (some unsuspecting person? lol maybe, not really sure) at 20-30 ft., so that means it was still flying fast, and not falling when it hit. or at least thats what im guessing it meant, since one of the first vortex videos shows the praxis firing reaaaaally far stock."
    They weren't talking about max distance. oh and the link for that first vortex video is up a little! so you can see what I mean by how it shows that the praxis shoots far. dunno why I didn't put it in my other post lol... but yeah they do fly kinda slow the farther they fly, so I guess I can't really say they fly fast. my bad :S

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  9. Sorry, but it's facepalm time. I refer to comments posted prior to mine.

    1) None of the Vortex blasters have an on-off 'switch'. In the Nerf Vortex First Look video, at 0:06, the lever is revealed to be...a magazine release lever. Same in Urban Taggers' own Nitron preview video.
    Even the Nitron, the only battery-powered blaster in the current lineup, doesn't have an on-off switch like the Stampede or Barricade. The motors are instead activated by a second trigger on the pistol grip.

    2) The blog's name is 'Pocket-Lint'. So an "unsuspecting Linter" is someone else who writes for the blog.

    3) "A fair rate of knots" is English vernacular for "pretty fast". I'm guessing the Linters didn't have measuring tapes and stopwatches on hand.

    4) Pump-action shotguns also fire solid slugs. It doesn't have to fire a spread of projectiles to be like a pump-action shotgun.

    5) No, Pocket doesn't have a Canadian release date. Or the release dates for anywhere else.

    tl;dr: RESEARCH AND SCIENCE.

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  10. Also, they never described the total range as 20-30 feet. They just said they shot someone from that distance, which means that it's *accurate* at 10 meters. With a stock Maverick, you'd be lucky to make that shot.

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  11. ahhh makes sense about the whole "unwitting linter" lol my bad :P to me just sounded like some english thing.

    and most people think of a spread when they think of a shotgun. That's why people (I assume others also, but mainly i'm just saying my opinion.) WANT a nerf shotgun is because they want a gun that fires spread. it would be way cool. Even if real shotguns can fire solid slugs, generally you think of it firing a spread. Also, all shotguns CAN fire spread shells right? i might be wrong, but even if they can fire solids, they can fire spreads as well, and there is yet to be a nerf gun that can fire spread. I want to see one that shoots 3 darts at once! It would be pretty epic!

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  12. a fly wheel doesnt have to be electric. it could be like one of those toy car that you pull back and it tightens a spring. a pump or a pull back action could do the same thing. in that case the switch would probably be a clip release or to clear the chamber

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  13. Hmm... guess that makes sense. could be a flywheel then. I really only think of them as being electric, especially for a blaster. Would kinda make sense if they were just vertical right in front of the clip for the praxis/vigilon/proton. but still the nitron has a different firing mechanism than the other vortex ones. but I do stand corrected, I guess the others could be flywheels :O

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