Airsoft Pistol Buying Guide: Gas, CO2, Electric or Spring?

Before you compare a single airsoft pistol, decide what job it has. A sidearm, your back-up gun, sits in its holster for most of the day and comes out when your rifle runs dry or a target is too close for it. Reliability and a holster that fits matter more than performance.

Many British CQB sites, where you play indoors at close range, run pistol-only games, and then the pistol is your primary, your main gun. You fire it all day, so you need more magazines and a grip that suits your hand.

Every airsoft pistol fires the same 6 mm plastic balls, called BBs. What differs is what pushes them out of the barrel, and that shapes the feel, the upkeep and the running costs.

A gas blowback pistol (GBB) stores its gas in the magazine: each shot uses a little of it to fire the BB and to throw the slide, the top half of the pistol, back, which loads the next round. That movement makes it feel alive in the hand.

Green gas is the standard fuel. As a rule of thumb a full-size magazine holds 20 to 30 BBs, and on a mild day one fill of gas outlasts them.

The choice is huge: Glock-style pistols, 1911s, Berettas and the Hi-Capa, a Tokyo Marui design with more spare and upgrade parts on the market than any other gas airsoft pistol.

A CO2 airsoft pistol runs on 12 g capsules. The pressure is far higher than that of green gas, so the slide snaps back harder and the pistol keeps working on days that make a green gas pistol sluggish.

That pressure has a price. Parts take more of a beating, and many CO2 pistols shoot harder than their green gas equivalents. Indoors that matters: every site sets a power limit, and a pistol over it stays in the bag.

An electric pistol (AEP) works like a small electric rifle (AEG): a battery and a motor fire the BB. There is no gas, so it shoots the same in January as in July, and several models offer full-auto. The trade-offs are a slide that stays still on most models and modest power.

A spring pistol is the simplest replica, as players call an airsoft gun: pull the slide back, fire one shot, repeat. In a game against other players it is outgunned by everything else. Much of what is sold as a cheap BB gun pistol is a brightly coloured (two-tone) spring pistol.

A metal slide feels and sounds right. It is also heavier, so it needs more gas for every shot and slows down sooner in the cold. A polymer (plastic) slide is lighter and moves faster.

A non-blowback pistol (NBB) keeps its slide still. You lose the kick and gain gas efficiency, low noise and very even shots, which is why snipers often carry one as a back-up.

With a single magazine you walk back to the safe zone, the area where you reload and rest, after every couple of dozen shots. As a rule of thumb a sidearm needs two or three magazines in total, a pistol you use as your main gun four to six.

Moulded holsters that clamp the pistol until you draw it are made for one model family, so check that your pistol is listed. And one thing for UK players: gas and CO2 cannot be shipped from our warehouse to the UK, so buy those from a British shop or at your site.

A used gas pistol is often a good buy. It is mechanically simple, and the wear sits in a few known places: seals, the nozzle and the magazines.

One thing to know as a UK buyer: most listings on Airsoft Bazaar come from the Netherlands and Belgium, so look at the listings in the UK first. A replica sent to you from the EU crosses a customs border, so expect import charges, and the UK rules for realistic replicas apply to it too.

UK law looks at what a replica looks like and at who buys it. A pistol in realistic colours is a realistic imitation firearm, a RIF. For players the usual way to buy one is a UKARA registration, which your site arranges once you play there regularly.

No registration yet? Then you buy a two-tone airsoft pistol, mostly in a bright colour. UKARA asks for three games at the same registered site over at least two months, and you have to be over 18 and live in the UK. Your site handles the registration.