This past weekend we had the opportunity to take the EXTAR EXP out to the range, and we ran a little over 200 rounds through it. I will admit at first I was a little leery about the claims that you could fire it one handed and not have a lot of kick. For as light as the gun is (2.98 pounds w/o magazine) it just seems like it would have a great amount of recoil.
After the first shot I was honestly blown away at how well this extremely light gun handled the recoil. Instead of kicking the muzzle up and making it feel unmanageable, the muzzle break forces the recoil down. Shooting one handed is surprisingly easy, and at 25 yards it was pretty easy to hit an 8" steel plate using the ghost ring sights.
When holding it like you would a Glock or any other semi auto handgun it is extremely easy to keep complete control of the gun. The recoil is light, which actually makes it enjoyable to shoot and I found it really easy to just blow through the 40 round PMag. Everyone else who had the chance to shoot it just had a smile on their face when they were done.
The muzzle break has a very loud report to it, but it's not like some of the other compensators out there that make your sinuses hurt. One of the other side effects is that it throws a huge fireball with nearly every shot you take, which looks awesome out on the range but would play havoc on your eyes if you shot it at night.
The Handguard does get hot (really hot) when you do rapid fire, and using gloves is probably a good idea. The bar above the Handguard goes into the gas block so it also gets hot, so you have to make sure you don't grab it with bare hands (I made that mistake).
Out of all the rounds we put through the gun there was only one issue that we ran into, which was a double feed. After it was cleared the gun continued to run like a champ. We used American Eagle XM193 and XM855, TulAmmo, Armscor, Geco, and Monarch during our shooting, and the EXP ate it all.
The one issue that I do have with it though is that there is not a brass deflector on the upper. After 100 rounds or so you start to see where the brass had been beating up the side while it's being ejected. While this isn't a big deal since it is polymer and will be easy to "polish" out, having a brass deflector would probably extend how long the upper looks nice. However I just consider them marks that show it's been put to good use.
One other thing that I would like to see is a sling adapter for it, which I have been told should be released sometime in the near future.
Even though I had my doubts when I first picked it up, I started to really enjoy shooting it. I look forward to running hundreds if not a few thousand rounds through it and see just how well this gun holds up.
Make sure to check back for updates as we get more time on the range with the gun.
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