Let me begin by saying that I had already seen all the reviews and heard the horror stories about this blaster... but I'm a completionist at heart. I figured "how bad could it be?"... well... umm... it's bad. Long-story short: the N-Strike Elite MEGA Centurion is a train wreck. Outside of looking cool and having a nice Bi-Pod, reading this review is more worth your time than actually going to the store to see if they have one.
Ranges are less consistent than Lindsay Lohan's drug testing results. 90-100 ft tests were successful about 1 out of every 6 darts in the clip. The rest either veered sharply left, right, or vertical... or they flopped out or worse. Jammed.
Thankfully, I'm a master of turning broken Nerf blasters into kick-ass Laser Tag rifles. It's not often that something so NEW is already broken, but I've already got plans to drop some LTAR internals in this guy, put a long-range lens on there, and make this blaster finally perform as good as it looks.
Video Review is after the jump!
Jeeze, I haven't had a single problem with the gun thus far but I suppose I'm just lucky I guess..
ReplyDeleteI hope your luck lasts! I was alright with the inaccuracy and such until it started stripping my darts. I was planning to improve the blaster, but now it's in repair mode.
DeleteThanks, Mike. I picked one up last night (locally, so I could return it if and when it followed suit from other reports). 6 darts through it while inside, and they were dead accurate, extremely level across the house, and the priming and recoil were smooth (and awesome feeling). Took it outside, and on the 6th dart ... no go. The priming handle refuses to go more than halfway forward. I pulled at the end of the dart through the jam door until I got it out of the breech far enough to slide it forward and then up and out, so no dart damage. But it's jammed so badly that nothing short of a deconstruction could hope to clear it, and I'm sure it would happen again in short order.
DeleteGoing back to the store. Might get a replacement to keep in the box as a collector's item in case Hasbro decides to pull the blaster completely, but probably just going to get a refund.
Thank You Mr.Bazookafied, I was about getting one :)
ReplyDeleteNow I'm not.
Thanks for the review Bazookafied, it seems that the rifle lineup of Nerf has steadily been decreasing in quality after the Longshot's release. Hoping that the Zombistrike Winchester-styled rifle turns out to be better!
ReplyDeleteLots of lemons out there! I'm lucky to have one that works. And by works I mean it cause jams and shred darts. Unfortunately, it's still very inaccurate/inconsistent.
ReplyDeleteI get 70 feet consistently and straight after poking out the AR. Every so often, the plunger doesn't catch at the beginning and I have to ram the thing back into it's starting position because of a lock. No idea if it's because I put it back together wrong or just flaky behavior.
ReplyDeleteUpdate: The catch is designed to open halfway through the pull because of the way the plunger works. If you don't pull the trigger at the right speed, the recoil will sometimes cause the plunger to hit the catch and stop on the on the wrong side. If the plunger isn't at the right position before you prime, then the lock that prevents partial primes will engage, and force it into a hard jam.
DeleteYou can prevent this by pushing the priming handle all the way forward after a shot. If it's stuck, you can also fix this by ramming the priming handle forward very hard to push past the lock.
Keep in mind that there will be a dart in the barrel at this point, and if you double load, you'll cause an even worse jam.
Also, 10 packs are 6.99 at Target, 2.00 off MSRP.
The 10 dart packs also tell about more mega blasters coming next fall... Not sure whether to be excited or not.
DeleteI hate to say it, but I am kind of glad that these aren't as great as everyone thought they were going to be. I always viewed the centurion as a challenge to the modding community from hasbro. It probably wasn't but it seemed like they were saying, "beat these ranges NIC" due to the fact it came out of the blue.
ReplyDeleteShould be a cool laser tag gun though, can't wait to see how that project turns out!
These problems just scream at me to get one and modify it to be an air blaster... Long, semi-tight barrel, VERY long prime and a nice, big shell to jam the stuff needed into.
ReplyDeleteHave to agree, unless your 8 & don't know any better this blaster sucks. Getting it to use as the shell for your own blaster design is the only way this thing is worth putting money down on one. Funny thing is I thought that the hailfire was nerf's Spruce Goose but nope looks like the centurion is taking that crown.
Delete"Ranges are less consistent than Lindsay Lohan's drug testing results" BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
ReplyDeleteMUAHAHAHAHHA
DeleteI'm really not interested in this blaster. Never have been. From the get go the ranges seemed too good to be true and coupled with the fact that the European version will be limited to a max of 80', blows this blaster's USP straight out the window.
ReplyDeleteFor us it's just going to be a really expencive Elite blaster with super expencive ammo.
To offer a dissenting opinion on this blaster, I picked one up and haven't run into these same problems. I went through all six darts without incident. Ranges were in fact inconsistent (and I expected this), but accuracy seemed on target. But before I picked it up I took your post, Zook, as a word of warning and decided to work with the blaster carefully; made sure that each prime was smooth and complete and each dart was uniformly loaded in the magazine and chamber before firing.
ReplyDeleteBut I admittedly wanted this blaster as more of a collection/target practice piece, not a war piece. I would make the assumption that the issues around the community are from an incomplete prime, but I certainly don't present that as an accusal of incompetence; the bolt draw is so unreasonably long and the darts so unreasonably fragile that errors no matter how small, will be inevitable and will be fatal to the blaster's operation.
I think it's cool, but admittedly my expectations and use for the piece were never meant to be all that demanding. Like you said, it's a great looking blaster, but it's use in battle is extremely limited.
Tip: as to not get the darts shredded, slam QUICKLY and VERY HARD the priming system, but if you do it slow again, it will shred again and jam, you should post any results of this.
ReplyDeleteYou were wrong. It's a $50 dollar bipod!
ReplyDeletePicked one up today, have had no problems with it other than the accuracy... In fact, putting the bipod on the scope rail and opening the legs to use as a sight presents a pretty good estimate of where your darts will end up at any range over short-mid, AKA damn near everywhere.
ReplyDeleteHey, I bought a Centurion today, and wouldn't you know it: the priming handle stuck halfway after about seven shots!
ReplyDeleteYeah, so I took it apart, which was arduous for me as a newbie with a particularly frustrating blaster, and I removed the offending lock. It's just above the slot which accepts magazines. It's just a little orange piece which doesn't seem to do any harm just to remove; I guess that's a lock by definition, huh? I genuinely don't know.
Anyway, I wanted to tell somebody that this horrible design flaw is rectifiable at home. I'd like to tell Amazon customers since the problem seems epidemic for them, but I have no account there.
I dread the time when my Centurion starts shredding darts, but honestly I wanted it mainly as a relatively cheap prop. I'm fine using something else for target shooting or whatever.
Anyway, I'm talking too much. I bookmarked your blog. It's very nice. Cheers!
Thanks for the info! That's great news on an easy fix. While it fixes the blaster, the darts have tended to be problematic too. How's your accuracy been with this?
DeleteSorry for the late reply! Until yesterday and today I'd only fired it indoors at relatively short ranges. Testing it outdoors yesterday, accuracy was terrible.
ReplyDeleteI tried using small strips of electrical tape over the holes on the mega darts, and I want to tentatively say that helps, but I've only fired it a few times with taped darts. One of them got stuck and bent, btw, and won't fire any longer. I guess this might be a known issue with taping dart holes, but I'm just saying.
Honestly, I've mostly fired my blasters indoors, and I've had severe range problems with them outdoors: I'm getting what I guess are grey trigger ranges with orange triggers. Firing flat, I'm getting like 30 - 40 feet, even with the Centurion, though untaped darts were getting maybe 10-20 more feet. So I have no idea if the tape really fixes the mega darts. If you know why my orange triggers are falling way short, please advise!
Oh, I also tried stuffing elite darts into mega darts and that was a failure. They either flop out or, if taped in securely, don't leave the barrel.
Lastly, the Centurion will still want to soft jam(?) fairly often even if you take the lock out, but I tried Oracle.Unity's advice regarding priming, and it seems to have been effective for me.
I'm not sure if my Centurion has the same problems as everyone else's, though; I think some might be outright defective out of the box, with the internals digging into darts. Mine just failed to enclose darts and wanted to fire them into each other. (Rolling eyes here.)
UPDATE:
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you're still interested in this, but the mega dart heads DO seem to cause most/all of the inaccuracy. I think they're also responsible for the occasional flukish long range, though. So Hasbro basically granted sniper lovers' wish in an evil genie kind of way.
I did five trials with a 3 taped, 3 untaped magazine and my general observation was that the taped tended not to swerve but ranges were still inconsistent. I did manage to tape mega+elite combos and fire them successfully, but I honestly didn't see much difference. That was this morning.
Later today I replaced the mega dart heads with felt+washer combos. With two trials on three modded darts I got very little spread. In the first trial, darts touched ground at about 35 ft near the same spot: on the second, about 40 ft. I have not tried aiming at an actual object yet. This sounds kind of bad still, but bear in mind that it still has more range and accuracy than my stock EAT :/
The felt was 3/4 inch Everbilt heavy duty felt pads, SKU 153 155. The washers were 1/4 inch Crown Bolt, about 1/2 inch total diameter, item number 19821. I think they may have been a bit too heavy. I could not find 3/4 inch foam backer locally; I just cut most of the dart head off and filled the cavity with hot glue.
I really am sorry I didn't respond sooner, but I would've only been able to say "I'm going to do SCIENCE."
Sigh... to think that I actually waited so eagerly for it to reach the shore here...
ReplyDeleteUnlike the commercial or in the perfect shot videos the centurion works fine on them.
ReplyDeleteMaybe hasbro will recall this gun so the centurion's bolt bug is fixed and no longer shred darts anymore.
ReplyDeletewas thinking about buying seems like its shit
ReplyDeletemine jams in the priming processes when it is going ford and i have to slam it as hard as i can to fix it
ReplyDeleteHi. Thought i would chime in. Bought my centurion. Jammed so bad the bolt was split damn near in half. My friends had a faulty mag and woudlnt consistantly raise dartsvto the top position. We both got new ones. We have used them in a few wars now and they are still functioning. I just want to stress how consistantly perfectly you have to fire this blaster. Always make sure your pull starts at the full forward position. Steady pull all the way back to its fullest and then return to the front end the same way. Make sure you dont squish your darts at all when you load them. Also i use elite darts inside of my megas when im not using them, it helps to maintain their shape. Well i hope this helps
ReplyDeletehello bro, nice reviews , thanks ! . i think i would like to this centurion , will you recommended me to get this one ? its looks pretty cool and interested. hope you reply as soon as possible . thanks again ! :)
ReplyDeleteIt should have been very obvious that I do not recommend the Centurion to people. My Centurion destroyed 5 of it's 6 darts, had inconsistent ranges, and eventually broke before I could even make a video review.
DeleteIt looks cool, but it is a poor design. If you really want a MEGA dart blaster, get the Magnus.
thanks ! :)
DeleteThe jam fix is soooo easy, in fact its people using the gun wrong. When you pull the bolt back and it gets stuck its because you didn't prime the gun all the way. Don't force the bolt forward - this causes damage. Pull back - ALL THE WAY BACK and it works. To avoid this (and it works EVERY TIME - haven't had a jam since in 3 months), just make sure you pull all the way down. Even if it feels like you do, you might not be. I just jam it back hard, the release can even be free (just let it go) or push it forward. It won't jam. Promise.
ReplyDeleteI find that I have been doing the exact same thing as you, with the exact same results . However, I would like to say that the bipod is quite useless. It keeps falling off. The accuracy is still awful.
Delete