KJ Works M700 Takedown Review - by Joseph

Disclaimer
Always use HFC134a for stock/pre-upgraded gas-powered airsoft guns. If you want to try out other types of gas, do it AT YOUR OWN RISK. Remember to play airsoft safe and always wear goggles.

Abstracts
Manufacturer: KJ Works, Taiwan
Product Name: KJ Works M700P Bolt Action Rifle Series, M700 Takedown Version
Power System: Single Gas Bolt Action

Length - 1160mm | 678mm (Front) + 527mm (Rear)
Weight: Around 3.4kg
Hop-up: Adjustable
Magazine Capacity: 11

Power - HFC134a, 10 shots mean value:

Stock: 271fps, 0.69J (0.2g) | 232fps, 0.63J (0.25g) | 224fps, 0.70J (0.3g)
Modified: 393fps, 1.44J (0.2g) | 368fps, 1.58J (0.25g) | 340fps, 1.61J (0.3g)

Accuracy - 10m indoor, 10 shots, modified:

SIIS 0.2g: Fail to measure, 2 shots missed the target
SIIS 0.25g: 45mm x 68mm
TM 0.3g: 20mm x 96mm

Units and Abbreviations
This section is added to prevent potential cultural differences.

1 meter = 3.28 feet = 1.094 yards
1 inch = 25.4mm
1kg = 2.205lbs
1USD = 7.8HKD (approx.)

"This gun" = KJ Works M700 Takedown Version
"KJ" = KJ Works
"TM" = Tokyo Marui
"TW" = Tanaka Works
"134a" = HFC134a Gas

Review
Before getting this gun, I've asked myself one question, "Is it exactly the one produced by Tanaka?" KJ's M700 series is actually a clone on Tanaka's products and marketed with a much lower price. Currently all Tanaka's sniper rifles included the pressure control system (PCS) for adjusting the amount of air flow and the fire power. KJ's M700 series adopted the last generation of TW's product, which are those without the PCS. Build materials and design are more or less the same, and, fortunately or unfortunately, BB magazines between KJ and TW are not interchangeable.

First Impression
Opening the box you will find the gun holding tightly inside the box by three pieces of foams.

Inside the box, you will find:
- Gun itself with 10 rounds magazine
- BB loading tube
- A Box of BB bullet, 100 rounds, weight unknown
- A hex driver
- User Manual with 1 supplementary sheet for takedown version
- Some target paper

Comparing by the packing itself, I'll appreciate KJ Works did apply more protection to this gun, three pieces of foam holding the gun tightly with the gun contained inside a plastic bag. In contrast to the Tanaka rifle that I have, Tanaka's one simply move freely inside the box.

While KJ Works is a Taiwanese company, the user manual (which is for KJ Works M700) that comes with this gun is written in Chinese, and the supplementary sheet especially attached for the takedown version is printed in both Chinese and English.

The magazine that ships with this gun is a short M700 style magazine that can takes up to 11 rounds of BB. Similar to other M700 produced by Tanaka, this gun also featured a magazine lock for safety purposes. One can only eject the magazine by pressing the release button and with the bolt opened. If the bolt is closed, even if you've pressed the magazine release button accidentally or intentionally, the magazine will still be locked inside the magazine well. This is a nice feature so that you will not lost your magazine in the game, however, with this feature you cannot practice "+1" by loading one BB into the chamber and refill the magazine again. There is a cocked indicator on the bolt and can be touched at night, and also the stock feels solid.

Other misc. things that comes with this gun included a loading tube, that sounds like an outdated design to me when compare to the BB loader that comes with my TM SG552. A bit disappointed with the free-of-charge BB that comes with it, as there are no markings on the box that is related to its weight, the only information that printed on box is only "6mm, 100 rounds".

Takedown System
The major reason for buying this gun is to break down your LONG sniper rifle into two for better concealment and portability. There is a locking lever on the stock in front of the magazine well, a rational person will try to unlock that lever and try to remove the front part of this gun. However, I've failed to "takedown" this rifle even if I have unlocked the lever, I've to go over the manual again and confirm if I'm using the correct method.

After checking the user manual, I've discovered that I'm simply too stupid. In order to remove the front part from the rear part (or you can say removing the rear part from the front part, the same), the manual wrote that you need to:
1 - Unlocking the takedown mechanism by pulling up the lever, and
2 - Rotating the front part by 90 degrees (anti-clockwise in case the muffle is pointing at yourself)
By following these steps and apply a bit more force to the front part to test out how much pressure it needs, I've finally and successfully broken this gun into two pieces.

That takedown system is a nice feature to show off your rifle and for putting it inside a smaller container. However, the attachments for the rifle sling are located in these two different parts - one on the rear part and one on the front part, which means even if this gun is being broken up into two pieces, the sling will still be linking two parts together. I believe this is a problem on the design of the real M700 rather than its replica.

Another interesting point is that this gun's hop-up adjustment are different from the typical M700 rifle, unlike TW's and other KJ's M700 rifles, the hop-up is not adjusted by the dial on top of the rail, it is adjusted by a small screw in the connection point between the front part and the rear part of the rifle. If the user would like to adjust/re-adjust the hop-up, one should "takedown" this gun and adjust and try again, which is a limitation of the takedown system.

Performance
Removing the magazine and looking at the bolt through the magazine well, one will see an orange thingy inside gas entering hole, it is the gas regulator that KJ intentionally inserted into it to reduce the air flow, so as to reduce its fire power.

So, the first test of power output will be conducted with the regulator and the second test will be done by pulling the orange thingy out in order to unleash its true power, and the third test will be on its accuracy.

Test 1 - Out-of-the-box

Test 2 - Modified by removing the regulator

Each test is conducted by using three different types of BB in different weight. Consistency is one of the most concerning element on choosing a sniper rifle as it affected the accuracy a lot, and this gun, as it is a gas-powered sniper rifle, the gun suffer from magazine and bolt cooling on each shot.

As we can see from test 1, the power of the gun continuously reduces on each shot. This problem is reduced with the modification by removing the regulator; its fire power doubled (measuring the J) and achieved a significantly higher consistency (much lower standard deviation). By comparing the difference between test 1 and test 2, it is suggested to remove the regulator for serious sniping because of higher fire power as well as consistency.

Test 3 is conducted by placing a target and test out its grouping on a range of 10m. The test is conducted with the gas regulator removed, indoor, no wind. As there are no iron sights on this gun, a Tasco red-dot scope is installed for more accurate shooting.

Using SIIS 0.2g BB, I cannot tell the grouping as there are only 8 out of 10 hitting the target. The grouping measured a width of 45mm, but as there are 2 BB going too high and fail to produce a hole on the paper, the height of the group failed to be measured.

Using SIIS 0.25g BB, all BBs hit the target and produced a grouping of 45mm x 68mm. The width of the group is the same as using 0.2g BB, but the heavier BBs do helps on making the hop-up more consistent, reflected by the height of the grouping from unknown to 68mm.

TM claims that their new 0.3g BBs are produced by the same manufacturing process of producing ball bearings, and I assume that the quality of TM 0.3g BB is higher than SIIS 0.25g BB. Something weird about this shooting pattern, the grouping measured 20mm x 96mm. The reduction on the width of the grouping can be explained by using higher quality as well as heavier BB, however, the height of the grouping increased from 68mm to 96mm when using TM 0.3g BB. I believe this increase can be explained by the lack of consistency on the nature of gas-powered rifle, as well as the different design of the hop-up on this gun in contrast to other M700 rifles.

Others
Like other M700 rifles, this gun included a rail on top for mounting a scope. This design, together with the bolt-handle of this gun, produced an inconvenient on cocking when having the scope mounted; it is suggested to have a higher mount to mount the scope onto this rifle.

Conclusion
Although this gun is a replica to TW's M700 takedown version, its competitive pricing together with its quality and fire power, it has a very high value to money. With simple modification of removing the gas regulator, this gun is surely a nice rifle for those who would like to pay less but wanted to try out the position of sniper.