Beretta ARX100 (ARX160) + TA31 ACOG (ACSS Aurora) to 500yds: Practical Accuracy

This episode was brought to you by Slate Black Industries. For M-LOK grips and accessories, visit slateblackindustries.com Impact. Neutralize. All right, 200. Impact. All right, 250. Impact. All right, on at 300. Impact. Left half. That one sailed a bit. I think that came over in over the top. Impact. All right, 350. So now I'm aiming to on the right half of the plate. So 350 yards. I was using a 350 meters and I think I was pushing it a little too high on the reticle. This is a meter reticle. Oh, okay. So that was on me. So we're on 350? 350. I could follow the trace right in there, but I didn't see any movement. Impact for sure that time. I'm pretty sure that first one was a hit. If it wasn't, Henry, it was right off the right edge. You want to just do another one for safety's sake? Yeah, go ahead. Send one more. I think you're off the right. Oh, okay. That's strange. All right, so I was aiming on the right half of the plate. I'll aim towards the middle of the plate then. Impact. There's no movement. That didn't move at all. You didn't hear the audible return? I heard it was a loud clink. Yeah, if you didn't hear that, you wouldn't have known that it was an impact. Now here's the debate on some of these things. The Beretta ARX was made in 2004, around right after 97 when the Germans adopted the Bundeswehr. The lightness of a rifle was very much in play for developing these things. I like it a lot for how light it is, but it does have a pencil barrel and some people don't prefer that. I actually don't mind the pencil barrel myself. All right, 400. All right, so that last one I aimed at the middle. So windage, I aimed at the middle and it seemed to hit. So shall I do that? Yeah, give it a go. It feels like we've got the wind shifting from our six o'clock to our four o'clock and back and forth. Looked like that one was off the right side. Okay, I'll aim on the left edge. Impact. One more. That was high over the bar. Impact. The trigger on this is quite heavy. Remember the G36? It's somewhere between the G36's trigger and the AUG's trigger on this one. It's a heavy polymer feeling. It feels like a glass trigger. Oh, gross. All right, 450. I'm going to use a 400 meter hash. Yeah, should be good. And I'm going to hold center just a little bit to the left to see where it lands, okay? All right. Dead on. Okay. That looked like it might have been off the right side a touch high. Yeah, definitely high on those last two shots. That one was up at the bar. Good windage though. Okay. Impact. Okay. That's strange. I was using the 400 meter and I was holding at the base of it. Well, I mean, your first shot was a dead on center hit. I'm at the 500. Impact. Nice. Good finish there at the end. Yeah. So I think something I have to demonstrate right here in the field, the ambidextrous capabilities of this. So the AUG, you could change things in the field, kind of. The FAL, you could change things in the field. This is truly a tool-less switch between left and right. So I'll show you later on how the charging handle can change. But with a bullet on the back, there's a hole. Click that hole right there. And then our next shots. Watch this. Do you see that? Brass to the left. Yeah. Kind of cool, huh? Yeah. And then if I take a projectile out again and I click it on this end. Watch this. Brass to the right. Nice. Pretty cool system. Nice. All right. Let's head over to the debrief. Yep. We'll see you guys over there. All right. So it's an easy-to-maintain rifle. It's a lightweight rifle. I think it's cool. I mean, it uses 90s to mid-2000s design and manufacturing techniques to make. You could see that on the design end, it was not cheap for Beretta to design. Right. Honestly, I just wish the trigger was not so stiff. Yeah, I mean, it seemed it was okay. Like we shot, the run was fine. One of the things that we talked about on the run was the pencil barrel. And whether or not that would come into play shooting the number of rounds we did, which was what? 30, sub-30? I think it didn't go to 30. Right. Sub-30 rounds, right? So, you know, that's probably not enough rounds to get the barrel hot enough to really see any sort of stringing to begin with. Yeah, but still, I didn't see any degradation in accuracy. No, no. That's what I'm saying. I wouldn't expect it to have degraded even with the pencil barrel, quote-unquote, in that few of rounds. But honestly, though, the thing that really impressed me was how I screwed around with it and pulled the barrel out before the run. And then it was fine anyways, right? Yes, it just retained zero. So let's talk a little bit about the optic selection. I mean, this is the ACOG, and it's the one with the ACS Aurora reticle. Yeah. I mean, it's made for 5.56, so it's quite easy for me to predict where they land. Yeah. And one of the things that you and I were talking about was whether or not we trued the optic or not, just to go into a little bit more depth for some of the viewers on that. Normally, when you are zeroing a rifle with any sort of a BDC or any sort of a reticle in it, like the ACSS, which has gradiated distance markers, after you take the 100-yard zero, generally, the best practice is to take that rifle and shoot it at 300 or 400 yards and confirm... With the crosshair setting. Correct. Right, correct, correct. So using the appropriate hash mark or designation and evaluate whether or not the elevation, not the windage, because wind is obviously going to be an environmental factor, but whether or not the elevation is hitting where that hash mark says it should be hitting, and then making any fine-tuned adjustments, truing the zero at that distance. And the reason behind that is because when you're shooting a group up close, you can get what appears to be a good zero, but is actually off by a half an inch or a third of an inch, which, although that sounds very insignificant, as you press that out to distance, it begins to stack. I think the one issue that we do see stateside, though, I would wager to say 99.9% or 95% plus people typically shoot at a 100-yard range, don't have access to anything greater than a 100-yard range. Yeah, I agree. And so truing an optic is actually not easy. Agreed, yeah, you definitely have to have access to the facility. However, if you are unable to true the optic, it took me, what, maybe one or two misses and I was on target? Yep. So it's not that far off, even if you can't... Oh, correct, absolutely, absolutely, yep. What do you think about it just on your first handling? So first handling. So I would say it is light. With it having the reduced length handguard is immediately something that I'm not a fan of because I like to take a grip that's further out on the gun. Mid-2000s. Right, right. It's a very cool-looking gun. It's a very futuristic, modern-looking gun. Yeah, right? It does, it carries with it that persona. Again, it falls into what appears to be the space-age-looking firearms. Yeah, the... I mean, FN had the FS2000, they had the SCAR, H&K had the G36, the Beretta, Italians had the ARX. Right. I always feel like the ARX is one of those that's the underdog. People don't really look at it very often. As far as all those rifles, I think the Beretta ARX is the best on ambidextrous capabilities. The entire rifle can be disassembled and then reassembled to work on the other side with zero tools outside of the cartridge itself. Well, it certainly makes it much more cross-user serviceable. Whether or not cross-user serviceability is relevant for you is a different thing altogether, but it certainly does position itself in such a way where its advantage is in that area. Can I handle this real quick? I can SBR this without any tools, actually. Yes, because now I pull the bolts back. Right here, this is the barrel release. The entire barrel assembly comes out, and I've taken that off after zeroing it. It holds zero. Alright, so definitely in terms of user serviceability and individual setup being ideal for a specific user, this rifle does it better than pretty much all of the other ones out there in terms of just how quickly and easily you can do it all tool-less. The tactical tuna performed. Yeah, I mean, it was a good run. Yeah. It was a good run for sure. I would depend my life on something like this. It would not be my first choice. However, these actually sell, I mean, for a rifle that was designed in the same, the SCAR-16 pedigree, it is significantly cheaper than something like the SCAR-16. Right, or the, I mean, the FS2000s are super expensive, right? Aren't those like several thousand dollars? No, I think it was like $2,000, $1,700, $2,000, which this is half that price. Yeah, yeah. I would also, I would depend my life on this over an FS2000. It's a lightweight, non-AR type rifle with awesome ambidextrous capabilities. The thing is though, for the civilian market, I mean, how often are you going to buy something based on its ambidextrous, ambidextrability? Yeah, probably not. Never. Yeah, probably not. I mean, why are you going to use the left or right hand ejection option? Yeah, I mean, I would say that it would, obviously, it's valuable for left-handed shooters. For a military, well, to accommodate for left-handed shooters. Even for a civilian shooter, if I say that I want a rifle that's going to eject left side as opposed to right side, like I can know that this one will allow me to do either. For a bullpup especially, but for a... Yeah, it's not as relevant, I agree with you, yes. It's cool. It absolutely is phenomenal how they were able to engineer it. But whether or not there is relevancy to all of the engineering marvels is up to the end user. So to me as an enthusiast, I like it. I think it's cool. I think it's got a lot of engineering cool points. It's very lightweight. Barrel detaches and quick reattaches with no loss of zero. All of that just makes me tingle as an enthusiast. Right. But as a practical shooter, does this serve me better than a budget AR? I don't know. That's a question you have to ask yourself. So I think it's cool as an enthusiast. It's obviously a very well used and liked military rifle that the Italian army uses. Yeah. It's seen warfare in Afghanistan. But is it for you? Give it a go if you can. I think it's a cool rifle. I think it's a cool secondary collection rifle in my opinion. It's a good way to put it. Yeah. So cool. See you in the next one. on the internet. On which rifle performs better on the practical accuracy course. We maintain this newsletter to be majority gun content. With nine whole reviews updates per every email. With less than 33% marketing content. Subscribe today on slateblackindustries.com