Chinese MF14 Gas Mask review

Hello, so this is going to be a video on the Chinese MF14 gas mask or respirator. Now this is one a lot of people asked me could I review because these are very easy to get on Aliexpress now for not very much money, about 20 to 30 dollars or pounds plus shipping. And what's interesting with these when I was looking them up, the older version of this mask was ghost threaded, the newer ones are 40mm Stannag NATO threaded, so you won't have any issues putting any of the sort of common filters on them. Now apparently the easy way to tell that is if you look at the sort of voice diaphragm XL valve cover, if it looks like that with like the great style design on it, then that's the Stannag version. If it's got like a round sort of looking cover on it, so a circular sort of design, that's the ghost one. Apparently there's a more modern version than this one, but as this was a brand new one, you know, dated very recently, that's probably not very common. So anyway, the one I ordered came with a sealed filter, I've opened it, one of these sort of Chinese generic sort of multi-function filters. So screw that one in, and it's got a little neck strap on it which is quite nice, I always like masks that have this just so when you're not actually wearing it you can hang it around your neck. Now supposedly this is mostly intended for industrial use in China, but apparently because it's so mass-produced and of a decent quality, it's ended up in quite a few places. So as well as being exported from China to several armies and like civil defense forces, you know, it's exported for industry and like commercial use like how I bought it, but apparently even like some divisions of the Chinese army and like civil defense type troops and whatever have it as well. So it's basically one of those masks that because it's good enough it's ended up being adopted for lots of things, even if it's not the official mask for lots of purposes. So there's a five-point head harness and the rubber's relatively thick, so it's that sort of standard silicone-y material lots of these are made from, but it's fairly thick so it's not a thin one. So five-point head harness, this reminds me a lot of the pewter mask except it's not crap, so if you see my review of probably the worst gas mask I've ever reviewed, this mask is basically that if it was made to a good standard. So rather than having very flimsy rubber it's made from good sturdy rubber, you know the straps don't ping off because they're actually you know made using a proper friction kind of system, so if you took the pewter mask and actually made it good this is what you'd get. So if I put it on then tighten up all the straps, there we go. So I'm not sure if there's meant to be a proper little chin shelf on this, but my chin's gone fully in and that feels quite comfortable. Yeah this is one of those masks that in theory has like a little chin shelf but you don't really have to use it or make a good seal regardless. So if I wasn't using a chin shelf I'd probably loosen that strap a little bit and pull this harness a bit further down. Yeah it's not certainly not uncomfortable, like I said it's quite basic for a panoramic mask, at least it's got like a simple voice diaphragm mechanism in it so you can hopefully hear it. This is certainly good for the cheap price, you know I did try it with my Riot helmet and because the straps stick out quite a lot this isn't really going to work with certain helmets so bear that in mind. But you know because the bonkiness of the straps and the harness certain white helmets, if they're tight-fitting helmets, won't work with this mask even if you know they'd actually fit around the shape of the mask that way they might not work because of these bits sticking out there on the top. Certainly doesn't fog up so that's good, the aural nasal cup's quite good. As said this seems to be like you know they've got a good ground between the rubber being flexible enough but not you know being so um sort of soft or whatever it droops out the way. So yeah this certainly isn't an uncomfortable mask like I said um you can probably aim rifles a bit fine because that's there so you could you know cheek weld. Again no idea how strongly rated the plastic visor is but I imagine it's not too bad you know because most modern mask plastics aren't you know even the cheaper ones aren't anything too brittle. So yeah there's not a lot to say about this obviously if you bought the modern one it's in 14mm NATO not dust so you'd have no issue getting filters for it and it's you know actually new. So yeah it seems quite good for it is again you know lots of masks like these don't have massive history events you know behind them so there's not loads you can talk about in that regard. But in terms of this is cheap and you can probably buy it in most places in the world. The thing I do like about with the AliExpress type masks is that you know when I get people who watch my videos sometimes from poorer countries say in Latin America or bits of Africa or Asia you know if they can get stuff shipped from AliExpress it's often affordable on a lower wage whereas you know lots of these people can't afford some of the stupidly priced surplus things we have say in the US and the UK and bits of Western Europe. So you know masks like this are good to review for people who either have a very limited budget in the western countries or you know the global south whatever you want to call it you know just don't have that sort of money available to buy top of the range stuff. So yeah this mask if you put you know a really good top tier filter on it I imagine would be completely serviceable for lots of things. Like I said I was actually quite impressed how good the voice diaphragm is on this where I can actually see the bars on the camera for how well the mic's picking up because even if I stand back here talk at a decent volume it seems like you know the camera is picking it up fine if it's just directional mic. So that's good there's a little bit of a weird sort of echoey kind of thing after I talk in the mask but that's not too distracting. But yeah this mf14 I probably recommend it because you know I can't see any faults with it and if you can get this for 20 to 30 dollars brand new with a filter issue and then you know just buy a better filter you know anywhere this is pretty damn good in all honesty. Like I said a lot of the Chinese masks now are getting to the stage where even the cheaper ones are good you know there's still a couple of models I'd avoid like the plague that you know really aren't fit for purpose but they seem to be dying out in the sense that you know if the sensible priced export masks like these are cheap enough you know the companies are just going to fold that are making the stuff that's so they don't protect anybody because you know if you're selling something that doesn't work for five dollars and then for seven dollars somebody's selling something perfectly serviceable it's going to be obvious why they're going to die out. So that's good I think also covid has helped quite a bit with the Chinese export market where it seems like obviously lots of the masks have to meet a better regulatory standard of actually working as a respirator. So there you go so the E-MF14 yeah I quite like it there's not much vision distortion looking like left and right with the panoramic lens it's obviously not a top tier panoramic lens but it's not bad. So yeah the E-MF14 seems quite good so I said five point head harness let's get all that undone again and yeah as I said I'll show you on the camera what it looks like if you're looking out from it but you know it's like I said a good sort of panoramic lens you can see the voice diaphragm bit with the exhale valve is there oh look one of the nose bits has fallen off so that's not great although that's just literally held in by friction by the look of it so that has just popped off one of the nasal bits so I'll push that back in later on the one on the other side's fine but yeah it's just obviously come off due to it not being pushed in very tight but the mask would still work even without that there that's just on the inner oral nasal cup but yeah so other than that falling off just now the mask seems absolutely fine so as I said repeating my points this I can't see a problem with you getting this mask if you know you don't want to spend the budget on something better like I said for something that is a 20 to 30 dollar mask this seems pretty good especially now it's the modern ones aren't GOST they're NATO threaded you know RD40 STANAG the fact that you know you can buy one and in pretty much any decent country on the surplus market or from industrial stores by 40 millimetre ABEC filters you know or still sealed sort of good condition military surplus filters that you know are going out of date or only just gone out of date and still sealed this would be quite a good mask so yeah as I said there's not loads more I can say about it there's not a really long interesting history behind this thing it's just an all right mask that you can buy brand new which is always good you know because it's better that you can have ones at the lower price points that work rather than having to rely on surplus stuff that is very hit and miss depending on what the condition it's been stored in and everything else and just to show you I've reattached those basically it's one of those ones with a little lip you have to sandwich the rubber around it so the oral nasal cup just literally pulls out of the mask and you can obviously push it back on by wrapping this bit around that bottom bit of the mask there but while it's off let's just quickly put on again and see how bad it is about the oral nasal cup because other than fogging up it shouldn't actually cause many issues so so now that when I pressure check that then that smacked me in the nose that was a bit painful the bit of hard plastic there but yeah other than the fact this is obviously going to fog up easier does give you a very big field of view about that oral nasal cup there but yeah I'm just going to obviously pop that back in for comfort reasons and obviously anti-fogging but yeah that just literally the oral nasal cup attaches in the rim sort of around the voice diaphragm type structure there it's just got a little plastic rim there so you just sort of stretch it over and then it fits between the two bits of plastic