LONG time overdue review of the Precision Underground recon mini bag with the arca base plate. I originally wanted to get about a month of practice with it and a few solid matches before I wrote out a review so because that took longer than I anticipated it's longtime overdue. Without any delay though I'll get this review rolling and my thoughts of it after putting about 1k rounds down range in practice and matches with it.
Aesthetics:
some of you may roll past this but to me I want my stuff to look clean and well made, if I'm going to hang it off something I have several thousands of dollars in it don't want it to look like pounded dog shit.
I don't think I need to go into a ton of details for this part but it looks good. Some as that and you can tell when you look at it and handle it that every part of it down to the lever and finish on the arca base plate it was fit and finished to look good as well as function.
My singular observation, and it is singular as there's nothing else I could nitpick at thus far is after shooting a match where it rained from when we showed up at 8am to when we packed up and went home at 5pm is there's one little piece (looks like the threading on a bolt) that got some rusty color to it from the moisture. Now, this likely is my fault because after the match I just wanted to get the hell out of there and get dry and warm so I lightly wiped off the bag and my gear and then threw it in the back of the truck and admittedly it was still moist in my humid truck come Monday. So this isn't necessarily a knock against Precision Underground but in transparency it's there and you have context why so you may draw your own conclusions as how that affects the aesthetics and durability rating.
For me I give the aesthetic a 9.5/10. Even though its probably because I'm an idiot I'd like it to be a bit more rust resistant for the price. And I do know I could probably just take it apart, clean it, and it'll be good as new but for the purpose of testing the bag and reviewing it I wanted to just leave it and run and and see how it did.
Update: Precision Underground, as you can see below, as soon as he saw my rust observation on that one little part he quickly put an order in to fix this small detail. It's so minor it didnt bother me but it speaks volumes for a business to listen to and iimmediately act to fix it. Really great reflection on how you do business and I'll buy products from you guys forever now. Keep up the good work
How's it performe:
The part that really matters here, and while it looks damn good I think we'd all agree we want it to work too.
The first 500 or so trigger pulls where dry fire practice and coming from a game changer and fortune cookie I honestly didnt think it would be more stable, really just a faster alternative for many stages.
In dry fire practice in my basement off different diameter bars and different widths boards it felt very stable right off the bat. There's not really a big learning curve here and I'd venture to guess it's not meant to be complicated. Complicated isn't fast, many guys have complicated crap and while they may be able to run it smooth I sure as hell can't so I appreciate how nothing is over complicated here.
At my first match I'd only shot about 40 rounds of practice with it, all the rest where dryfire in my basement. This was the rainy match so I wasn't super excited to say the least. I'd also never shot here before and it was slick and sloppy as hell, trees covering some targets and honestly this range was young and obviously had some growing pains to work out. Not exactly perfect and sunny to test out a new piece of equipment. First stage I looked at the target and my reticle and realized my wobble zone was nearly nil so I easily finished the stage without problems. That was essentially the theme of the day, if i could see it through the fog i could hit it. Last stage of the day was 2 shots from 4 positions which shouldn't be hard but you have to crawl through branches and brush to set your gun up so most everyone timed out or rushed it and dropped easy points. I ended up cleaning it with 2 seconds left and there's 0% change that would have happened if I used another bag because the speed here was the real winning feature. I ended up placing like 10th which was my best finish thus far. My accuracy of hit targets vs rounds fired was 81% so if I could see it I usually hit it.
My next match my scope went down and I ended up finishing middle of the pack. Not the bags fault and I was steady on target to watch the bullet miss far left all day.
I'll break it down into three parts here so you can get why this is such a good piece of gear.
1) the bag: the bag its self is decent. I think I'd probably pick something bigger up than this sized bag but as the name implies it's not meant to be a huge pillow, it's a mini. The fill though I really like. It separates and unlocks while in your hand, maybe flows is a better word here but anyhow it's very fluid and when you put it down it conform and locks on pretty well. So for its size it provides a solid foundation. Now while it's a very decent bag up front it's the absolute best rear bag I've ever used. Since it flows and locks so easily you can make easy adjustments to the bag and effortlessly hold it on target. As a front bag I'd give it a 7/10 and as a rear bag it's a 10/10 all day every day on chassis and stocks.
2) the plate: not a ton to go into here. Mainly it needs to do 3 things which are be well put together so nothing moves or wiggles where parts interface, it needs to clamp to your arca rail easily and be secure, and the plate needs to have zero flex or bounce. It does all of that. Its simple and like I said not a ton to go into here.
3) the bag and plate as a system: here's where it goes from a nice plate and a nice bag to a system that works very well. I will go into a bit of detail here because I think there's a few specific reasons why this works so well.
With the bag conforming easily and "locking" itself into the barricade and then the plate locking all of that into your rifle you're immediately as steady as you'd ever need to be. Now since the plate is expanding your footprint so much it's pretty obvious how much more stable that's going to make you and I can say it makes a huge difference. Now where this starts to shine is as you can see in a few pics above that plate can slide a little bit so what you can do here when you're locked in and steady already is then press your gun forward slightly and you'll then lightly lock your magazine/mag well into your bag as well. At this point you're basically locked in every way you can ask for. The gun doesn't easily twist or cant from any axis unless you want it to. Basically everything comes together and everything works in a way to easily and naturally lock you in.
One of my favorite things is the bag is grippy but it's not tacky and sticky. There are some bags out there that will lock that bag in so hard that you cant easily make adjustments swinging target to target and you end up torquing and twisting the hell out of the bag if you don't completely pick it up each time which costs you time and is frustrating as hell. This bag grips lightly and not too aggressively and I personally like that.
Essentially it breaks down to you can easily and without much thought just run this thing and it'll work fantastic and quick. Hopefully I conveyed that.
I would give this as a system a 9/10
You may wonder why not a 10, and for me I think I'd prefer the bag itself to be Slighly bigger because it would be just slighly more stable on weirdly shaped obstacles/barricades. Also on shaky days and days I'm hurting (f'ed up back and nerves) I think it would take up some of the slack from my fundamentals. I'm not knocking it or faulting it I just think it would be perfect For me if it was a bit larger of a bag. Not a whole hell of a lot but maybe 10%. I wouldn't want the plate any bigger though I don't think, that part is perfect I believe. A bigger plate would in theory make it more stable but what I've seen with other plates on the market is when they get bigger than this size you're not able to butt your gun against the corners of barricades and then use your hand to help lock the rifle in.
I'm sure I've left out some stuff so feel free to ask questions below. I think for the money this is a really solid product and I'll be taking it to every match, I did pay for this product with my own money and if he came out with a bag slighly bigger I'd buy that too and play with it. Thanks for reading my long winded review and thanks to Precision Underground, I don't think I've ever been able to say a bag helped me this much before and got me better placement.
Aesthetics:
some of you may roll past this but to me I want my stuff to look clean and well made, if I'm going to hang it off something I have several thousands of dollars in it don't want it to look like pounded dog shit.
I don't think I need to go into a ton of details for this part but it looks good. Some as that and you can tell when you look at it and handle it that every part of it down to the lever and finish on the arca base plate it was fit and finished to look good as well as function.
My singular observation, and it is singular as there's nothing else I could nitpick at thus far is after shooting a match where it rained from when we showed up at 8am to when we packed up and went home at 5pm is there's one little piece (looks like the threading on a bolt) that got some rusty color to it from the moisture. Now, this likely is my fault because after the match I just wanted to get the hell out of there and get dry and warm so I lightly wiped off the bag and my gear and then threw it in the back of the truck and admittedly it was still moist in my humid truck come Monday. So this isn't necessarily a knock against Precision Underground but in transparency it's there and you have context why so you may draw your own conclusions as how that affects the aesthetics and durability rating.
For me I give the aesthetic a 9.5/10. Even though its probably because I'm an idiot I'd like it to be a bit more rust resistant for the price. And I do know I could probably just take it apart, clean it, and it'll be good as new but for the purpose of testing the bag and reviewing it I wanted to just leave it and run and and see how it did.
Update: Precision Underground, as you can see below, as soon as he saw my rust observation on that one little part he quickly put an order in to fix this small detail. It's so minor it didnt bother me but it speaks volumes for a business to listen to and iimmediately act to fix it. Really great reflection on how you do business and I'll buy products from you guys forever now. Keep up the good work
How's it performe:
The part that really matters here, and while it looks damn good I think we'd all agree we want it to work too.
The first 500 or so trigger pulls where dry fire practice and coming from a game changer and fortune cookie I honestly didnt think it would be more stable, really just a faster alternative for many stages.
In dry fire practice in my basement off different diameter bars and different widths boards it felt very stable right off the bat. There's not really a big learning curve here and I'd venture to guess it's not meant to be complicated. Complicated isn't fast, many guys have complicated crap and while they may be able to run it smooth I sure as hell can't so I appreciate how nothing is over complicated here.
At my first match I'd only shot about 40 rounds of practice with it, all the rest where dryfire in my basement. This was the rainy match so I wasn't super excited to say the least. I'd also never shot here before and it was slick and sloppy as hell, trees covering some targets and honestly this range was young and obviously had some growing pains to work out. Not exactly perfect and sunny to test out a new piece of equipment. First stage I looked at the target and my reticle and realized my wobble zone was nearly nil so I easily finished the stage without problems. That was essentially the theme of the day, if i could see it through the fog i could hit it. Last stage of the day was 2 shots from 4 positions which shouldn't be hard but you have to crawl through branches and brush to set your gun up so most everyone timed out or rushed it and dropped easy points. I ended up cleaning it with 2 seconds left and there's 0% change that would have happened if I used another bag because the speed here was the real winning feature. I ended up placing like 10th which was my best finish thus far. My accuracy of hit targets vs rounds fired was 81% so if I could see it I usually hit it.
My next match my scope went down and I ended up finishing middle of the pack. Not the bags fault and I was steady on target to watch the bullet miss far left all day.
I'll break it down into three parts here so you can get why this is such a good piece of gear.
1) the bag: the bag its self is decent. I think I'd probably pick something bigger up than this sized bag but as the name implies it's not meant to be a huge pillow, it's a mini. The fill though I really like. It separates and unlocks while in your hand, maybe flows is a better word here but anyhow it's very fluid and when you put it down it conform and locks on pretty well. So for its size it provides a solid foundation. Now while it's a very decent bag up front it's the absolute best rear bag I've ever used. Since it flows and locks so easily you can make easy adjustments to the bag and effortlessly hold it on target. As a front bag I'd give it a 7/10 and as a rear bag it's a 10/10 all day every day on chassis and stocks.
2) the plate: not a ton to go into here. Mainly it needs to do 3 things which are be well put together so nothing moves or wiggles where parts interface, it needs to clamp to your arca rail easily and be secure, and the plate needs to have zero flex or bounce. It does all of that. Its simple and like I said not a ton to go into here.
3) the bag and plate as a system: here's where it goes from a nice plate and a nice bag to a system that works very well. I will go into a bit of detail here because I think there's a few specific reasons why this works so well.
With the bag conforming easily and "locking" itself into the barricade and then the plate locking all of that into your rifle you're immediately as steady as you'd ever need to be. Now since the plate is expanding your footprint so much it's pretty obvious how much more stable that's going to make you and I can say it makes a huge difference. Now where this starts to shine is as you can see in a few pics above that plate can slide a little bit so what you can do here when you're locked in and steady already is then press your gun forward slightly and you'll then lightly lock your magazine/mag well into your bag as well. At this point you're basically locked in every way you can ask for. The gun doesn't easily twist or cant from any axis unless you want it to. Basically everything comes together and everything works in a way to easily and naturally lock you in.
One of my favorite things is the bag is grippy but it's not tacky and sticky. There are some bags out there that will lock that bag in so hard that you cant easily make adjustments swinging target to target and you end up torquing and twisting the hell out of the bag if you don't completely pick it up each time which costs you time and is frustrating as hell. This bag grips lightly and not too aggressively and I personally like that.
Essentially it breaks down to you can easily and without much thought just run this thing and it'll work fantastic and quick. Hopefully I conveyed that.
I would give this as a system a 9/10
You may wonder why not a 10, and for me I think I'd prefer the bag itself to be Slighly bigger because it would be just slighly more stable on weirdly shaped obstacles/barricades. Also on shaky days and days I'm hurting (f'ed up back and nerves) I think it would take up some of the slack from my fundamentals. I'm not knocking it or faulting it I just think it would be perfect For me if it was a bit larger of a bag. Not a whole hell of a lot but maybe 10%. I wouldn't want the plate any bigger though I don't think, that part is perfect I believe. A bigger plate would in theory make it more stable but what I've seen with other plates on the market is when they get bigger than this size you're not able to butt your gun against the corners of barricades and then use your hand to help lock the rifle in.
I'm sure I've left out some stuff so feel free to ask questions below. I think for the money this is a really solid product and I'll be taking it to every match, I did pay for this product with my own money and if he came out with a bag slighly bigger I'd buy that too and play with it. Thanks for reading my long winded review and thanks to Precision Underground, I don't think I've ever been able to say a bag helped me this much before and got me better placement.
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