How to Increase your Airsoft Gun's Range and Accuracy

Everyone wants more range and more accuracy from their airsoft guns. It’s frustrating that we spend so much time on making our gear look as accurate and as realistic as possible, yet we’re limited by the range of our rifles and their accuracy.

Whilst we can’t make our rifles laser accurate at 200+ meters (and keep them safe/legal to use), we can (and do) try to eek the most range out of them as possible.

In this article, we’re going to outline some of the key ways that you can improve your range and accuracy, whilst also dispelling some of the myths in airsoft.

We’ll start with some of the easiest things that you can do to improve your effectiveness at distance.

Quality ammunition

Quality ammunition makes a serious difference to where your rounds go.

The smallest surface imperfection, irregularity in the weight and its distribution or the BB’s diameter will affect your gun’s accuracy. These tiny variances in the BB are then amplified over the distance of your shot, showing huge variance at range.

Quality ammunition is as regular and predictable as possible, every BB should be identical (or as close as possible) to the previous BB and the next one. This predictability and regularity in the ammunition only comes with the high quality controls of more quality brands.

To help increase the consistency of their sniper rifles dedicated airsoft snipers will inspect each BB for imperfections, weighing, measuring and washing each BB to get the most consistent shot possible.

If you want to learn more about the history of BBs and how they’re made, click here.

Clean your barrel

It’s incredibly important that a BB’s journey from magazine to enemy is as smooth as possible. One of the most important parts of this journey is down the barrel. A dirty barrel is a common cause of inaccuracy in an airsoft gun, but also one of the easiest to fix.

Dirt finds its way into the barrel in a number of ways including during a skirmish, as residue from BBs or gases and if the barrel begins to corrode. 

Inside your gun’s box, you should find a barrel cleaning rod which you can use to clean your barrel until it’s squeaky clean. Use cleaning wipes and ensure that you turn your hop-up off to ensure that you don’t damage it.

Quality hop-up parts

The hop-up is the key part of your gun that affects range; it can make the difference between 30m effective, accurate range and over 60m effective range.

Contrary to popular belief, FPS is not the key factor in determining your range.

Whilst it’s true that a 500fps sniper rifle will generally outrange a 300fps sniper rifle through heavier ammunition, for example, when a game site has a 350fps limit but your rifle is firing at 330fps, taking the effort to increase the weapon to 350fps will yield little to no increase in range.

Tokyo Marui AEGs are renowned for their excellent range due to fantastic quality control and hop-up components, despite firing sub 300fps.

When upgrading your hop-up parts, it’s important to consider the FPS that you’re firing at and the conditions in which you intend to play. Hop-up buckings and nubs are made from rubber and so they react and change properties in different temperatures.

Consistency

You may have guessed already, but the key to a gun with range and accuracy that you can rely on, is consistency. This comes down to everything, including fps. If your FPS varies too much between shots, they’re going to go in different places every time.

A consistent FPS is produced by having quality gearbox internals that are well (not over) lubricated. The inside of your gearbox can be thought of as an air pump, the parts inside need to seal properly to deliver consistent airflow.

Take a look at our range of lubricants to learn more about your requirements.

Airsofters are in a constant search for more range and accuracy out of their guns and it’s completely natural to want to outrange the enemy all the time.