Nerf Super Soaker XP20 Review

We’ve been celebrating the return of air pressure soakers this year. The XP100 was fun to use and review. However, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. The smallest of the new blasters, the XP20, has some serious issues, both in terms of usefulness and quality control. It’s a flawed design, even if I was unlucky enough to get one that leaked.

A Wee Bit Small

The XP20 (modeled after the SS20) isn’t the smallest “real” Super Soaker ever. However, it’s fairly large for a blaster that only holds four ounces of water. The handle is fairly comfortable, with room for the entire hand and a heavy trigger pull. The air pump runs up inside the grip. The reservoir screws into a port on the top of the blaster. Using the blaster is fairly self-explanatory. and it looks great, with lots of shell detail.

Using it, however, is where things started to go wrong. Straight out of the box, water leaked out the nozzle when you pumped it – the pinch trigger didn’t pinch the tubing completely closed. It possibly had to do with the way the tubing was poorly attached, with an extra kink in it. I ended up disconnecting the tubing, turning it a bit, then reattaching and gluing the fitting. After that…I then found a leak on the line feeding air into the tank, and I had to glue that shut as well.

Performance

Now that I could finally use the blaster without leaks, I filled it up and pumped again. Three pumps later, water was already coming out the nozzle. It turns out that the trigger spring just doesn’t exert enough force to keep the water line closed once a bit of pressure is added. It’s a small amount, but that’s still a horrible flaw. I couldn’t hear any sort of pressure release valve in the pump, so it appears to just be a defect.

Even worse, you can only really get two shots out of this blaster. I get that it’s the power of pressure and all that, but only two shots before needing to reload? There are similarly sized Adventure Force soakers that, while manually pumped, hold far more water. While you’re running to reload, the people using those are still chasing each other around.

The longest ranges I got were 28′ angled, though in reality you can effectively soak people at up to 20′ away. After that, it’s more of a mist than a stream.

Final Opinion

Before writing this review, I waited a bit and got another XP20. It didn’t have any internal leaks, but it also had water coming out the nozzle after only a few pumps

Sure, it looks nice, but the key to pressurized blasters is being able to store pressure. Even putting aside the issues I had to fix, these are the things that can pop up with pinch-trigger blasters. If you don’t have it right, then you’re going to leak. And with only four ounces in the pressurized chamber, you have no endurance. Keep the $8 and spend it on something better.