Nerf N Series Agility Review

The Agility follows a strong tradition at Hasbro. From Maverick to Strongarm to Commander (and all the variants between), we’ve had a six-shot revolver as part of the main blaster line. Now, with N Series being released, the Agility fills that role.

If you’re investing in the new N Series ecosystem, dart exclusivity and all, it’s hard to go wrong with an easy-to-use blaster like the Agility.

Kid Friendly!

The Agility is fairly large in size, accommodating most adult hands as well as the 8+ age range it was designed for. Those usability concerns also influenced an important addition to the blaster: a priming loop that attaches to the slide. In testing, Hasbro found that kids weren’t always able to smoothly prime the blaster using the slide, but that they found the priming loop extremely easy to use. Indeed, while a priming slide is pretty intuitive for me, I can see the benefits of such a small addition to play value.

The Agility’s trigger is contoured and works well, but it does have to move quite a bit before interacting with the catch mechanism inside. I imagine hair triggers aren’t as kid-friendly as the higher level stuff I’m used to using these days.

The Agility works by moving the rotating cylinder on the prime; that’s a departure from the Elite and Elite 2.0 mechanisms that autorotated the cylinder after the dart fired. The cylinder can be freely rotated by hand in its resting state, making reloading a breeze. Even if, for some reason, you need to rotate the cylinder while the blaster is primed, you can move the cylinder backwards (compared to its normal rotation, anyway).

There aren’t really any sights to speak of on the blaster, but it’s also the basic revolver. Point and shoot.

Performance

The Agility has averaged 91fps in my hands so far, and remained consistently within a few steps of that number. Rate of fire is lower at just two darts per second (there is no slam-fire), but for typical pistol use, that’s perfectly fine.

As you can see in the video, reloading is relatively easy.

Internals

The Agility is relatively simple as far as the mechanisms are concerned. The rotation mech is molded into the outside of the cylinder, and a long plastic arm moves back on the prime to make it rotate.

As with the rest of the series, the blaster is tuned specifically to fire N1 darts up to 90fps. As a result, there are several features in play: an air restrictor that gets opened by the rear tab of the N1 dart, a large plunger tube, and a “speed hole” used to freely accelerate the plunger before it compresses the air firing the dart.

I know there are already mods out there for making the Agility fire 1/2″ darts. I have yet to try that myself, though.

Last Thoughts

The N Series Agility is a solid offering, and I’d be disappointed if the default revolver of the line wasn’t solid. It works as advertised, hits harder than the previous generation, and it’s only $10. If you don’t mind the new darts, you definitely won’t mind the new blaster.