Nerf N Series Infinite Review

The N Series has made its debut, and between the influencer care package from Hasbro (thanks, guys!) and buying other blasters, I’ve been able to fire most of them. More importantly, fire them in actual Nerf wars. So the results have been interesting, to say the least, with both the blasters and the new N1 darts.

The Infinite is the flagship of the first blaster wave, and for $40, it’s a hard blaster to criticize. It works as advertised, features a cool ammo capacity/reloading setup, and isn’t a rehash of old designs. Whether you get it, however, comes down to your opinion on the new dart ecosystem.

OFF THE CHAIN!

The N Series Infinite is designed to have “infinite” capacity, by way of a contained, side-loading chain inside a magazine. As you pump the blaster to prime it, a breech opens, the chain rotates in the box, and a new dart is put in line with the breech. Pushing the pump grip forward loads the dart into the barrel. It’s a really cool system, and if you have time in battle, it’s not hard to slip darts into the empty slots as you play. The ammo storage at the front of the magazine makes it even easier.

You can, of course, also simply drop the magazine and replace it with a new one. However, the Infinite has a closed-breech mechanism, so either you need to prime the blaster first, or leave the topmost chain segment unloaded. The box only comes with one magazine, so you’ll have to buy another blaster in order for that to happen, though. No word on whether this unique magazine will have extras available for purchase.

The Infinite, as part of the N Series, fires the brand new N1 dart. It fulfills several of Hasbro’s requirements: have a faster-flying dart for the 8+ crowd that meets Kinetic Energy Density regulations, fly straighter than Elite, and allow control over the darts being used in the blasters (what we in the hobby often call “Dart DRM”). While they do perform better than Elite (90fps vs 70fps, and about 25% more precise in Hasbro’s in-house testing)…they’re still behind the competition on store shelves. And since you can only use N1 darts, the marketplace is going to turn into a game of “Is our name brand big enough to convince people that they should drop the old style darts and buy refills of the ammo that we have complete control over?”.

In any case, the Infinite itself is a ton of fun to use, and the chain rotates and feeds reliably. I’ve had maybe three instances of jams across a few wars, and all of them involved darts that were substantially stepped on or damaged in some way. Whether that trend holds true in the long term has yet to be seen.

Thankfully, the blaster comes with 80 darts!

Performance and War Use

My Infinite has averaged 89fps throughout testing, with only a few fps variance either way. Rate of fire is a consistent two darts per second, due to both the need to operate all mechanisms (belt rotation, spring compressing, and breech operation) and the decision to not include slam-fire. Interestingly, slam-fire proved to be louder than regular operation; that would have crossed the legal decibel limit in several markets! On the business end, that decision makes sense…but slam-fire is still a ton of fun, so its exclusion is sad.

As far as actual use is concerned, the Infinite holds up well when playing against anything within a reasonable fps range – I’ve used the blaster in 130fps limit park wars, and 160fps limit indoor wars that featured plenty of cover. That being said, when other people are using half-darts or even regular full lengths (Dart Zone, Adventure Force, etc.), the difference in accuracy is still quite noticeable.

In any case, kids will definitely love it.

Internals and Modification

There’s lots of potential if you’re a hobbyist, but you have to get around the fact that this blaster was tuned specifically for 90fps N1 performance. That includes the AR made for the dart nub, the large speed hole in the plunger tube, and a few other factors.

That being said, there are already people exploring the options. One person in the various Nerf Discord channels already hit 190fps with a spring replacement, filling in the various plunger tube holes, and a few other mods. There are also effort to make half dart conversions. Just stay tuned and see what happens.

Overall Opinion

The Nerf N Series Infinite really is the best case scenario for a first-year ecosystem flagship product. It requires the new darts, but comes with a large number of them. It features a cool new mechanism that works. And it’s only $40. If you really don’t mind the change of dart type, then the blaster won’t disappoint, especially for the target audience of 8+.