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Magpul makes firearm accessories for both military and civilian firearms. Although they don't make airsoft accessories directly, third parties have licensed the right to replicate Magpul accessories for airsoft. One such accessory is the Magpul PTS 30 Round EMAG for M16/M4 variant airsoft rifles.
The Magpul 30 round EMAGis made out of hard ABS plastic. It feels extremely hard and solid in the hand. In fact, it feels beefier than the metal magazines for M16/M4. The plastic magazine is also lighter than the metal magazine. The photo below shows the magazine mounted in APS ASR106 Mini Patriot M4 airsoft rifle.
The beauty of this magazine is that there is no winding wheel, nor does the BB rattle in the magazine. Both of these benefits means the magazine is more realistic than a typical airsoft magazine. In addition, it makes you stealthier on the battle field.
Much like the real ammunition magazine, the EMAG 30 has a window that shows the ammunition (see photo below). The problem is that the replica has a fake window, which doesn't actually show the airsoft BB's in the magazine.
There is a removable plate at the bottom of the magazine. We thought it is used to take the magazine apart to clean or to remove a jam. But it turns out that there is nothing under the plate as shown in the photo below. It's purely a decoration piece.
Unlike a high-cap magazine where you can pour BB's into a large hole, the only way to load the Magpul 30 round EMAG is to use to speed loader. That's pretty typical of an airsoft magazine that doesn't rattle. The loading hole has a switch (see photo below) that lets you unload all of the BB's in the magazine quickly.
The whole purpose of the 30 round magazine is to provide realism as the real M16/M4 magazine only holds 30 NATO ammunition rounds. In military simulation (MilSim) airsoft games, you will be limited in this manner. But we found that the Magpul 30 round airsoft magazine can actually hold more than 30 rounds of airsoft BB. Therefore, you can't use the magazine to guage how many BB's to load.
We found the best method to load 30 rounds in this magazine is to determine how many BB your speed loader feeds per injection. Then use that number to determine how many times to inject. For example, our speed loader feeds 4 BB's at a time (see photo below). Therefore, seven injections loads 28 BB's into the magazine. Then simply load two more using the speed loader to make it 30 rounds.
The fact is that you can do that with any magazine. You can use a high-cap magazine and still only load 30 rounds for MilSim. Luckily Magpul EMAG is also available in a 120 round mid-cap version (see "Related Links" below). We suggest getting the 120 round mid-cap version instead of the 30 round version for this reason.