I’m planning on getting into the airsoft craze that has hit our school. Unfortunately, I don’t really have the budget for it. My friends told me that I could start with airsoft spring guns. What are the types of airsoft spring guns available in the market? How are they different from the AEG’s? 

Let us begin by differentiating AEGs and airsoft spring guns.  Although airsoft spring guns and the AEG’s basically share the same principle, the means of powering both guns are different. A spring is used to propel the 6mm plastic pellet to velocities of up 400 fps (feet per second) to a range of around 30 meters. An AEG uses batteries to store electricity that is used to power a gear box. This gear box then causes the pellet to be expelled whenever the trigger is pulled. This feature also gives the user flexibility in choosing semi or full automatic mode of their guns.

The airsoft spring gun however uses energy stored in the spring whenever the user pulls on the cocking handle to enable the gun to be fired. Meaning to say, whenever you want to fire the gun, you should always have to manually charge it buy pulling on the cocking lever. You might think that the gun is pretty useless as far as range and velocity goes but these airsoft spring guns can also have same range and velocity that an AEG can have.
 
Airsoft spring guns can be used in all types of adverse weather such as rain, snow, extreme heat or cold. It would be a shame to damage an expensive AEG by exposing it to the elements.

As far as looks and feel are concerned it really takes a lot of exposure to spot the difference between the two. They are both made to scale like the real firearm and have the same metal and plastic components. So really there isn’t much difference between them.

There are three types of airsoft spring guns: airsoft spring guns, Rifles, pistols and shotguns. You can find the type of rifle that would suit your need as the manufacturers carry almost all models in a spring gun category like M16 series, M14 series, the AK47 series and its variants and other sniper rifles modeled from weapons found all over the world. The pistols also come in varied models and countries of origin. From automatics such as colt .45, 9mm berretta or a revolver such as the colt python of Dirty Harry fame. Shotguns are only available as airsoft spring guns.

What sets the airsoft spring gun apart is its price. It is considerably cheaper than an AEG. This is the reason why a lot of people who are new to airsoft games buy them. Another reason for the popularity of airsoft spring guns is because almost all players use them as an “entry level” or training guns. Almost all players at one point owned an airsoft spring gun either for actual use in the game or for collection as there are guns that are only available in the spring version.