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Review of the Etek 5

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Mar 31, 2009
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Etek 5 Review ......


IMG_2069.jpg


Once again, the arrival of the postman heralded a buzz of excitement when I saw the distinctive Planet Eclipse logo on the packaging tape. I had been expecting this for a while, but still, it’s exciting to get a review marker in. Even more so when it’s something from a company as respected as Planet. They’ve been a personal favourite of mine since the mid to late nineties when they specialised in taking other manufacturer’s guns and sprinkling them with splash anodising and fancy parts to make them even better.

We’ve all heard about first impressions and in this case they weren’t just good, they were excellent. Nice packaging still makes a massive difference although it’s only a small thing and will get lost somewhere along the way.
The outer box is finished in a nice glossy cardboard with modern graphics which always helps to build excitement. Inside this is a VERY classy gun case containing everything you need for the marker. Barrel, Allen-key set, oil, spare o-rings, manual, barrel sock, plus spaces for extra barrel backs and fronts.
download.jpg

Really, it’s a brilliant case and will prevent your marker from getting rattled around and dinged inside your kit bag. It’s also a brilliant way to take care of your personal admin. There’s nothing worse than looking for a particular Allen key in the bottom of your kit bag on a cold dark morning before a tournament. Organisation, it’s nerdy but it’s also brilliant. Don’t be that guy who comes expecting to borrow (then lose) other people’s stuff…….
download (1).jpg


From more than 10ft away you could be forgiven for mistaking the Etek5 for an LV1 with the regulator and handle shrouds. This doesn’t feel like the “little brother” of the family in the hand either, it weighs in at a bag of sugar and a multipack packet of cheese and onion. Exactly 1020g out of the box with barrel and battery fitted according to my scales. 2.24lbs for our colonial cousins if they’re reading this. Yes, you should be salivating over the British design and engineering :D

Not being a wimp, I didn’t find it too heavy even when fitted with an ordinary fibre wrapped bottle and a rotor. With a superlight bottle I imagine it will be very easy to handle on the field for extended periods like a big scenario game. If it isn’t you may wish to consider an extra egg in the mornings………
Construction consists of Aluminium main body and the frame is glass reinforced nylon to keep costs down. The clamping feedneck is the same material as the frame and if you need any reassurance as to the durability, if it’s good enough for Glock, it’s good enough for paintball. There is no LED screen but the option for one is there as an upgrade. To be honest, do you need one?
Unless you’re playing multiple formats or tournaments with differing rates of fire, then no you don’t. For a beginner to paintball this will be an absolute machine gun once the ROF is set.
For the more experienced among us, it will be more than capable as it’s got everything you need to put balls on target and the Eclipse reliability and tech support to back it up.
The beauty of these markers is that if you have a problem, someone within 20 feet will be able to help you. Their popularity and ease of maintenance makes them an ideal choice if you’re still finding your feet or aren’t that terribly “techy”.
If you’re performing a bit of home maintenance Youtube has a world of walkthrough videos to help you service your shooter.


IMG_2055.jpg


I actually took this marker to a non-paintballing friend’s house where he has a bit of land and let him have a sho ot so I could get a newbie’s input. I set the gun up and from the box over the chrono with a high pressure PMI reg we were getting a spread of 257-270 fps. A little low for my taste so out came the Allen keys and with a twist in the indicated direction on the regulator (nice touch by the way) we were cranked up closer to the magic 300 with a spread from 285-297 and only one ball out of 50 or so creeping over the limit. That may sound like a bit of a variation however taking into account the crap paint I had deliberately brought (more on this later) it was more than impressive for a brand new marker. In my experience it takes a couple of cases for everything to bed in and settle down, efficiency will also improve as you go along too.

IMG_2060.jpg

With the rotor feeding consistently I let rip on semi and the light and responsive trigger allowed for a very respectable string of paint. Yes, a couple of balls broke, not on the bolt though so it was the fault of the paint, not the marker in this case.

The barrel cleaned itself fairly well however a quick fluffy stick moment had us back in action.
The trigger activation is my personal favourite being a micro switch. The trigger itself actually made of aluminium, the same aluminium as the barrel and body. Anodising was as usual flawless with no defects on the body and an exact colour match between it and the barrel. To be fair, the marker was black which should be pretty hard to get wrong. You however may wish to refer to it as Ninja/Stealth/Special forces/Midnight or whatever to spice it up!
Other colours available are blue/black, red/black, grey/black, HDE Earth (my favourite) and HDE Forest. The latter should keep the scenario players more than happy but if you drop the HDE Earth pattern, good luck finding it………

After a quick introduction and safety chat with my newbie compadre who’s a real gun enthusiast, I let him have a go. To be transparent I did show him how to best position the marker, the principle of walking the trigger and that was it, everything else he worked out himself.

Several plastic milk cartons and a couple of empty boxes later he was asking the usual questions about how much, where to buy, where to play, wow, can I have more paint, when can we go playing, what’s the rules etc etc so in my eyes, job done.
Simple enough in operation to catch and maintain his attention and exciting enough to have him wanting to do it all again. Proof that out of the box this little marker is easy enough for a beginner and good enough for a more experienced baller like myself.
Believe me when I tell you this man is fussy about his real guns too and would probably have considered this a bit of a toy because it’s unlikely to kill you. He had an unfair amount of fun with it to be honest.

IMG_2067.jpg


My personal thoughts are that the marker points naturally and I had no issues getting the first ball on or nearly on target. Failings in that respect were down to me being out of practice I am loathe to admit.
There were no awkward macroline fittings digging into the wrists and running and gunning was easy enough with the rubber grips fore and aft keeping the marker from slipping in my bare hands. I liked the barrel length, I think it is actually 14.5” which I didn’t notice until I read the specs. Standard cocker threads so you’ve probably got something which will fit it already should you need a different bore size.


It is surprisingly quiet too, back in the olden times Egos and Eteks had a reputation for being a bit loud on the field.
With lower operating pressures, this seems to be well and truly in the past. Obviously there’s noise, it’s a gun at the end of the day but it certainly isn’t obtrusive or worth highlighting as a negative.

From a kick point of view there is very little to none. The Etek5 comes fitted with a Zick 3 rammer kit as standard as well as a Cure 5 bolt with the GSL soft tip.
For those of you unfamiliar with Eclipse bits, the Zick 3 offers a kind of stepped acceleration to the bolt which softens the blow on the ball. It was originally introduced as a paid upgrade for the Ego 7. The Cure bolt system was introduced around about same time and at that stage was a £35 or so upgrade and so it’s nice to see the latest iteration being included for no extra cost.
Basically as the ball drops from the feedneck its landing on the bolt is cushioned by a soft rubberised tip on the bolt which minimise the chance of a pressured ball stack (I said STACK, stop sniggering) cracking the ball and causing it to explode when the bolt makes contact. Like a crash mat for paintballs. It’s also tapered so it doesn’t clip the ball stack as the bolt moves forwards.


Anyway, you may remember I mentioned crap paint. I had a really old half box of paint which had been sitting in storage for about a year or more. I thought it would be a good test of the Etek’s ability to shoot. At the end of the day it is always possible that you turn up to an event and get a bad batch, an especially brittle batch, or just end up buying the cheapest there is because everything else is sold out. Your marker has got to be able to deal with it or you’re going to have a very bad day out. I also had a fresh bag of 500 balls to play with, just as a back to back comparison. I didn’t properly measure the balls but the stock barrel seemed to fit just fine and there were no issues with breaking from them.

I’m pleased to say that out of the 1500 balls we shot I saw only 3 or 4 barrel breaks and predictably, they were from the crap batch of paint I used.

I think 1 ball broke on the bolt but it didn’t slow proceedings in any way, there were the usual few balls which went askew immediately after the break but the laser eyes didn’t cease to function and the marker continued without skipping a beat. Not bad for a brand new not broken in marker.

IMG_2059.jpg


The thing I like about Eclipse markers is that I don’t find them to be as temperamental as some other brands in funny weather. I was always happy to shoot an Ego or Etek in the wintertime when some high-end spoolies just didn’t want to play nice. Planet’s customer service and backup is legendary, they have some kind of a presence at every event, parts and knowledge are easy to come by.

£425 from Planet’s website buys you an awful lot of marker. The empty case alone is worth £30 plus another £20-30 for the included tools and spares. I would HIGHLY recommend this if you’re in the market for your first “serious” marker, you couldn’t go far wrong and the other nice thing is that Planet guns tend to be in demand on the second hand market so residuals are usually pretty good.

If you’re new and have any doubts, get yourself to any tournament series and you’ll see Eclipse markers on the podium every time. Tells me all I need to know really………


Jim Montgomery [Dusty]
 

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Jacob.007

Winners never quit & quitters never win
May 13, 2016
16
4
3
34
West London
Etek 5 Review ......




Once again, the arrival of the postman heralded a buzz of excitement when I saw the distinctive Planet Eclipse logo on the packaging tape. I had been expecting this for a while, but still, it’s exciting to get a review marker in. Even more so when it’s something from a company as respected as Planet. They’ve been a personal favourite of mine since the mid to late nineties when they specialised in taking other manufacturer’s guns and sprinkling them with splash anodising and fancy parts to make them even better.

We’ve all heard about first impressions and in this case they weren’t just good, they were excellent. Nice packaging still makes a massive difference although it’s only a small thing and will get lost somewhere along the way.
The outer box is finished in a nice glossy cardboard with modern graphics which always helps to build excitement. Inside this is a VERY classy gun case containing everything you need for the marker. Barrel, Allen-key set, oil, spare o-rings, manual, barrel sock, plus spaces for extra barrel backs and fronts.
View attachment 48099
Really, it’s a brilliant case and will prevent your marker from getting rattled around and dinged inside your kit bag. It’s also a brilliant way to take care of your personal admin. There’s nothing worse than looking for a particular Allen key in the bottom of your kit bag on a cold dark morning before a tournament. Organisation, it’s nerdy but it’s also brilliant. Don’t be that guy who comes expecting to borrow (then lose) other people’s stuff…….
View attachment 48100

From more than 10ft away you could be forgiven for mistaking the Etek5 for an LV1 with the regulator and handle shrouds. This doesn’t feel like the “little brother” of the family in the hand either, it weighs in at a bag of sugar and a multipack packet of cheese and onion. Exactly 1020g out of the box with barrel and battery fitted according to my scales. 2.24lbs for our colonial cousins if they’re reading this. Yes, you should be salivating over the British design and engineering :D

Not being a wimp, I didn’t find it too heavy even when fitted with an ordinary fibre wrapped bottle and a rotor. With a superlight bottle I imagine it will be very easy to handle on the field for extended periods like a big scenario game. If it isn’t you may wish to consider an extra egg in the mornings………
Construction consists of Aluminium main body and the frame is glass reinforced nylon to keep costs down. The clamping feedneck is the same material as the frame and if you need any reassurance as to the durability, if it’s good enough for Glock, it’s good enough for paintball. There is no LED screen but the option for one is there as an upgrade. To be honest, do you need one?
Unless you’re playing multiple formats or tournaments with differing rates of fire, then no you don’t. For a beginner to paintball this will be an absolute machine gun once the ROF is set.
For the more experienced among us, it will be more than capable as it’s got everything you need to put balls on target and the Eclipse reliability and tech support to back it up.
The beauty of these markers is that if you have a problem, someone within 20 feet will be able to help you. Their popularity and ease of maintenance makes them an ideal choice if you’re still finding your feet or aren’t that terribly “techy”.
If you’re performing a bit of home maintenance Youtube has a world of walkthrough videos to help you service your shooter.



I actually took this marker to a non-paintballing friend’s house where he has a bit of land and let him have a sho ot so I could get a newbie’s input. I set the gun up and from the box over the chrono with a high pressure PMI reg we were getting a spread of 257-270 fps. A little low for my taste so out came the Allen keys and with a twist in the indicated direction on the regulator (nice touch by the way) we were cranked up closer to the magic 300 with a spread from 285-297 and only one ball out of 50 or so creeping over the limit. That may sound like a bit of a variation however taking into account the crap paint I had deliberately brought (more on this later) it was more than impressive for a brand new marker. In my experience it takes a couple of cases for everything to bed in and settle down, efficiency will also improve as you go along too.


With the rotor feeding consistently I let rip on semi and the light and responsive trigger allowed for a very respectable string of paint. Yes, a couple of balls broke, not on the bolt though so it was the fault of the paint, not the marker in this case.

The barrel cleaned itself fairly well however a quick fluffy stick moment had us back in action.
The trigger activation is my personal favourite being a micro switch. The trigger itself actually made of aluminium, the same aluminium as the barrel and body. Anodising was as usual flawless with no defects on the body and an exact colour match between it and the barrel. To be fair, the marker was black which should be pretty hard to get wrong. You however may wish to refer to it as Ninja/Stealth/Special forces/Midnight or whatever to spice it up!
Other colours available are blue/black, red/black, grey/black, HDE Earth (my favourite) and HDE Forest. The latter should keep the scenario players more than happy but if you drop the HDE Earth pattern, good luck finding it………

After a quick introduction and safety chat with my newbie compadre who’s a real gun enthusiast, I let him have a go. To be transparent I did show him how to best position the marker, the principle of walking the trigger and that was it, everything else he worked out himself.

Several plastic milk cartons and a couple of empty boxes later he was asking the usual questions about how much, where to buy, where to play, wow, can I have more paint, when can we go playing, what’s the rules etc etc so in my eyes, job done.
Simple enough in operation to catch and maintain his attention and exciting enough to have him wanting to do it all again. Proof that out of the box this little marker is easy enough for a beginner and good enough for a more experienced baller like myself.
Believe me when I tell you this man is fussy about his real guns too and would probably have considered this a bit of a toy because it’s unlikely to kill you. He had an unfair amount of fun with it to be honest.



My personal thoughts are that the marker points naturally and I had no issues getting the first ball on or nearly on target. Failings in that respect were down to me being out of practice I am loathe to admit.
There were no awkward macroline fittings digging into the wrists and running and gunning was easy enough with the rubber grips fore and aft keeping the marker from slipping in my bare hands. I liked the barrel length, I think it is actually 14.5” which I didn’t notice until I read the specs. Standard cocker threads so you’ve probably got something which will fit it already should you need a different bore size.


It is surprisingly quiet too, back in the olden times Egos and Eteks had a reputation for being a bit loud on the field.
With lower operating pressures, this seems to be well and truly in the past. Obviously there’s noise, it’s a gun at the end of the day but it certainly isn’t obtrusive or worth highlighting as a negative.

From a kick point of view there is very little to none. The Etek5 comes fitted with a Zick 3 rammer kit as standard as well as a Cure 5 bolt with the GSL soft tip.
For those of you unfamiliar with Eclipse bits, the Zick 3 offers a kind of stepped acceleration to the bolt which softens the blow on the ball. It was originally introduced as a paid upgrade for the Ego 7. The Cure bolt system was introduced around about same time and at that stage was a £35 or so upgrade and so it’s nice to see the latest iteration being included for no extra cost.
Basically as the ball drops from the feedneck its landing on the bolt is cushioned by a soft rubberised tip on the bolt which minimise the chance of a pressured ball stack (I said STACK, stop sniggering) cracking the ball and causing it to explode when the bolt makes contact. Like a crash mat for paintballs. It’s also tapered so it doesn’t clip the ball stack as the bolt moves forwards.


Anyway, you may remember I mentioned crap paint. I had a really old half box of paint which had been sitting in storage for about a year or more. I thought it would be a good test of the Etek’s ability to shoot. At the end of the day it is always possible that you turn up to an event and get a bad batch, an especially brittle batch, or just end up buying the cheapest there is because everything else is sold out. Your marker has got to be able to deal with it or you’re going to have a very bad day out. I also had a fresh bag of 500 balls to play with, just as a back to back comparison. I didn’t properly measure the balls but the stock barrel seemed to fit just fine and there were no issues with breaking from them.

I’m pleased to say that out of the 1500 balls we shot I saw only 3 or 4 barrel breaks and predictably, they were from the crap batch of paint I used.

I think 1 ball broke on the bolt but it didn’t slow proceedings in any way, there were the usual few balls which went askew immediately after the break but the laser eyes didn’t cease to function and the marker continued without skipping a beat. Not bad for a brand new not broken in marker.



The thing I like about Eclipse markers is that I don’t find them to be as temperamental as some other brands in funny weather. I was always happy to shoot an Ego or Etek in the wintertime when some high-end spoolies just didn’t want to play nice. Planet’s customer service and backup is legendary, they have some kind of a presence at every event, parts and knowledge are easy to come by.

£425 from Planet’s website buys you an awful lot of marker. The empty case alone is worth £30 plus another £20-30 for the included tools and spares. I would HIGHLY recommend this if you’re in the market for your first “serious” marker, you couldn’t go far wrong and the other nice thing is that Planet guns tend to be in demand on the second hand market so residuals are usually pretty good.

If you’re new and have any doubts, get yourself to any tournament series and you’ll see Eclipse markers on the podium every time. Tells me all I need to know really………


Jim Montgomery [Dusty]
Hi. Top marks on the review. I am looking to get a new marker and was wondering how the etek 5 compars to the eclipse Lv1 pro for the price. Etek 5 £340 / Lv1 £750
 

Dan Moss

Active Member
Jun 6, 2016
45
2
28
33
Cracking review mate. I got the gtek when my mate gave up the game....all need now is a carbon tank
 

ckennedy

Active Member
Feb 28, 2016
88
15
28
33
Nice review. Made me contemplate one as my next marker but I think it'll be to loud for my style of play