I was pleasantly surprised to be asked to review G Smith’s new “Super Impact” pellets. As all air rifle shooters will know, G Smith already has a slew of pellet varieties in 0.22 and a solid reputation as being a manufacturer of the highest quaility pellets in India. So why create one more pellet variety named as “Super Impact” – and that too a round head which appears to be in direct competition with G Smith’s own earlier round head pellet “High Impact” ?
I hope this review will make this clear.
PACKING AND APPEARANCE
G Smith’s new “Super Impact” pellets came packed in a new circular box of transparent plastic with the usual foam pads, a change from G Smith’s old style black plastic box used for their older series.
The pellets themselves appear to be of very high quality, smooth, perfectly machined and of uniform shape and size, with no damage in transport.
WEIGHTS AND DIMENSIONS
Weight: 1 gram (15.4 grain)
Skirt Diameter: 5.6 mm
Head Diameter: 5.25mm
Length of pellet: 7 mm
SHOOTING PERFORMANCE
For all shooters the shooting performance of the pellet, its accuracy and consistency count for more than anything else – including weight, packing, colour and other parameters.
I am not the best shooter on earth and I did not zero any of my rifles to adjust them to the G Smith Super Impact pellets I was testing. I was more interested in the groups that the pellets formed rather than hitting dead center.
Here are the results of shooting from 10 meters (bench rested), 10 meters (unsupported) and 20 meters unsupported.
With the rifle bench rested at 10 meters range, a 5-shot test showed a good grouping consistent with the reviewer’s shooting ability. No outliers. If the sights had been centered then this grouping is consistent with a score of 41/50 – I would be happy with that :)
With the rifle held unsupported in the artillery position at 10 meters, I still got a good grouping of 4 shots with only one outlier. I knew that this outlying shot was a bad one as soon as I pulled the trigger. Can’t blame the pellets, which grouped well again.
From a range 20 meters using the artillery (unsupported) hold I managed to group 3 shots consistently, with 2 outliers. Once again this is more a reflection of my aim rather than the pellets which again grouped well.
CONCLUSIONS AND COMMENTS ABOUT GSMITH SUPER IMPACT PELLETS (0.22)
It requires little analysis to conclude that G Smith’s new Super Impact pellets (0.22 cal) are of excellent quality and a dedicated shooter could buy and use them withour regret. They are of high quality and accuracy.
The only question that arises is why GSmith chose to create one more brand of high quality round head pellets in direct competition with their old GSmith High Impact round heads. I will attempt to answer that question with some data and observations:
The folowing table is a comparison of the weights and measurements of the different variants of Gsmith 0.22 cal pellets available.
Note that the new “High Impact” pellets are lighter by about 10% . Indian springer rifles that dominate the market are of relatively lower power and the lower pellet weight makes a big difference to the average shooter in terms of range and muzzle velocity. Lower weights – 1 gram or less are more suitable for Indian springers. In any case hunting is illegal and “killing power” of heavy pellets at longer ranges is redundant in the Indian situation. That would make the new GSmith Super Impact pellets score over the older round head High Impact pellet
I have been a long term user and fan of SDB air rifles by Susanto Das Bros of Kolkata. SDB rifles are affordable and powerful but the bore is of 5.5 mm caliber as opposed to 5.6 mm in most other rifles. This ensured that I was unable to use older GSmith pellets in SDB rifles because their longer length ensured that they could not be pushed fully into the breech. This problem has been solved by the new Gsmith Super Impact pellets and I am happy to be able to use them with my SDB rifles.
Here is an image to illustrate the way the older GSmith pellet could not be fully inserted into the breech of my SDB 65 rifle:
GSmith Super Impact pellet inside breech of SDB 65 rifle.
Older Gsmith High Split (hollow) pellet resists being pushed into the brech of an SDB 65 rifle
Reviewed,Content & Images by "Bennedose"
You can get in touch with Bennedose at his email bennedose@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: Different airgun will producure different grouping for the same batch of pellets,hence it is necesary to note that this review & the grouping are from SDB 65 airgun, other brands of airgun may producure a diffrent grouping.