REVIEW: Tippmann X7 Phenom

       I'm not going to lie, writing this, my first ever marker review on Eight Pound Ops isn't exactly what I want to be doing with my first Monday off in four months (obviously posting this late), least of all with a copy of Borderlands Game of the Year Edition sitting in it's plastic wrap, glistening in the late afternoon sun coming through the window and calling out to me. But alas, I've had the X7 Phenom for awhile now since selling my Milsig Paradigm, I've beat it up a fair bit, and it's time for an after action report of the thing. The pictures you'll be seeing of the marker in this review are of my own X7, which I painted, there is no SKU of the gun which looks like that. I've been using the X36 stock on it, with a Milsig PDW grip more often than not, as well as a FLASC Barrel kit, but for the day of consistency testing and chronoing I only used the stock barrel the marker itself comes with. In these pictures it's sporting a Versapod Bipod instead of the PDW grip, and sadly there is no Tippmann Phenom label where it should be since it wouldn't stay on and fell off in the bush somewhere. The air I've used has for the duration of use has always been supplied by a Pure Energy 70/4500 outputting at 800 psi, and is delivered to the marker via a PSI Worx Pro Connect III. I should also mention the bolt is regularly lubed with Tech-T Gun Sav.

       Let's break the Phenom down and talk about some of the cool features you get with the gun out of the box. First off is an awesome submachine gun look. The magazine on the marker is a durable light weight plastic and so although it doesn't do anything for the gun functionally (unless you stow allen keys in yours) it doesn't take away from the Phenom by adding any more weight to it. Second is no gap between the grip and magazine for you whiners who hate an air line going into the gun right there. The Phenom also has a gas thru grip meaning there is no line running outside the gun to power tube anywhere on the marker, your propellant goes right through the pistol grip of the marker and the Phenom accepts both CO2 and HPA. As the old X7 and A5 before that, the Phenom also comes with Tippmann Cyclone feed system which really is a hell of a loader. Most folks with gripes about the Cyclone loader are those forum users with several thousand posts who wanted to make their Tippmann a speedball marker and inevitably failed at doing so. If the Cyclone isn't broken, so don't think you're the guy to improve upon it. The thing capably feeds 17bps fine out the box without any tampering so nit-pickers should just leave the thing alone, seriously, you don't even need squishy paddles. The Phenom has a nice select fire switch for jumping between mechanical and electric operation, the usual iron (plastic) sights found on bushball guns these days, a low profile hopper, and a pretty respectable stock barrel. Perhaps a personal favourite feature of the Phenom is the way the velocity is adjusted at the back. There is an open area on the rear right side of the marker which allows access to a dial for velocity adjustment, but no specific allen key is required. All one needs is any small, skinny object which they can put in there to rotate the dial up to lower velocity, or down to raise it.

And it folds away to fit in a backpack nicely!

       The X7 Phenom comes E-gripped to go full-auto out of the box unless you specifically are trying to buy the mechanical version. If the battery in the Phenom's grip dies, however, it can still shoot in semi automatic unlike most other auto-electric markers. Firing modes included on the board are 13bps auto, auto-response, 3 round burst, and 15bps turbo where you must continue pulling the trigger to stay at 15bps; this last mode is essentially a ramping mode.

       Internally, the gun is not like any Tippmann before it, with the exception perhaps of the TPX Pistol. The bolt and air nozzle of the Phenom are pretty much the same as the TPX, and users of Tiberius pistols and even Invert Mini's and BT TM series guns will be familiar with the way the marker operates. The “powertube” of the Phenom is a long black tube which runs the length of the marker, inside are all the things needed to regulate air pressure down to 400psi, adjust velocity, and effectively deliver air to the air nozzle and bolt to fire the marker. Some gas is also supplied from here to power the Cyclone Feed System. The Phenom doesn't have the same blow back system for recocking as your typical Tippmann marker would, and instead of a spring and hammer pushing the bolt forward to shoot, it's all done by air. Once the bolt has delivered the air and fired the ball, a spring in front of the bolt pushes it back to it's cocked state to be fired again. As a result, there are no outside levers to pull to cock the gun, nor are there additional springs and metal rods running the length of the marker's internals.

Image credit goes to "Merc" of A5OG

       Disassembly of the Phenom is a breeze too, which is a nice departure from having to break down one's entire Tippmann as was the case in the past. To clean and due routine maintenance on the Phenom, all one needs to do is pop out the two rear push pins where the stock would go, pop out the pin at the front of the trigger, and then remove one last plastic pin which runs through both the body of the marker as well as the powertube, keeping everything inside secure. Once this has been done, the internals will begin to slide out and user only needs to ensure the hose running from the Cyclone Feed to the marker is out of the way and guts will come out with ease for maintenance.

       So how about performance? As earlier mentioned, I've been using the marker for about three months or more and have had ample time to break it in. It's become my primary marker and I'm already dreaming up ways to build my next one since I love the thing that much. I had a few bad days at the field right away when I was using it though, so I didn't want to review the marker right away. The bad days were not due to the gun, but other life things which would probably have muddied my objectivity for a review which is one of the reasons I held off for so long. I've scored tonnes of kills with this marker, had lots of good days since the one or two personal rotten ones when I received it, and had lots of winning games, but I can't chock that up to the marker alone. A lot of that goes to personal experience from so much practice, as well as the skill of the team I'm on. The gun definitely feels great though, it's light, manoeuvrable, and super easy to keep tight to the body with or without a stock on it, and the fake magazine makes for an adequate foregrip all on it's own. The only thing I'd recommend getting is your preferred stock to complete the look of the gun and maybe a barrel kit. It's a rocking marker all around, but the review wouldn't be complete without a consistency test and target shoot, right?
       I'll get to that in just a second. It seems that right after posting this, some folks thought my review might be a little biased and that I needed to hunt high and low for some cons of the X7 Phenom to talk about. After many hours of chin scratching, I've found three, and they aren't super big complaints. First is the biggest: it seems that there are quite a few Phenoms which have come off the production line with some rough bits on the bolt, this issue has been identified by Tippmann, I'm sure they are looking in to it, until they do however, all you need to do is take your bolt and lightly sand off any rough nubbins you feel right where the air exits it to propel the ball out the barrel and you will be chop free. I had to sand my own, and I'll be sanding a friends the same way very shortly. Problem two: where the Cyclone Feed's hose enters the power tube. This part that plugs into the power tube is plastic, if you give your Phenom's back end too rough a tap to make the internals slide out, they might get to much momentum and sheer this bit off. This happened to mine, but Tippmann replaced the part very quickly and it was an easy fix to do on my own. Tech T's MRT bolt kit also comes with a metal fitting to go into the power tube instead of the plastic one which is stock on the Phenom. Last complaint which isn't a problem for me but might be to others: the profile of the Cyclone Feed and hopper. This marker uses a wide mouth loader and hopper and it's kind of a bulky thing to have hanging off the side of your marker. If you play at a field where gun hits count, the hopper on the Phenom will get tagged more than you do, landing you in the dead box. You can keep your head in behind your bunker, your arms and marker in tight to your body, but that Cyclone hopper is going to hang off the side no matter what . What you can do to overcome this is try shooting lefty, this will keep the hopper inside the bunker so only your guns fore-end is sticking out while shooting. This isn't an issue for me at Kamloops Paintball Games since gun hits don't count there, but I can attest that this markers hopper takes a lot of hits. Now onto the tests at the chronograph...

Did I mention that not one ball missed?

       I did this chrono test at a big, red, X-Radar chronograph after all those moths of play to break the marker in so bare with me on the numbers. Shooting off of the air delivery system mentioned above, with GI SPORTZ 4 Star paint and the stock barrel, I obtained these successive numbers: 282, 287, 298, 296, 298, 300, 302. It would seem that for the most part, the marker shoots within 2 fps of the previous shots with the exception of those two warm up balls. I also have another picture here of a target I fired at, and an additional shot taken at 50mm focal length (approximate human eye equivalent) so you can see how far off it was; only about 60 feet in this case, but good grouping for a stock barrel I think.

       That's the Tippmann X7 Phenom for you and I'm going to put it out there that this marker is the Eight Pound Ops Marker of Choice, up there with the Dye I4 as the preferred mask, and the Milsig Hydration vest as the preferred vest. I should probably get around to reviewing that vest soon.... anyhow, I hope you liked the read, and regulars will hopefully let me know how the first gun review on here went so I can tweak how future gun reviews go!