Which AR-15 5.56 magazines are best?

[Jeff22]

In 2007 I took a carbine class from Pat Rogers.

Prior to the class I had sorted out all the AR magazines I had accumulated since 1977. The 20 rounders and the 30 round mags from Adventure Line Mfg. are all sorted in a box and I haven't done anything with them yet. I took all the Colt & Parsons Precision 30 round mag bodies I had and put Mag Pul anti-tilt followers and Mag Pul loop things on the floorplates. In 9 of magazines, I installed red springs from Specialized Armament Warehouse (SAW) which reduce the capacity to 28 rounds. (As I only load 27 rounds in a 30 round mag, to make tac reloads easier, that wasn't a big deal)

All the magpul accessories I ordered from Paul Buffoni at Bravo Company. (Paul's prices are good and he ships via USPS Priority Mail which I prefer over UPS & Fed Ex -- I work the midnight shift and I'm never awake when the delivery driver comes, but the US Mail always finds me)(www.bravocompanyusa.com)

I have a couple of Brownell's magazines and they seem to work fine, but they haven't been run very hard and I haven't had them long.

At work we have some GI magazines from D&H (which is a local company) and they seem to be okay as well.

I have half a dozen PMags that I've had for only a few months. I think they're wonderful but I haven't used them as long as many people on this forum.

I don't have any experience with the Lancer Magazines.

[rob_s]

I generally will tell a new AR buyer to get 10 Pmags.

10 because that gives you 280-300 rounds loaded which will AT LEAST get you through lunch at any training class and will get you through an entire day in many. You can top off at lunch.

Pmags because it can be hard to find NHMTG (the only aluminum mags I suggest) and because people will tend to buy "as good as" when it comes to metal mags and wind up with crap.

I personally have been making the switch back to NHMTG with Magpul followers and Ranger plates. I use different color Ranger Plates to indicate the ammo that is in those magazines (tan for xm193, green for steel-cased, black for Black Hills 75 grain). I like the Ranger Plates because it makes it easier to get them out of deep cans or pouches, and I like the extra traction when monopoding.

I have a rather large storage bin full of Pmags I'm not using now. When I consolidated all of them into one place it was downright scary how many I had accumulated, and how few I had actually purchased. It's insidious how these things worked their way into my chest rigs, battle belts, mag pouches, and range bags. Without any intent I had completely changed over to them.

I have 10 of the newer Lancer AWMs and I like them well enough. They seem a bit harder to seat, even on 28 rounds loaded, on a closed bolt. The new metal feedlips are slicker than snot though and the rounds strip out very easily which should help keep the gun running when things get dirty and sluggish. I won't be changing over to them for my personal magazines because they are still wider than the GI mags and because I can't justify the added cost.

[Tamara]

Good to go.

This.

Brownells busted their tails to make a quality mag. I was in pretty close email contact with a guy who was there during the torture testing, and none of the ones I received has puked.

[JMS]

I have 10 of the newer Lancer AWMs and I like them well enough. They seem a bit harder to seat, even on 28 rounds loaded, on a closed bolt.

I've got two of these to try out. Smoke/clear, of the most-current variant; when I'm not beating them up, they're exclusively used for dummy rounds because I find it handy to visually confirm that there's no ammo in them without having to download.

Glad I'm not the only one that that's noticing how hard they are to seat on a closed bolt. Hell, for a while, they were difficult to seat with only 10 rounds in each one (warshots, not dummies). Seems to have hammered itself out, but that was really weird.

[John Hearne]

If you're going to leave them loaded and ready, I don't like plastic mags as the feed lips will stretch. We just bought a bunch of mags for work. They are meant to be left loaded in a kit for a long time. We went with D&H/DSG. We were able to purchase a teflon coated magazine with a Magpul follower for less than the Brownells magazines.

[JDM]

If you're going to leave them loaded and ready, I don't like plastic mags as the feed lips will stretch.

Do you have a link to any instances of this happening?

[Byron]

If you're going to leave them loaded and ready, I don't like plastic mags as the feed lips will stretch.

John,
In your experience, how long has it taken to stretch the feed lips, and has this been with all polymer mags?

I know that the PMAG dust covers led a lot of people to believe that PMAG lips would stretch over time. I've had some PMAGs sitting loaded for 2-3 years now, however, and they're fine (no dust covers on them). They haven't been exposed to any temperature extremes, for whatever that's worth, but I've read other people reporting the same. Curious to hear what you've been seeing.

[LittleLebowski]

I've never had a problem with polymer mag lips spreading but look forward to hearing about which brand did.

[John Hearne]

I have never experienced it myself but I'm pretty low-tech when it comes to AR magazines. I still carry an old, aluminum follower 20 round in my patrol rifle and have a couple of aluminum 30's for reloads.

I don't recall where I first heard about the issue of feed lip stretch but for some reason the Steyr AUG comes to mind. If you look at Magpul's manual for the PMAG and the plastic cover, it says "The PMAG™ was designed for long-term loaded storage with the impact cover in place. First, the impact cover prevents feed lip creep (when stored over 1 year)."

Pg 16 at http://cdn.magpul.com/downloads/PMAG...90430_BETA.pdf

[Jay Cunningham]

Seems to me that aluminum magazines loaded to 30 rounds would potentially be most susceptible to the feed lip creep thing.