Bunkerkings CTRL vs Virtue Spire III | What's the best hopper?
What is going on guys, it is Tony and Joe from Lone Wolf Paintball and today, we are bringing you an old-school throwback, a Versus video. The Spire III versus the Bunkerkings...
CTRL.
Ooh baby, let's go.
[Mark] So tell me guys, what's the difference?
Sick, that got me so hyped.
[Mark] Why would I want one over the other?
Why would you want one over the other. Who do you want to go first? Me or Joe?
Well, the Spire III's been out longer, so let's hit the old-school guy first.
So you're hitting me. First off, I can tell you right now, when you press my little button in the back here Mark, it's gonna pop open for y'all, and it's got a hinge feature, so the whole shelf doesn't come off, you don't wanna lose it, you don't wanna drop it and get this expensive hopper all jacked up, do y'all? I didn't think so.
[Mark] Do you have a hinge Joe?
The Control does not have a hinge, but it does have the quick removal on the back, so it's got your kind of traditional, where the shell comes off, hinge feature's kind of cool, I mean this is kind of nice though too, 'cause then you can just thoroughly clean stuff, I mean, it's kind of-
I mean if you're fumbling bumbling around at the field, you're nervous, your hands are all slippery, you don't want to drop your nice little shell on the ground. Eh, I like the hinge feature, I like that you don't have to worry about it falling off or whatever, but, it's a solid thing too, like you said, if you really wanna thoroughly get in there and clean the entire thing, having it come all the way off would kind of be nice, but at this point and time, I don't have to worry about losing anything. All right.
Well now that we've got the top-downs, the top down on these
Ooh you popping tops? Nice
Popping the top, so, like you said, you guys wanna see as far as the lids, the lids that come on these are identical. Virtue, Bunkerkings are owned by the same company, they're brother sister company, you know, whatever you wanna call it.
So you're saying speed-feed access?
Yeah, so speed-feed access, they're both gonna have the same real heavy-duty nylon lid, I mean you can see these things, like, I'm-
[Tony] Yeah, they're not-
Flexing out of your-
[Tony] They're not breaking.
You're not gonna break it. Speed-feed, they're both gonna take the Crown SF, or the new Bunkerking CTRL speed feed, so lids, speed feeds are gonna be 100% identical on these two loaders, so opening-
Click in and click out, you can change your speed feed in about 10 seconds if you know what you're doing.
[Mark] And neither one of them comes with a speed feed-
Nope
In the box, right?
Correct.
[Mark] It's an add-on.
No sir, which Mark that's gonna bring me to my point on the Spire III, speaking of features that these hoppers come with, Mark do you happen to know what that is?
[Mark] It's a Flappy Flapper Flap.
Oh it's a Flappy Flappersen's, also known as a spring ramp, so when you start to get low on paint, the ramp will rise up, and feed it into the tray down below. Does yours come with that?
So the Bunkerkings, you guys have seen my old review, straight out of the box, it does not come with the spring-
[Tony] No!
Does not come with the spring ramp
[Tony] No!
Okay, so, you know, you got a little bit of an edge here with the Spire, but when you do add the Bunkerking spring ramp, it's only 11.95, I mean you've already spent over 200 bucks on a hopper, I mean, what's another 12? I mean , really and truly.
That's fair.
The nice thing though, when you do install it, one when you pop this tray out, it's got this nice magnetic release. On his, you gotta hit a button to pull it out.
Let me show you a button on the back.
[Joe] But, the cool thing is, when you do install the spring ramp, you'll have the ramp up front, just like the Spire, but it also has a spot for a secondary ramp. That is one thing that the Spire doesn't have, is the secondary ramp option on there, so it is pretty cool. It doesn't come with it unfortunately, but when you do upgrade, that actually kind of takes you a step above the Spire, you'll have your front ramp, and then you got one here on the back to continue to force paint down.
Hmm.
So, next.
[Mark] Dual ramps.
Dude, you got dual ramps.
So it'll be dual ramped. It doesn't come with it, but once you do, you get double the rampage.
So you guys know what you're getting here.
Really gonna ramp.
[Mark] So because you bought up price point-
You're really gonna ramp.
[Mark] What do these retail for, stock out of the box?
So it depends on what color way you get. The reds, the blues, the limes and these are like 225, currently, the black is 235, and then the Highlander, Camel, the Special Prints are 249, that's as of today. Spires, current retail's 229, so you're a couple bucks less, or a couple bucks more, depending on which color you get, so, you know, I mean you throw on a spring ramp, you might only be a few dollars higher than the Spire, so.
Does yours have a magnetic drive cone. You can pull it up and pull it out and clean it really-
Yeah, so actually, so speaking of the trays, if you wanna pull that tray out so they can kind of see the comparison on these. So that is one of the major upgrades they did with the CNTL, is that it's got your tray ray here now, it's got this inner lip, which is kind of cool, you can see on this one, the paint doesn't have as much of a lip on there, it does spill but, this kind of holds paint in there more, and then speaking of the drive cone, when you pull out the drive cone, this one's more hollowed out. Real similar part, it might even be... Interchangeable.
So Interchangeable drive cones, but if you watch my Bunkerkings overview with the CNTL, they hollowed this out a lot more.
[Tony] Hey Mark
[Mark] Hi, put a nut through there-
[Tony] So what was the purpose of that? It seems like a paintball could like-
Well yeah, so the reason that they hollowed, this is the Spire one, this is the Bunkerkings CTRL.
It's perfect.
Yeah, Spire the three, the reason they hollowed this out, is so you would have less weight on the actual drive cone, and then when the paint's in there, they can sense the true tension of the paint more, as opposed to getting more of the extra tension, whatever, I don't know the best way to explain it, but-
Technical terms.
Yeah that was why they hollowed this out, they felt that they could give a little bit more of an accurate reading on that, so.
Does yours still operate on the three double As on the bottom?
Yeah, so you flip 'em over, both Hoppers on the bottom they're gonna run on three double As, both are N-Charge compatible, we saw the N-Charge battery packs, Mark a while ago did a video on how to install one on a LTR, super easy, though, you just remove this, pop in the N-Charge, plug it in so you can get 'em set up to run on rechargeable batteries, which is pretty cool, and then really kind of the last main difference, is gonna be just kind of the bells and whistles, so the bells and whistles of this hopper now, is it has the paint angle indicator, so again if you watch my control video, you'll show when they got batteries in here, this thing lights up. If your hopper's too high, it's gonna be red off to that side, and if your hopper's too low, it'll be red to this side. If you got the perfect angle, it will be green in the middle.
How do you know what the perfect angle is?
So that angle was set up for if you're kind of standing at the back center start box on a regulation NXL airball field, so if you're kind of at the back center start box, you come up, there's kind of a perfect angle if you wanna lane out the guy kind of running snake or running to the corner on the other side. You can change the calibration on that if you're playing on a different size field, so it's a training mode thing, it's not, you know, oh my god, you're not gonna use it every game, obviously there's not time to check your angle, but the whole point is a training mode. This is that muscle memory, so you keep, you're practicing at home, you know right now, there's not stuff going on, can't really go out, so you can start working on that muscle memory, so when you get your pull up, you get used to pulling up right in the right spot.
I like that.
And then-
Mine obviously has the reload indicator on each side, left and right, so just there and just there. It'll tell you when you need to reload on paint, if you already not sensing you're getting low, or you know, something like that, but yeah, it has lights, gonna turn on on each side of the hopper, both sides, and lets you know if you're getting low on paint, so-
So yeah, so that's kind of
[Mark] So the Spire has no-
No it does not have at angle-
[Mark] No level indicator?
No, nope.
[Mark] But the control doesn't have a low.
It doesn't have the low-
Well like he said, bells and whistles. His has something better than mine, mine has something "better" than his, so.
And then, probably the couple other things you guys wanted to see, is gonna be the kind of the profile, the Control does have a little bit lower of a profile.
I'ma set the Spire there, set the Control right next to it. Similar, you know the Spire is just a tad higher, but you know, they trimmed that down a little bit.
[Mark] You can even show 'em the front view.
[Joe] Got your back side comparison.
[Tony] And they both hold 200 paint balls, each, just so you guys know.
[Joe] Side. And then your front comparison. So that's kind of how they shake out on that, and then the other big thing would be the weight. So everybody wanted to see what's gonna be the weight on these.
[Tony] Last but not least, you guys always ask, you want all the technical terms, you wanna know exactly the specs, so here we go.
Get it set up for pounds.
Mark, zoom on in. Control hopper going on the scale.
[Mark] Hmm. 0.9.
[Joe] I'll show it better. 0.9 pounds, we can even change the mode to pounds and ounces if we wanted to be more accurate.
[Joe] Pounds and ounces, yeah.
[Mark] So re-tare it and do it again.
[Tony] We're gonna do it again, just so we get an accurate read. Tare.
[Joe] So it's 14 ounces. Yep.
14 ounces.
So 14 ounces, so under a pound, that's pretty light for a hopper, that's for sure.
All right, Spire III is going on the scale with the spring ramps already on the inside. Spring ramp, just one. Ooh, 1 pound. So what, you got me by two ounces?
[Joe] Two ounces.
Oh, but if you had your spring ramps installed.
Uh oh.
You might wanna throw that on the scale and see what it's working with here. So currently, with no spring ramps, the Control loader is two ounces lighter, but if you're gonna throw those on the scale along with it, just take a lil' look and see.
[Mark] And if you're concerned about losing two ounces, go to the bathroom before you play, you'll probably drop two ounces.
There you go, wise words from Mark,
So we'll throw both of the spring ramps in there.
[Mark] Oh it fluctuated.
[Tony] Oh, you know what? I touched the counter, kind of moved a little bit. It still says 14?
[Mark] All right.
I mean I don't know, so okay, Control loader's gonna be a little lighter, like Mark said, if you're worried about two ounces, go to the men's room or the women's room.
Hey, nah, it's pretty impressive, though, I mean to have a nice hopper like this come in at under a pound, I mean like you said,, the two ounces shouldn't really be a make or break difference, but-
That's it man, that's the Control, well we did a little video, Control versus Spire III, now you guys know the differences, you've seen profiles, you've seen weights, the features, bells and whistles, all that good stuff, don't forget guys, both of these are available in multiple colors, www.lonewolfpaintball.com, and put in the comments below, which hopper you like better. If you wanna see another Versus video on any other products on the market, we've got it. shop Lone Wolf Paintball and head on over to The Jerky Den.
[Mark] And our question?
Joe's gonna answer this one.
Oh.
[Mark] Well, yeah, it works out either way. Manuel Castro wants to know, so did they stop making the Spire III to make this, charge you an arm and a leg, not include a spring ramp on a 220 hopper. That was from the last video that Joe did doing a full review.
Spire III's are still in production.
A hundred percent.
Control's are just the newer, the newer style, I like that little laning, the fancy, you know, level indicator, pretty sweet, but, what do you think Joe?
Yeah no, Spire, I mean they're still cranking the Spires out. The Spire's an awesome loader, been tried and true.
What about charging an arm and a leg for something without a spring ramp? It's only 11-
I mean I would say, it's an arm and a leg, I mean you're at 225, I mean for this one, you add that on, I mean you're seven bucks more than what a Spire would be, but you're getting a dual ramp system, so I mean you're right there, I mean is it annoying that it doesn't come with it off the rip, sure. I would agree, I would have probably personally just put it on, charge the little bit extra and called it a day.
Fair.
You know, but it's never really make or break.
[Mark] Neither one of you as far as I know has actually played with it, so do you really need the spring ramp, that's another question.
Yeah, and that's one of the other issues too, I mean the way these things feed, that's not a die hard necessity, but sure, it's cool to have, you know, yeah, it would have been nice if they would have just maybe charged a us a couple bucks more, just included it, save you guys the trouble, but either way, we're here, we got 'em, so.
www.lonewolfpaintball.com, thanks for watching guys. Take it easy.
[Mark] Bonus question, since there's two of you, two questions. Ryan Shafer wants to know, does the warranty cover dogs eating it? Asking for a friend.
Let your friend know, probably not, so. But Virtue does have an excellent warranty, if there's any issue with them, contact them, they are great over there, so shout out to Nick at Virtue, doing it right for you guys, so.
Yeah.
[Mark] See you.