HK Army Speed vs Dye LT-R vs Virtue Spire IR
What is going on, guys? It is Tony and Jake. And today we are bringing you a triple threat match of paintball hoppers. We've got the HK Army Speed in the building versus the Dye LT-R and also the Spire IR.
Before we get into any of this, first off, we're going to say, hit up Lone Wolf Paintball. Second off, we're going to wonder– what in the beep is on Jake's head right now, okay?
[Jake] PB sweat bag that's what it is. This is the old school way. I look like Uncle DJ or my Dad, Dad DJ. So when you're out there snap shootin', you know, you got the little thing on the top, and you just gotta look good.
This guy is absolutely ridiculous.
[Jake] Well, I can't play good, so I’ve got to look good, which leads me to my first point. If you have HK Army, you obviously are looking the best on the field. No matter what company, HK makes the best looking gear.
You think so?
[Jake] One hundred percent.
I mean, they are, they are pretty intense.
[Jake] They are the AG, they're AG.
Electronics and Pricing
All right, on to the hoppers. Let's get down to the nitty-gritty here. So Jake came in the building today to defend the Speed, which is a great hopper. These things retail at $79.95, super light, durable. What kind of batteries does this thing take?
[Jake] Two nine-volts.
Take it off the stand and show the people.
[Jake] So right underneath here. You just fricking take her off right there. And then you have two little battery slots right there. I don't know if Mark can see that. Mark can see that now. So you've got two little battery slots right there, and then you put your, you plop your two nine-volts in. You have your button and your light right underneath here, and then you just hit it. It turns on, and then you're good to go.
Okay, so let's talk about the Dye LT-R a little bit, comparison, kind of seeing what's what. This is $99.95, that's $79.95, and the IR over here is $114.95. So we're all within the same price point range. This hopper does take-
[Jake] Yeah, let's get to that battery.
Right here, right down in there. It is three double As, the same on the Spire IR I believe, right? Three double As?
Yeah, three. Yeah, this one is super easy to take apart, as I'm not able to take it apart.
Did you slide the button down?
[Jake] I did, I did. No, you slide the button up in the unlocked position. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's why I was struggling.
It's brand new, so you're struggling?
[Jake] I am struggling. There we go. Got her! New plastic, and then you just fricking pop out the whole tray and there you go. Three double A spots right there.
Okay, so actually, you know what? While we're on the inside of these hoppers, don't put it back in just yet. You were telling me earlier that this HK Speed hopper you can easily clean out sometimes?
[Jake] Correct, yeah.
HK Army Speed Maintenance
With even water if you're careful. So show me. Set that down and show me how that works. Okay.
[Jake] So I owned a Speed for two to three years. I used it as my main hopper for the longest time when they came out, because I also use the original Pinokio. I used it when I was out on the field. So how I would always clean it and how Evan from Pinokio, the dude who helped design this-
[Tony] Push button-
[Jake] You have one little push button tongue. You pull this out. And if you takeIf you break a little bit of paint in here, whatever, how I would clean this out after every single day if I broke paint, which normally it wouldn't happen, but you can just take a little squirt bottle, spray it in there, and it comes out as long as you're not tipping it back up like this.
Towards the batteries, obviously.
[Jake] Yeah, this is where your batteries are at. If you, you don't want to get the battery in the board area wet. I got mine wet a couple of times, and it didn't break, but I don't suggest it. But I would sit there, I'd spray it off on the inside. It's not like the Spire where you can't manually sit here and twist this or else you're going to break it. And here you can just get up in here. The fins are soft, so you can get up underneath the fins. You can, I would just take a microfiber, and then I would just wipe it up into here. And I just wipe up here. Super easy to do, so it was very, very easy to clean.
Okay, speaking about the fins and getting up in that area right now, I heard that hopper can feed 30 plus paintballs per second.
[Jake] I don't know. I didn't test it.
Okay, fair enough, but-
[Jake] But it would feed 12.5 to 15 balls a second when I would play that.
Without a problem.
[Jake] Yeah, easy, no problem. It wouldn't jam. The fins areIt feeds basically anything. I've had rocks go through there. I had a pine cone jam up once, because it wouldn't fit down into the Speed or wouldn't fit down in the Speed-
Why is he putting a pine cone in there?
[Jake] It fell from a tree when I was playing. It actually fell through my Speed feed. But I still had a pine cone in there, and I kept reloading paintballs. And the pine cone just kept jumping up over the fins. And I kept on actually feeding. I have a video of it. It was pretty funny. And I was like what's going on? And I pulled out a pine cone. So it will feed sort of basically anything which is really cool, which is why I liked it and why I used it for so many years.
Hopper Profiles
Let's talk about ergonomics and the actual profile of the hopper itself. So I know the reason you really liked to have it was because of the rotor you've got there. I mean, it's fat and chunky in the back. There's no denying that.
[Jake] So how this sits on the gun is that you have a really big wide view, a really big range underneath, because you don't have all of this meat here. Same thing with the Spire is that this thing looks like a boat on the back, so it's not the easiest to see, 'cause normally you're looking down the feed neck of your guns. So you're normally looking down like this, and it is really nice when you're in the snake. You're in that front jarrito or whatever. You want to be able to have that nice wide view when you're looking, so if you're getting shot from the side, you don't just have that side hopper just sitting there looking at you.
Sitting there, is it looking at you or are you lookin' at it?
[Jake] Yeah, it's both, it's looking back at you. You put some googly eyes on here that'd probably be awesome.
You would do that. You would be the type of guy to do that, for sure.
[Jake] I would. So it does have the lowest profile in the back. That's the biggest reason why I used it on the speedball field. When I used it on the woods ball field, I would just use the normal Pinokio. I'd use the big boy.
Loader Feed Sensors
All right, so let's talk about two more features, two or three, and then we'll close this video out. You also told me that this hopper never jams, and that's a lot to do with the eye sensor. How does the eye sensor on this thing work?
[Jake] So there is no eye sensor. It's a bend sensor. I don't know if you can see that little clip in there, Mark.
There's a ribbon tab that sits on the–.
[Jake] So there's a little tab on the inside, so this doesn't have eyes.
Hold on one second. Just, just hold on. I'll be right back. Mark, just keep it rolling, I'll be back. I have one that had batteries. Just show them how this works. That one has batteries in it.
[Jake] Oh, okay. So this one has batt-
[Jake] So there is a little sensor in here. It's not eyes. So if you, you know, if you get any paint or anything on there, it's not going to jam up. So then once you move your finger across that sensor, you can hear it going.
If you quit talking, let them hear it.
[Jake] Yeah. If you just listen to it. You just look at it.
Okay, so there is a little ribbon in there and every-
[Jake] Every time that a paintball passes through it, then the spins, the little fins move. If there's no paintballs, like there is right now, this is on, you can see the light is on, if there is no paintballs there, it will not feed. It will do nothing. It doesn't pulse. It doesn't grind up popcorn. It doesn't do anything like that.
So keep it just like that. I want to show you on the Dye LT-R. It does have an anti-jam fin just in case you did get a weird or fat paintball. You can do the anti jam. The Spire IR does not have that. They have the standard-
[Jake] Don't they have a button? Yeah, doesn't the button like, if you hit that button?
Yeah, I mean, you could press it. I think it's going to rotate it back a little bit.
[Jake] Yeah. It has the other little button. So it does, yeah, it does like a little skirt!
But neither of these hoppers are built like that with a little tab eye sensor. All the sensors are already on the board and they're more-
[Jake] And the Spire pulses.
These are more force-fed than this, correct?
[Jake] Correct, yeah. This does not keep a lot of tension on the ball on that ball stack inside of your feed neck. Most people aren't shooting 15 to 20 balls a second semi-PSP anymore or anything like that where the rotor, when it originally came out, it had all that torque on the ball stack. So those first few balls, once you start ripping on the trigger, you have all those balls compressed down, and you have 10 balls right there ready to go. But if you're shooting 12, 12.5 to 15 balls a second, it'll still feed perfectly fine. If you're going to, you know-
You like that?
[Jake] Yeah.
That's a good point?
[Jake] Yeah.
Speed Feeds!
No, I like it. And the fins inside of here are pretty soft. Lastly, let's talk about the speed feeds. So we went over the batteries and how they come apart and all that. But speed feeds for the hoppers. Your, well, not your, but the HK Army Speed is a lot like the LT-R for that, because you can't easily just pop. Show them how the speed feed goes on the IR.
[Jake] This is easy. You don't even have to pull this off anymore, but right here there's a little tab. And then you just take this little tab, you push it in like a little button. You just maneuver it out. And there she is. Here's my speed feed. It's got my fins and everything. And then you just boop!
And then the LT-R you got to actually take it off. And then you're going to go on the inside, undo some screws, and that way you'll be able to install the speed feed on here. Same with the HK Army. It doesn't have a quick release, like the Spire IR does.
[Jake] Yeah, this one has one little screw on the side. Once you get that screw off, and then you take your little nose cone piece here, and then you slide this off. You have to take the battery cover out, as well. And then what you do is after you get that little screw out, that's right here on the side, you just kind of take your hand, and like a claw martian. Yeah. And you just kind of spread it apart. There's a little seam right here. And then it just comes right apart.
So for easability, installing the speed feed Spire IR, for sure. Next is gonna be that. And then the rotor, you've got a bunch of screws and stuff to deal with. And obviously out of all of these three, I believe weight-wise. We didn't bring the scale today, but I think this one-
Hopper Weights and Capacities
[Jake] This one's the lightest, this one's the lightest, but I think it holds the least amount of paintballs.
180-round capacity for this, for the Speed.
[Jake] Isn't the Spire 200-
These are both like 200, so.
[Jake] Yeah, so this does hold the least amount, but nonetheless.
And I would say my last point on here would be I think the LT-R is the only one that does come with, so they can see, an actual ramp already built into the inside, so when you guys get low on paint, it forces the paint towards the front to feed better.
[Jake] That is one thing that sucks about the Pinokio. And then plus when it's not, when it doesn't pulse, like the Spire, if you have two or three paintballs left, it just kind of does that little pulse, this is on right now, it doesn't do anything. So if you have those last few paintballs in there, and you don't have any paint left, you kinda gotta do like a little shake and shoot and then it'll end up feeding the rest of them.
Ka-choo, ka-choo, ka-choo.
[Jake] Yeah, exactly, just like that. And then it'll end up going in there. The Spire, you can add a ramp.
All right.
[Mark] What is, each of you, what is your best selling point of each hopper?
Best Feature of each Hopper
Okay. Okay, you go first. One thing that you start from left to right, go. Best-selling point about the Dye LT-R.
[Jake] It's the fastest.
Okay, Speed.
[Jake] The lightest and has the best view.
[Jake] Spire IR, it's super easy. It's super, super easy. Everything in terms of taking apart, speed feed. There's not really any maintenance you're ever going to have to do. It's super easy for a new person to just take this and just do this right here. You can throw this in your bathtub. You can put it in your dishwasher. You can do pretty much anything. And then with this, you just kind of wipe it down. The Spire is a very, very easy hopper to use. You just buy it, you put it on your gun, and you're ready to go. That's what I like about the Spire.
Sounds like you really like the Spire, okay. LT-R for me. You said that this was the fastest. For me, my favorite thing is the shark fin, in case you do catch a weird fat oblong paintball, you can unjam it from the bottom. For the HK Army Speed, I really do like that you said it is the lightest. I'm going to go with that. The field of view is great, too. And then the IR, same. Quick changing that speed feed from speed feed to rain lid in case you got in bad conditions. Very easy. Great hopper. So yeah-
[Jake] And the warranty on the Spires as well.
It's nice.
[Jake] They do have the best warranty.
Mark's got his phone in his hand, so he might have a question.
[Jake] Oh no.
YouTube Question
[Mark] Yes, I don't know if people can hear me. But VexTV, "can you get a speed feed for an Empire hopper?"
What type of Empire? Like Empire makes a h=Halo hopper.
[Jake] Then there's the Z2s and then there's the original Prophecies.
So there is a universal speed feed for the Halo Too hopper. If you want to do that, if you're owning a Z2 or a Prophecy you also have speed feeds for that.
[Jake] Do you have speed feeds for that?
Well, they, I don't carry them in stock anymore, but I know there were speed feeds on the market made for those hoppers, so. Yes, there were speed feeds for those, as well. So any Empire hopper, as far as I know, they have made a speed feed for them, yes. And that's it. All right, guys, hope you enjoyed a different version of kind of comparing and contrasting hoppers. Jake, who is still weird as you guys already know with this on his head.
[Jake] Just old school, man.
And shop now-
[Jake] Back to the 90s. Make paintball great again, 30 balls a second.
Is he okay? I don't know.
[Jake] Sick!
He's not okay.
[Jake] Make paintball violent again.
He won't even let me talk. Shop Lone Wolf Paintball. Have a good day, guys.
[Jake] Sick!