PaintballX3 Magazine November 2013 Issue | Page 98

product review

barrels accept Empire SuperFreak bore sizing inserts and three are included with the
marker. The DFender hopper’s lid, sitting
atop the butt stock, is a flip lid with magnetic closure, but a speed feed is included
as well for faster reloads.
Mechanically, the Empire DFender is an
electronic paintball gun offering numerous
firing modes including semi-automatic,
ramping, three-shot burst and “rock and
roll” fully automatic. The shooter can quickly and easily “shift on the fly” from safety
to semi to triple-burst and all the way to
fully automatic with a thumb switch on
the left side of the receiver just above the
adjustable, light and snappy single trigger.
Anti-chop eyes prevent paintballs from
being chopped in the marker’s breech

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and disassembly is simple, via push-pins
around the marker’s shells. Plenty of sight
rails are around, allowing sights, scopes,
lights, lasers bipods and anything else
with a dovetail to be attached to the marker’s top, bottom and sides, A nice vertical/
angled foregrip combo is delivered bolted
to the rail at the marker’s front and a single-point sling swivel is bolted to the buttstock on the left side of the marker.
You’d think this long list of standard features all wrapped around a marker and
hopper in a magnesium shell would make
the Empire DFender pretty heavy. It’s not.
The marker, with its six AA batteries installed and a barrel attached, tip the scale
at an extremely impressive five pounds
and change. Obviously that includes a

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