Does anyone feel like they are cheating on Magpul when they think about buying a Lancer magazine?

I've had a few 20 round smoke Lancers sitting in my cart for a few weeks, but I just can't seem to pull the trigger. I'm a faithful MagPul believer, and it just seems wrong to buy another polymer mag.

To keep this technical: any positives or negatives to getting some Lancer mags over getting some Gen3 20 round mags?

No.

Lancers are in my experience, one of two of the best magazines you can buy

Lancers are superior, I own hundreds of them, no complaints.

I own 70+ GI Mags and six Pmags. Hell, I have more Thermolds than Pmags. So no....

If I could trade all of my PMAGs for Lancers, I would. I still buy every PMAG I see for $8 or less though.

I have a ton of 30 round USGI and PMAGs. Very few 20s. Guess I'll be trying some Lancers.

I have a well rounded collection of Lancer, Magpul, Aluminum, Steel, Thermold... and maybe others.  No guilt.  

After all the trouble I've had with Magpul 20s and Gen3 30s....  No.  I'll probably never buy another Pmag.

RevMs are not M3s.  You are correct, I have never cracked a Pmag, hope I never do. I have a bunch of Gen M2 Pmags.   The Gen M3s didn't work out for me.  I'm good with my Gen M2s and don't see myself buying any more after my experience with early Gen M3 20s and 30s.  

I'm not married to Magpul, they make nice things and I have a few, but I am not obligated in any way.

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I wasn't trying to create a shitstorm. I just found it funny that I can't seem to bring myself to buy a non Magpul polymer magazine.

Maybe I'll just hold off for a bit.

Reading comprehension.  You need it.

No.

I have Magpul, Lancer, Hexmag, H&K, and Troy. I'm an equal opportunity mag-ist!

Which HK? The Steel Marine Mags or the new Poly ones?

 

This.

I am a huge Magpul fan, I only have Magpul AR magazines and USGI AR magazines.  

However, I recently purchased two Magpul AK magazines for my SLR95 and neither of them feed correctly.    A little disappointed.

On the other hand, I recently built 25 Remington 870 less lethal shotguns with the orange Magpul furniture, and they turned out most excellent.

No


I patronize the products of magpul (and lancer, and nhmtg, etc). I believe in Jesus and my responsibility to my family.

Okay. I think we are taking this a bit too far.

When I said faithful, I wasn't drawing any parallels between molded polymers and the love of God and family.

I have about one hundred P Mags, fifty windowed, fifty regular. I'm done buying magazines for the AR platform.

Good for you.  

In my experience Lancers are tougher than PMags, but PMags are more reliable.  Not that Lancers are unreliable, they work fine in 98% of rifles.  But rifles that won't run on any other mag tend to run with PMags.

I own one Lancer smoke 30 rounder and it is sweet. I hope to acquire more one of these days. For now, I keep a dozen windowed foliage green Pmags for shooting. They work well enough once you get the first few rounds out of them.

I have a shitload of Pmags still in the wrappers as well. Like the other poster said, it's hard not to grab a few when you see them on sale.

You really cant cheat on a consumable product, of which there are millions of versions exactly like yours.

Its like cheating on a hooker.

Fair point and quote worthy.

Magpul = Hooker

 

Fair enough. I don't think it would be cheating on them, anymore than a trip to Burger King equates to cheating on McDonald's. Their job is to earn my patronage (ie, my dollars); my job is to do whatever I want with those dollars, while myself trying to earn the patronage of others. I have a hundred pmags, give or take; not knocking them by any means. I just leave it up to magpul (and nhmtg, and lancer, etc) to make their product the one that earns my dollars over anyone else's product. Magpul has some very good products and some great products; their magazines aren't the only products of theirs that I use.

The Gen2's are great AR magazines. The Gen3's are very good AR magazines with the added benefit of also fitting some non-AR guns. I have both generations. Now, if magpul were to actually release the full slate of products they "introduced" at SHOT nine months ago, they'd earn some more of my dollars. Fact is, I'll probably buy one or two of the D-60's when they come out regardless, which won't be cheating on NHMTG (my absolute 'first love' of AR mags... )  Yes, I know the story of "we want to make sure they're right", and that sounds all well and good. But that's supposed to be done before a new-product roll-out, not after. When they are finally released, I would absolutely LOVE to be able to write a glowing review of them on this and other boards. Maybe make other manufacturers step up their game in the process. But can't do it if they don't exist.

Well, i wouldn't say magpul is the hooker, rather, ar15 magazines in general.

Cheap, available, do their job, and if it gets broken, get a new one

It was difficult for me, to be honest.  I think the world of MagPul, and have tremendous respect for them.  As a product development professional myself - these guys set the bar, no other company in our industry has my respect like MagPul has.  Probably a little over-statement, but I consider them the Steve Jobs/Apple of our industry.  You can't deny these guys come out with amazing products and are game changers.  The industry is what it is, because of MagPul, and they are continuing to come out with excellent products.  However, there is an appearance that their material science has now been surpassed.  

Frankly, Lancer is making what I need and what I want.  MagPul is still just making what I need.  So, sadly, I'm now buying Lancer clear magazines.  If MagPul ever figures out clear polymer chemistry as well as ETS apparently has, then I will be very interested.  I know they claim such chemistry doesn't meet their standards.  Sadly, I'm not seeing a lot of data supporting that claim - and a lot of postings and abuse commentary indicating the clear ETS mag is actually stronger than a non-clear PMag.  Ball is in MagPul's court to  publish a comparison showing that's not so (as in breaking ETS Mags while PMags Survive)  - as no one is more open minded than me to see it.  

To address your specific question - the reason you should buy Lancer 20's is because if you ever shoot service rifle competition (and they make curved legal), you will be expected to load 2 rounds in one magazine, and 8 rounds in another.   You are expected to load the 2 round magazine first, than reload with the 8 while under time constraint.  If you have a clear magazine construction, you will visually be able to confirm the correct round count.  You will also visually be assured you are grabbing the correct magazine in preparation and during the firing.  You can obviously successfully compete with non-clear magazines - every shooter currently does so, as do I.  But if given the choice, I would prefer to have clear - because more than once I've had that "well.. I think I loaded 8.." moment, and had to strip them out and reload again just to be sure.  Just like every other competitor has had to do at least once.

You summed up my feelings when I first posted quite well. Thanks.

Where the hell are the Pmags for under $8!!!! I can't break $7 on metal mags!! Link PLEASE

I have a bunch of pmags.  Too many to count of USGI. Probably 15 or so Lancers, and 18-20 ETS Group mags. They are all great mags.
I really like the metal feed lips of the Lancers. The toughness of the ETS mags is really something.

You should cheat on Magpul.  Pretty soon they'll be coming out with another generation of Pmags, making your gen 2 and 3 obsolete.  If they leave room for improvement, then why settle for less?  They are still tweaking the magic polymer formula and they haven't perfected it yet, which makes me believe a new generation will come out.  I say this because every generation has had its problems.  I like Magpul but I'm done buying their mags.  They have excellent customer service so I'm not worried if they break.

Wheres a good place to buy lancers?

DSG is my go-to vendor. They have Lancers in stock (and PMAGs)

Five clear 20 round Lancers ordered.

Primary Arms has Lancers on sale periodically. That's when I pick them up. Too expensive otherwise.

I prefer the Lancers.  Only issue I've had with Magpul is the dust covers are not that secure, but I'm not sure they're really necessary either.

I'm waiting for the Gen5

.

I'd rather buy from a company that constantly improves their product.  If they waited until it was perfect to release it, they'd never release anything.  So, release the best available product now and continue to make improvements as new technologies and materials become available.  Or be like so many other firearms companies that stagnate because they refuse to improve their product.  Dammit it was good enough in 1980, it's good enough now.

Yea that was just a non-nonsensical statement.  All of them improve their products and switch over to updates, including Lancer.  As well they should.

That's true to a point, but when someone introduces a new generation of magazines, claiming they're better than all previous gens, proven by years of pre-production testing and evalution, then immediately start having ongoing revisions to correct 'statistically insignificant' numbers of issues, that only occurs with certain ammo, that are 'not detrimental to the function of the magazine'...  Just rubs me the wrong way. Especially when I'm one of the statistically insignificant that had problems that were detrimental to the function of the magazine.  

If the Magpul mags work just fine, why would you spend more money on the type mag mag?

Translucent. But also curiosity.

It happens.  End user testing will always reveal things that no amount of company testing could possibly foresee.

Samuse, I'm a newb, need to start buying mags - would you please elaborate on the kinds of issues you've had with the Gen 3 Magpuls?