Bunkerkings CTRL Paintball Hopper Unboxing
What's goin on guys? Joe Lone Wolf Paintball. You guys have asked for it, we got it. The Bunkerking's CTRL loader. We're gonna do an unboxing and overview to show you guys the features.
Bunkerkings CTRL Pricing
All right, so jumping into it, this is the new Bunkerking CTRL loader. These retail at $235 to $245 depending on the color way. So right about the same price point as your Virtue Spire III. Virtue and Bunkerkings kinda go hand in hand. The companies are owned separately.
Bunkerkings CTRL Unboxing
So pull it out, that's the loader. You got the box, got your inside and it's nothing fancy and then a little control card assembly and a little coupon code for a later purchase. Talks about the angle indicator and then little bit of programming instructions. Got a couple different things you can adjust the angles, adjust the pressure that all comes right there on the card. Gives you guys a breakdown on that and what your settings are.
[Mark] Adjust the angle of what?
Bunkerkings CTRL Hopper Features & New Additions
So oh you've never seen this. So this is an all new feature. On the back of this loader this is kinda what it's known for. It’s got this angle indicator that helps you train. We'll get into that in a minute. I'll turn it on but yeah we'll save that.
We'll start out. You guys, look at this thing, this profile. Incredibly low and it is still a true 200 round hopper. You can fit 200 paintballs in there. You guys look. This is literally the shortest profile on a loader I've probably ever seen.
So that's one of the claims to fame the guys love is when this thing sits on top of your gun instead of having a hopper that sits up taller you can see right over the top of this gives you a lot better field of view when you're running, gunning looking over coming out of a bunker, it's excellent. I mean this is a really, really sleek design. I love just how kinda compact this hopper is.
So getting into it, its got a reinforced nylon lid. Virtue and Bunkerkings have been doing that on all their stuff now. Lid flips open, super heavy duty, you guys. I mean unless your dog just chews it to pieces you're not gonna break it. To swap out, just like the Spire III and all Crowns are perfectly compatible on this, if you have a Crown SF2 that fits a Spire III or an IR this will fit. But just push that tab it just comes right off like I said, super heavy duty reinforced lid the thing's not going anywhere. You can either throw a Crown on it or you can throw the Bunkerking's NTR, they call it the NTR Speed Feed, that would pop right on.
It's got these real nice rubber fins comes with an extra one operates just like a Crown where you can replace just that slit out those things will slide right out so you can use an NTR Speed Feed you can use a Crown if you have a Spire or a Spire III or a Spire IR the NTR Speed Feeds fits these as well says right on there. They come in a bunch of cool color ways black, red, blue, lime purple, all the different options for you guys.
So we're gonna open this up hopper hinges right apart. You just got this quick pull right here on the back top of your shell comes right off. You got the tray so this one as well. When you get it, you’ll need a rear spring ramp and a front spring ramp as they don't come included with it. For the video I threw them on there so you guys could see what it already looks like but if you buy the CTRL loader you can pick up the rear and front spring ramp. It comes in a kit, it's like $11. So not too much extra if you guys want that. Otherwise it would just be a flat tray.
[Mark] Is it hard to install?
How to Install the Rear and Front Spring Ramp
Nope, it’s super easy. The tray itself, I'll show you all those. The tray itself is magnetic so this just slides in, you can hear it kinda click and that magnet pulls it down. But yeah installing the spring ramps so when you'd open it up you just wouldn't have these two pieces. It would just be nice and flat. They got some real cool designs, Bunkerkings, all that. But yeah this front spring ramp just pops right in place. I can actually disassemble it for you so you can see how quickly that came out. Just got these two little springs, so when you go to put it in have them flat just pop those in on both sides see the we kill suckers and then the one on the back.
I will uninstall it so you guys can see those are the two spring ramp pieces. So yeah normally when you buy the hopper right out of the box that's how it’s gonna come this flat tray. Spring ramps are a couple bucks extra if you like them. When you go to put the tray back in it slides in under the front and its just magnetic. Boom. That simple.
Inside of the Bunkerking CTRL Hopper
Whole hopper broken down. Got the similar tray as the Spire III. It's gonna run on three AA batteries. The power button's right here on the board and then also two, when I had mentioned about the programming and all that printed right on the board are some of the basic instructions you know what the indicators mean so you got that kinda readily, handily available for you guys.
Batteries Required
So I mentioned it runs on three AAs or you can use the Virtue N-charge battery pack. We have those available so that's plug and play. You can take your batteries out throw the rechargeable N-charge in there and then that thing's gonna be good to go for you guys. We have all those options available.
Flipping over to the tray. So you got your tray here. One of the things they did with it it's now most of the hoppers always just had the paint that kinda fell in. This has got this nice kinda lip now. They did that so when the paint is feeding in this tray any of these balls are gonna stay in the tray. Like I said it's got this lip now that overhangs so when the paint gets in here, it can't pop out. So if you're using a mechanical gun, it'll blow back it kinda sends some air back up in there sometimes you have that popcorn effect where it would kinda pop the balls out of the tray. With this lip it's not gonna do that or you know if you're running and gunning your hopper's kinda moving up and down it's gonna keep that paint right there in the tray feeding into ya.
You got your cone here, it’s magnetic disassembly. You can see this ones a little bit different than the Spire III, it's more hollowed out so that way this tension control can kinda feel the paint more. Kinda got rid of this extra weight so it allows it to feel the paint more and it'll adjust accordingly for you guys.
Bunkerkings CTRL Angle Indicator Light
So I'll put this back together and I'll show you that angle indicator that I was talking about which is kinda the coolest features of this loader. There you go. It's got this little hook in the front that hooks in and bam my hopper's back together. I took it all apart.
So you got your power button down here you're just gonna hold that on. You hear it start spinning. So you can see this light. So what they did with this, guys is the whole idea is that they wanted a standard tournament field's 120 wide 120 feet by 150 feet long. So what Virtue did is they did the math. A lot of guys, one of the most important skills in paintball is laning. Right off the break if you can lane out one or two, three guys from the other team in a five-man game, that is huge. So what they did is that they made this training option. So that way you can see what your angle is.
So what happens is when this thing's sitting on your gun if you're angled down too low off the break you know you come up off the box you know guys always wanna swing their guns and half the time they're shooting up so high that paint's flying and hitting guys over the net. Other times guys come up off the box and they're shooting at, you know, kind of flat or you know, kind of a flat level that they think, "well I'm gonna hit 'em" well at that point your paint's not gonna quite make it across the back of the field.
So what Virtue did, they did the math, the trig you know, whatever it was to figure out based on the dimensions of the field you can see this little light in the back is starting to turn green. So right now if I'm too low, the light turns red to show you're on the wrong side.
You can see how the hopper's angled down. Obviously I'm not gonna be shooting the field. When I start to adjust upwards, it starts to go green. So you can see now right there at that angle the hopper is the ideal angle to shoot somebody off the break on a standard NXL field. So you can see as I move it down it goes that way. When I go this way, it goes all the way to the other side it means I'm too high. You can see obviously at this point yeah it'd be shooting over the net and hitting spectators and the vendor booths and whatnot. So when I get this at the right angle. Right there. Boom. I'm in the green. That's my perfect spot.
So their kinda whole idea behind this is something that you can train with at home. You don't have to have paint or anything like that. You’d just kinda be standing there and just boom, pull up your gun. You kinda freeze and you'll see where the hopper indicator is.
So you know you start to get used to your muscle memory pulling up going, "oh all right, cool, perfect." Then you start to remember how that feels. And then it becomes second nature to you guys. So that's a really cool feature. And no one in paintball to my knowledge has ever done that. I haven't seen that on a hopper in the last 10 years. I don't know if 30 years ago some dude tried to do it. Probably not, I can't think of anybody else that has done that before in paintball.
Is the Indicator Feature Legal in a Tournament?
[Mark] Can you use that during a tournament or is there a rule that have to have that turned off?
No you don't have to have it turned off. No rules against that. So yeah that's always on you can probably toggle it off. Yeah so perfectly legal for now. I mean I don't really foresee them changing it any time soon. But really cool feature guys aside from just a good durable loader. Like I said you can definitely see it’s built on the original Spire platform and technology. Spire III is arguably the best loader on the entire market. You can see it as you're shooting the hopper's gonna keep spinning. Feeding paint for you, nice and quiet. It's really not that loud at all. And we're in a nice quiet room.
[Mark] Any low paint indicators or anything of that nature?
I do not believe there are low paint indicators, no. Doesn't look like they did any type of low paint indicator on there. Turn this thing off. I don't believe they did. It's got a low battery indicator, but it doesn't have the low paint indicator like the Virtue one had with the lights.
But yeah the angle thing, that's pretty cool. I mean I've never really had a problem keeping track of how much paint's in my hopper but I mean that angle thing that's huge, like I said. 'Cause I see that guys off the break "Oh my God I should've shot you." like, dude, if you saw where your gun was shooting you weren't even close to that guy. So this is a big step up, I really like that.
We'll probably do another video where we throw it on a paintball gun, take it outside, and shoot it. We'll kinda actually see how the angles and all that move but yeah for now, though this was kind of a full review unboxing breakdown of the Bunkerkings CTRL loader. Love the way it looks, even the design. I mean they did a lot of cool stuff and you can see they shaved weight off these nice little lines and designs on here. Yeah definitely a fancy looking loader real nice durable one-piece feedneck you're not gonna break that thing and the profile. The profile's super low on it.
Wrapping Up
All in all, pretty great hopper. Looking forward to actually taking it out shooting it, seeing how it performs. I’ve got no doubt that it'll definitely hold up to expectations. All this stuff's available in store on Lone Wolf Paintball, online so make sure you check it out. Bunkerking's CTRL loader. Make sure you like this video, subscribe to the Lone Wolf Paintball YouTube channel, and check out the jerky den and we'll see you guys next time.
[Mark] I think we'll have to do a comparison video in the future with the Spire III right next to the Bunkerkings CTRL. And keep an eye out 'cause maybe I can convince Joe to put a package on the website with the hopper with the Speed Feed and the ramp parts together so you guys don't have to click add to cart three times.
Yeah for sure we'll get you guys all hooked up. Check it us out guys, lonewolfpaintball.com.