Direct Hit Paintballs Review

So what on earth is Direct Hit? Direct Hit paintballs are the latest paintballs to hit the paintball market. Currently they are available from paintballgeek.com for about $39 per case. Each case contains the standard 2000 paintballs. Picture.

Our two cases arrived by FedEx in perfect condition. Not a single ball break, which is quite astounding. We have had other paintballs sent to us on previous occasions, and they usually end up with ball breaks. The boxes had plastic bubble wrap surrounding every bag of paintballs from all directions. The boxes even had about five bright orange stickers that said ‘Fragile’ on them. Excellently packaged.

The balls were a purple and pink shell with a fill that broke fluorescent pink.

We wanted to be as objective as possible, so we distributed the paintball bags to a number of different industry experts and let them play with the Direct Hit paintballs in order to gain a broader range of opinions.

The first thing we did after the paintballs arrived was break a few to see the fill. We were impressed with the fill, to say the least. The fill was very bright fluorescent pink and was very hard to get off your hands. It was so hard that parts of our hands, especially areas around our fingernails, remained stained for a few days.

Some of our staff members opined that the fill felt hot or warm. They couldn’t explain the feeling very well, but said it’s like the feeling you get when you use Icy/Hot muscle pain medication on your aching muscles. So if you get sore by the end of the day, crack a few balls open and soothe your aching muscles.

Another one of our staff members said that he noticed a pungent odor emanating from the paintballs and their fill. We tried this out on a few other paintballs and the smell wasn’t there. However, we must say that he really did not like the smell and described it as, “smells like rotten fish or cow manure.” Not everyone concurred. In fact, after hearing this we went to test the remaining bags, but could not detect this smell. Perhaps it depends on the batch you get. Fish oil is not unusual in paintball products. But more and more manufacturers are trying to avoid oils in their paintball products.

So how do they shoot?
Veteran paintball player and long time field operator, Sharif Joseph said, “Once you are hit, the fill is not negotiable. When you’re out, you’re out. No question about it.” Sharif has been playing paintball for over 14 years and is probably the one who brought paintball to the Midwest. Furthermore, he has played in many tournaments and has receive 2nd place in The Big One. He was also a member of the Killer Klowns paintball team and has been involved in all facets of the paintball industry.

Sharif used his infamous ball drop test. He dropped five balls with his arm fully extended and parallel with the ground onto a smooth concrete floor. Of the five balls, 3 broke and 2 bounced, which he said was above average. He said usually most will bounce. He was impressed with how well they broke. “These paintballs are very fragile and brittle.” He also mentioned that none of the paintballs broke in the barrel. He was using a custom autococker with a 3000 psi compressed air supply and a stainless steel Lapco Autospirit barrel.

Sharif was also very impressed by the shell color. “The color is great, you can see where they are going, and that really helps when you are trying to aim or take longer shots.” When asked if he noticed an odor he said, “No I didn’t. They don’t have any odor.” He then broke one and said, “Smells fine.”

Sharif went on to say that he’d give the paintballs a rating that was on par with RP’s All Star or El Tigre paintballs. “The balls are small bore, the paint is very sticky and bright, and everyone knows that I was the one that hit them. It’s a very unique color.”

Mike Gomez of Michigan Paintball was also very impressed. Mike is a long time field owner and operator and has refereed more games than anyone can imagine. Mike has been involved with the paintball industry before it was even an industry. “Really adequate fill, broke very thick, and left a lot of paint on it’s target” he proclaimed. Mike went on to say that he enjoyed the testing process and had “no ball breaks in the barrels, no duds, and no flat spots in the 1000 rounds I tested.”

He tested the Direct Hit paintballs with an Inferno, a Smart Parts Impulse, and a Tippmann Model 98. The barrels he used were the CP barrel, stock Tippmann barrel, and the very nice stock Inferno barrel. To say that not a single ball broke in the barrels, is quite a statement. Especially knowing the rougher nature of the stock Tippmann barrel. He also mentioned that none rolled out of the barrels.

Mike also said, “They flew straight in our barrels. The hits are easy to see, but I can’t stress enough there is a lot of paint in the balls. I mean a lot. When they broke, they drowned their targets. I haven’t seen that before. The Direct Hit paintballs were easy to see when traveling through the air, as you know that is crucial.”

Mike and Sharif are among the pioneers of paintball and for them to be so impressed with these new paintballs is truly a statement, in and of itself.

So what did our editorial staff think?
We also shot the paintballs with an Autococker running at a 230 psi operating pressure, Lapco barrel, and a 3000 psi compressed air supply. We were very impressed, to put it mildly. We used the paintballs outdoors at Toledo Action Games and performed our typical battery of tests. We played a few games with the paintballs, shot them at the range, and tried getting them to fail.

During the game that we played, the paintballs shot very nicely. They went straight, broke on contact, and never broke in the barrel. We eliminated a few players and found that the paint was very unwipeable. In fact, we attempted, as a test, to wipe the paint off between games, and we just couldn’t. However, on black clothing it was easier to mask the color. We also gave some to a gentleman playing with an all stock Model 98, barrel and all, and he said that the paintballs were shooting better than the ones he had before. So not only did they work well in our tight bore barrel, but also in a very loose, unfinished, unpolished stock barrel.