Muzzle Flash Test of 25 Suppressors – SilencerCo, Dead Air, Huxwrx, AAC, KGM, Rugged, B&T, and More

Overview:

By popular request! We tested 25 suppressors and put them head to head looking at muzzle flash. See the full list of suppressors below, includes brands such as SilencerCo, PTR Industries, Huxwrx, KGM, Dead Air, Rugged, AAC B&T, Otter Creek Labs, . We tested each suppressor on 16" and 11.5" 5.56 rifles to determine performance on standard length and SBR AR15s. Thank you to TrueShot for providing ammo for this video. We used PMC X-Tac 55gr as always.

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Skip To Video Topic:

00:00 - Intro
01:48 - Test setup and parameters
02:41 - Muzzle Devices
03:33 - SilencerCo Omega 36M
04:12 - Dead Air Nomad 30
04:47 - KGM R6
05:21 - SilencerCo Velos
05:57 - Otter Creek Labs Polonium 5.56 K
06:54 - Otter Creek Labs Polonium 5.56 Full Size
07:12 - SilencerCo Scythe Ti
07:46 - Dead Air Nomad LTi
08:18 - PTR Industries Vent 3
08:50 - B&T SRBS Ti 5.56
09:23 - B&T SRBS 7.62
09:55 - Dead Air Nomad Ti
10:25 - Huxwrx Ventum 7.62
11:00 - AAC SDN 6
11:31 - AAC M4 Mini
12:05 - Rugged Alaskan Ti
12:39 - SilencerCo Omega 300 w/ 5.56 End Cap
13:12 - Grunt Mini
13:43 - Huxwrx Flow K
14:19 - Huxwrx QD
14:49 - Rugged Razor 5.56
15:21 - Surefire RC3
15:52 - Surefire 212 Mini
16:25 - KGM 5.56
17:00 - Otter Creek Labs 5.56 (on 14.5" Rifle)
17:46 - Trueshot Ammo
17:55 - After Action & Conclusions

Transcript:

Hey everybody, Rob Orgel with Silencer Syndicate. You asked for it, you're getting it. We're here tonight at the 1,000 yard range and the sun is setting, it's getting very dark, very quick and we're going to go head to head with 25 different silencers. Now our hopes is to fire three to five rounds, catch that first round pop, and then see the subsequent rounds from an angle that should hopefully help us see how much muzzle flash we're actually delivering. Now how we're gonna conduct this experiment, we've got the same two hosts that you remember, the 11.5 inch with the adjustable gas system. We're gonna leave the gas all the way open for this. Then we've got the 16 inch with the same adjustable gas system where we're gonna leave it all the way open just for the sake of ease as we hop from suppressor to suppressor. Now I did bring a particular rifle out that's a 14.5 and the reason I did that was for the Otter Creek Lab OCM-5. The OCM-5 suppressor has a proprietary mount that it's kind of difficult to put onto our normal favorite hosts. So for this video being just muzzle flash, we're gonna attach this guy onto a different rifle knowing that he's 14.5. Having said that, the rest of the silencers, you're gonna see them go through a 11.5 and a 16 inch variation so we can test for that muzzle flash. We'll start by having a control. The control is going to be no muzzle attachment at all, then we're gonna add a flash hider, and then we're probably just gonna pick one of our favorite muzzle devices that you can see the muzzle flash that a rifle would typically send into the atmosphere. After that, we're gonna go all down the line and hit each one of these silencers. Before you get to see the rest, like, comment, subscribe. Please help us beat that 2A algorithm because we're out here at night when I should be drinking tequila and I'm making this video for you, so please do return the favor and hit us with that like, comment, subscribe, and help us defeat that 2A algorithm. We're kicking butt, keep it up. All right, so here's our plan and please bear with us. This is in high hopes that it works out. This table has every one foot a stripe of blue tape. We're hoping that we're going to be able to quantify how much muzzle flash we catch every time we fire. The first round pop, hopefully we catch. Subsequent rounds, again, hopefully we catch. Without a muzzle device and with a muzzle device, it should be pretty observable. With a suppressor, we're hoping we don't need this many feet of observation. We're thinking it's gonna be closer to inches, not feet. Without a muzzle device, it might be a bit more, but this is how we plan to quantify. So every time we switch suppressors, we'll move the rifle forward and backwards so that we're aligning the edge of this table with the forward side of that suppressor or muzzle device. All right, here we go.

*Testing begins*

We were done filming for the evening. We did the 11.5, the 16 inch. We went through 25 different suppressors on each setup, as well as no muzzle brake, a flash hider, and then the SilencerCo ASR. So we got through a lot of good quantifiable data. I can tell you from behind the rifle, I could see some major differences. Hopefully the camera captured some of those differences as well, so that you can have some quantifiable data to help you in your next purchase. Special thanks to TrueShot, because they covered the ammo tonight. We went through, I don't know, like a thousand rounds tonight. Going through all these combinations and doing the three shot, first round, pop, etc. So special thanks to those guys. Finally, we've got an ammo sponsor that's really helping us. All right, now that we've gotten an opportunity to get back to the house and dissect the information we pulled, I want you to have two frames of reference. The first one is understand what muzzle flash really does to the shooter. So as the operator of the weapon, in some cases, I saw more muzzle flash than the camera did, and same thing with the cameraman. Sometimes he saw stuff that the camera did not capture. We put our settings with the camera. Now, you know I'm not a camera guy. I'm a firearms guy, but my buddy who is the camera guy, we had a discussion before we filmed this, and we decided we want to capture this to the human eye. So as close as we can make the camera see at night to how the human eye sees is what we set this for. We did not set this up to exploit capturing the muzzle flash as much as possible. We wanted a more real world test to what you're likely to see. And for the most part, we were able to capture it. What we saw with our eyes is very similar to what the camera saw. Now, if we had changed those settings and really exploited, kind of like you would do with your iPhone if you want to capture a muzzle flash, you might put night shot on and hit the button when somebody's shooting, and you'll capture the best part of that muzzle flash. That wasn't our intentions for this. Our intentions were what will it look like for you standing next to the guy who's shooting. Now, some other context is when you're shooting at night, particularly in tactical operations, a lot of the times you're wearing night vision. And when you're wearing night vision, these muzzle flashes get amplified quite a bit. Now, I know in the comments section, you're going to say, "Hey, do it all again and show me with night vision." And we're working on it. We do have night vision recording devices. We're kind of seeing how we're going to do that. But if you like this and keep help us with that anti-2 algorithm thing, maybe we can keep snowballing and get some more night shoot going. But know that this is just phase one of our night shoot. This was just a test. This really isn't 100% quantifiable. It's just a good exposure to what we're finding so far. Now, you know we've got 20 some odd more suppressors on the way, so you know we're likely to repeat this test. And when we do this test on the next round, I'd like to know in the comments section, do you want to see the same stuff you saw where it's more to the human eye and what you're likely to see it and expect? Or do you want us to really exploit that muzzle flash so you can see how big it would get in the camera's eye, which maybe your eye doesn't see quite as well. But that might give you something more quantifiable to delineate which one you like better, understanding that your human eye might not necessarily catch all that muzzle flash when you're shooting the weapon. All right, so let's understand why you'll see people do a sequence of fire. Often people will do a three shot or a five shot. And if you'll watch our sound testing, you'll see me fire the first round and then we'll take your ear pro off and shoot the second round. That's because of first round pop. And that's because there's oxygen inside the suppressor. And when you fire that first round, it's often a little bit louder and has a slightly larger muzzle flash. In some cases, a much larger muzzle flash. So this is where you'll see me attach the suppressor and fire one round and then two and three. This way we're seeing that first round pop and what it looks like. There's theories in the world today that people have found ways to defeat first round pop. And I'll let you look through our videos and decide if some suppressors do a good job or that they're consistent throughout, or in some cases shot three was the larger flame. That's just kind of how it happens. But in the end, the first round pop is something that we can typically identify. And it's usually the worst of the three within sound and muzzle flash. So for the most part, when we had no muzzle device, the flash hider or the ASR brake on both the 16 and the 11.5, it was pretty obnoxious. You can see the flames coming out of the barrel. When we moved into any of the suppressors, they all performed substantially better than those first three, where we didn't have a suppressor at all. Having said that, some of the smaller suppressors did not perform all that great because they're small. The larger suppressors by and large did excellent. And the medium suppressors, you can dissect it yourself and decide what you think. But there were some suppressors we decided particularly shined and particularly failed. So the ones we decided particularly shined, both shined on the 16 inch and the 11.5. And that's the Omega 36M, and that's a 338 suppressor. And it's very large. We believe it's the suppressor volume that really helped tone it down. I mean, there was almost nothing to see in the camera. And then there was the long suppressors, the Nomad Ls and the titaniums. Because they're so long and so much volume, they really absorbed a lot of that muzzle flash. Another one that surprised us was the Velos 556. The Velos being a more flow through-ish style suppressor, we expected to catch some muzzle flash like we did on the Huxworks. And I'll come back to the Huxworks in a minute. But we really didn't see any muzzle flash on that suppressor. It was very impressive. Now, I know a lot of people are kind of controversially going back and forth about the Surefire RC3. We actually thought it performed very well. And you know I'm not a Surefire guy. But that suppressor did incredibly well for this low light situation. In both the 11.5 and the 16 inch. But I'll let you dissect that and tell me what your thoughts are. Now, we did notice a few that did not perform well. And the ones who did not perform well, particularly on the 16 inch gun, was the rugged 556. I'm not terribly impressed with that suppressor, both in its sound suppression and in its muzzle flash. I'm not sure I'm digging that one. And then the 360 Ti. Now, that suppressor is made for 338. It's really only got four baffles. So it takes the bite off for a hunting situation. But it does not perform well at night. And finally, the KGM suppressors. The ones that I have is the R6 and the 556. We have the 556A1 and the 556A2 on the way. But on the current models that I have, there are ports around the end of that suppressor, which directs the blast in a 360 degree. And that's supposed to reduce recoil, pull the gun forward. I get it. Maybe during the day that does a good thing. But at night, it does not do good. As the shooter, I'm observing that muzzle flash from every direction. And I can say I don't dig that. Once I have the A1 and the A2, we'll test those again. But I can say that I'm not terribly impressed without that one performed. Now, of course, we go back in time. The SDN6 was a suppressor of yesteryear. It did not do good for nighttime shooting. That was back when I don't think back pressure or muzzle flash was really a consideration. The RDBS 762 performed pretty poorly on the 556 rifle. But that's kind of expected, one, to flow through, two, it's 7 ounces. And three, it's for 762. So we weren't terribly impressed. In fact, the first couple of shots we did, it put fireballs out there. And we decided maybe we're still burning off some machine oil or something. So we ran the test three more times in order to create a little bit more fair of a scenario. Because all of these suppressors have been shot multiple times. That's one of my newest suppressors and has the lowest round counts on it. If you're curious, I'm up to 58 suppressors right now. The vent is the newest one from PTR. Okay. Hopefully, this gives us some quantifiable data for you to go through, pick at and decide which one you like, which one you don't like. If you like this video and want to see more, please comment, like, subscribe. All that stuff goes a long way for us. And this is just the beginning. We didn't get it perfect. We're going to do it again. We're going to get more suppressors. We're going to keep running this test over and over. So I'd like to know in the comment section, do you want to see more as to the human eyes we can make with the camera like we did in this video? Which in some cases makes it hard to dissect which one performed better than which. Or do you want us to really exploit that muzzle flash so we can capture maybe even more than the human eye will see. So you can quantifiably decide which suppressors you like in kind of exploited situations. One more side note I wanted to throw in there, because I said I would, is the Huxworks. So the Huxworks, we really didn't capture a whole lot of muzzle flash. And the reason is because everything else showed flames. And the camera captured the flames relatively well. The sparks, it doesn't catch all that good. And the Huxworks really was like sparky coming out the front, not flame coming out the front. So we didn't really capture it well. But I can tell you that to the human eye, we both agreed that the QD did pretty good. The Flow K, not so great. And I know people have been commenting on that. And it's a fact. The Huxworks really do good in signature reduction. But as far as the tiny one, sound reduction is not great. And there is some muzzle flash. The larger one, muzzle flash is pretty good. And sound is okay. But the back pressure, they were really after back pressure on those suppressors. So for that part, they did great. The other categories. So hopefully this gives you the right quantifiable data so that you can purchase your next suppressor knowing what to expect in your nighttime shoot. As always, like, comment, subscribe, and we'll see you in the comments.