Let’s face it. We as modern consumers are used to hearing cheap and automatically equating it with low-quality junk. The word cheap has definitely evolved to occupy that niche of definition over time. Cautions and pithy sayings abound on why you need to avoid whatever is cheap, wherever it is.

“When you’re in for a dime, you’re in for a dollar,” they say. They also say to buy it right the first time and keep it instead of having to replace it a hundred times thereafter. Those thoughts arise from the same vein.

We’re not here to tell you to ignore them. There’s truth in them. But we’re going to shatter the illusion that cheap unequivocally means bad. Here are eight great reasons that cheap airsoft guns are a great investment.

1.Cheap doesn’t always mean low quality.

First up is probably the most important thing you need to hear and actually internalize. Stop thinking that price is the only way to assess the quality of a consumer good (or any good). When you start buying on the quality of a good’s traits and assets and put the price out of your mind, you’ll start scoring killer deals on an almost regular basis. You just need to retrain your brain and look for quality instead of price. It’s easier said than done, but it’s worth it.

How else can you explain cheap airsoft guns like the G&G Combat Machine 16 Raider that is a crowd favorite and is not going anywhere anytime soon? The same could be said for many of Lancer Tactical’s AEGs and a lot of the Hi Capa and Glock replica pistols (like Elite Force models) out there. Don’t get us wrong, there are lots of electric airsoft guns out there that cost a pretty penny, and plenty of similarly expensive gas-powered airsoft guns but they aren’t always expensive.

Many of these cheap airsoft guns cost under 200 dollars, and some of them are even under 100. Among many of these imitation firearms, you’ll find features like adjustable hop-up systems, fully upgradeable gearboxes with metal gears, and full metal frames or receivers.

Adjustability, high-quality components, and durability are the features of quality, not the features of cheapness. In fact, in describing these features you might even recognize them as characteristic of airsoft guns that cost many times more than the prices we stated. Go figure that one out. Iron sights and folding stock are not the only features you can get from an airsoft gun. There are a lot more and you don’t always need to pay extra.

2.You’ll end up modding it or customizing it anyway.

When you get serious about airsoft, you’re probably going to end up getting sucked down the hole of modding and customizing your airsoft guns. On top of being endless, modding and customizations are expensive.

If you’re not sure exactly where we’re going with this, allow us to spell it out for you. You’re going to invest money (and time) into your airsoft guns if you get serious about the sport. That means the ultimate price you pay cannot be accurately projected by the sticker price of the airsoft gun itself.

Also, mods and customizations will probably end up impacting more than just the appearance of your favorite airsoft guns. Thinking about including an updated trigger? A better metal barrel? Serious about upgrading the hop-up system or adding a rail adapter to the top of the receiver? Replacing or upgrading the springs in your favorite spring-powered airsoft sniper rifle for more power? These things impact the functionality of airsoft guns as well, which means you may end up with a better model than you paid for in the first place.

If you’re going to invest money into it to make it better anyway, you might as well start with a less expensive canvas. That’ll give you some additional funds to make it better and save you on the overall price you invest.

3.Sometimes their performance can be tweaked to significantly outperform the price range of the initial investment.

We touched on this, but to make the point explicit, if you aren’t happy with the package-promised-performance of a cheap airsoft gun, you can often make it much better with some basic simple modifications.

Perhaps the gun itself has plastic gears in the gearbox, which are prone to deforming, shearing, melting, or just breaking under stress. Swap out the gearbox for an all-metal version and it’ll be like you have a whole new airsoft gun.

Need a barrel with a tighter constriction for better accuracy? Swap the factory barrel out. Dealing with a mushy trigger? That can be replaced (or adjusted) as well. Maybe what you need is to install a new handguard to the forward section of your AEG so you can add a red dot sight.

Spring airsoft guns can often be given a boost of power simply by replacing the springs. A new or more powerful battery can extend the life and firepower of an AEG that’s using a less-than-desirable model. As you can see, the changes and mods you can make to a given platform are pretty broad in scope, and you can often vastly improve the performance of an airsoft gun by making some simple changes.

The too-long-didn’t-read version of this is that you can make a cheap airsoft gun into a much better gun just by modding or customizing it.

4.Lose it and you won’t want to pull your hair out.

Have you ever lost something in a move? Perhaps not, but have you ever lent something to a friend and never seen it thereafter? A piece of expensive or coveted gear, perhaps?

We’re not going to waste breath enumerating the number of ways in which you can lose something. What is apparent is that losing something isn’t fun and it can incur uncommon angst, especially when you lose something that you really like or use a lot.

The pain is all the greater when whatever you lost was expensive. Do you know what you can do to address the problem of losing expensive things? Well, for one thing, you can be careful about their use and judicious about lending them. Another thing you can do is spend less on them, generally.

That is to say, if you’ve ever lost an airsoft gun or a favorite piece of equipment, it wouldn’t have been such a bad loss if you didn’t have to part with the loss of so much money as a result. What we mean is the less it costs, the less it will hurt to lose.

Not that we’re advocating buying cheap things while not reforming any loss-prone habits you might have, but at the same time, if you lend your gear out, it won’t be such a big deal.

5.Or worse, break it or ruin it in a match or in the field and you won’t be out too much money.

Forget the matter of losing a favorite piece of equipment for a minute or two. Let’s touch on a different subject that is directly relevant to cheap airsoft guns and lead with an analogy.

If you spend a lot of time in the outdoors or in competitive airsoft matches like MilSim matches, you probably have a favorite knife or multi-tool. You need one if you spend a lot of time outside, that’s just a fact.

What happens to your favorite knife or tool when you use it constantly? At best, the edge is going to wear down to the point that you need to sharpen it. Even the best of us have gone a little too hard on our tools and have chipped edges, broken tips, or bent liner locks. That stuff just happens when you are hard on your gear.

Tools need maintenance, too and if you have a favorite knife that you don’t care for, eventually the lock will gum up and get gritty or the blade will rust. That means you need to use your tools carefully and provide adequate routine care to them.

Airsoft guns are the same way, and even the best of us is just too hard on our favorite airsoft guns from time to time. Without elaborating on the details it would be fair to say that when you lean on your gear, you’re going to use it harder than you should every now and then.

Even well-cared-for airsoft guns have dings and scratches that are the badges of their use and toil. There’s also such a thing as a “safe queen,” which, for lack of a better term, is an airsoft gun that never gets used. What use is that to serious players?

We say it’s not much use, but the point here is that the less you go in for at the outset, the less guilty you will feel using it hard in a match and breaking it past the point of repair.

6.You won’t feel as guilty beating it up.

On the flipside of ruining an airsoft gun in the field, we have a separate issue of abusing it, which is another problem that some people have with their gear. They just use it way too hard.

Now, if you had to pay for the privilege of riding your gear into the ground (and you do) would you rather pay more for it or less for it? We’re understandably going to offer an answer for you. Hopefully, it isn’t too bold to assume that you’d rather pay less to abuse your gear.

That’s just one more assurance you can get from investing in a cheap airsoft gun instead of a pricier model.

7.You can learn - or teach others to play - on a cheap airsoft gun without worry.

By the way, it’s not all about making mods and customizations or even about beating up your favorite expensive airsoft gun and then regretting it. Some of you reading this might just now be looking at getting into the sport and aren’t sure where to start.

There is a lot of information for new airsofters to absorb. If you’ve never played or even shot an airsoft gun before, then you probably don’t even know what kind of airsoft gun you want to get. On the same note, you may know nothing about how to care for them, and what you should avoid doing with them.

Learning something is tough and everyone makes mistakes. Also, not everyone sticks with their investments. Whether you’re concerned about keeping the cost of learning down or you just don’t know where to put your money while you’re learning, a cheap airsoft gun will keep total costs down for you along the way.

8.They’re cheap! What other explanation is needed!

Finally, we’re going to close out with a simple statement that is self-evident and self-explanatory. Cheap airsoft guns are cheap - what other explanation do you need? You can pick up a bunch of them for the price of one or two other more expensive airsoft guns, and as they say, sometimes one is none and two are one.

You can beat them up and not feel bad about it, make endless mods to them, and most importantly, expand your collection. What’s not to love about that prospect?

There you have some really good reasons that an investment in cheap airsoft guns is probably worth your time, at least as a portion of your arsenal if not the entire collection.

The deal’s even better here at MiR Tactical for you wise and savvy shoppers; we offer a price match guarantee on what we sell, which means that our prices are great from the start and we’ll even match them on qualifying purchases. Plus, some orders get free shipping and all orders get flat rate shipping, keeping prices down even further.

Check out our collection of cheap airsoft pistols, shotguns, and rifles, and if you have any questions about making mods or about the performance or specs of a given model, call us at 800-581-6620.