Page 25 - Beeman P17 Reviews

The accuracy is astounding! The trigger is rather nice for such an inexpensive pistol. Very comfortable, P99-style grip. The adjustable metal rear sight is very adequate. Great, quiet practice - perfect for the basement.

The return stroke (which compresses the air) is quite difficult at first. I would not expect a child to be able to do it. The elevation adjustment screw on the rear sight is not very positive. That is, you can adjust it with your fingernail. Maybe a stronger spring under the sight would help. The sight works fine, though.

I have only a couple hundred pellets through it, so the jury is still out as to how it holds up over time. But for the price, the deal is incredible.

1 pump and you're there. The noise level is acceptable.

I would like to see it smaller.

After adjusting sights this is the most accurate air gun I have fired.No kidding.This is the best deal out there.

Use only domed or pointed pellets and you will have no problem loading this gun

Good value for the money, accurate, good feel of grip

The rear sight is very flimsy and moves out of adjustment very easily, hard to load, cocking effort is not easy. Trigger is ok but spongy feeling.

Get plenty of pellets, this gun is fun to shoot and very accurate, a good buy for the money.

Price. Accuracy. Power. Low noise. No recoil. Great sights. Smooth and light "simulated 2-stage" trigger pull. Build quality (so far). Full size grip. Great balance. Ease of operation.

The second stage is too long for very fine target work, but is easily fixed if you are familiar with type of work. Loading pellets is a bit tricky at first, but becomes second nature with repetition. Grip is a bit smooth and will make cocking the pistol harder if you shoot with wet hands (like when it's raining). That may not be an issue for most, but I shoot in the rain at times. I just stippled the grip with a soldering iron to fix that issue.

I think this pistol is the bee's knees. It will easily shoot under 1/2" at 20 yards with pellets it likes (~7.5gn wadcutters and 7.9 gn crossman premier domes). Of course that is from a rest, but I can usually shoot under 1" offhand at that range, with an occasional flyer that is entirely my fault. I did a trigger job, though it isn't necessary, and the trigger travel is perfect now. The pull weight at the tip of the trigger is just over 1.5 lbs, which is right where it was out of the box. The gun is fairly quiet (quieter than my Daisy 953). The velocity is right on the money with a 10 shot string averaging 391 fps with 7.9 grain premiers. I tested the only 3 Beeman laser pellets (6.5 grains) that I had and they all went a little over 420 fps. I think it is impressive velocity for a ssp that is fairly easy to pump. I find it easy to pump, but I am a fairly strong guy. I think that with the proper pumping technique, anyone over 10 years old should be able to handle it. If it isn't easy for you, just think of it as a rewarding upper body exercise program :) I have had zero issues with leaks or problems of any sort. The sights have held a perfect zero. One note on the sights: They are flawless for target shooting in good light, but they will not do well in lower light on a dark background. A little orange nail polish will help with that. Also, NO, this gun is NOT sufficient for ethically hunting anything except bugs at fairly close range. Carpenter bees are fun.

metal construction - weight and feel of pistol

make the ease of cocking the piston better. It takes an unimaginable effort to load the spring-piston. Also, it was almost impossible to load the pellets into the magazine without using tweezers. A very undesirable feature.

Weight, feel in the hand, accuracy, looks, no co2 and the price.

Nothing, amazing pistol for little money.

Have had this pistol for about 3 weeks, put about 1500 rounds through it with no problems. I use it for plinking. It does well with Crosman wad-cutters, field points and destroyers. It did seem to have an excessive amount of grease on piston, which I wiped off every 3rd or 4th pump, for the first 500 shots.

Heavey duty feel, not all plastic. Has the look and feel of a real pistol.

The cocking is not user friendly as for a women. Too strong,, takes 28 lbs of force to close the system.. Loading the barrel is a SUPER REAL PAIN IN THE BUTT. The principal is a good idea but needs a better access to loading. NOT FOR LARGE FINGERS !!

I would not recommend this pistol for a women. It is not easy to cock and load. The Browning 800 Mag is much better.

The feel is natural ,And the trigger is very smooth . I use open sites and it hits every time at what ever the target may be (paper or cans) .

This really is a great gun , it feels great and shoots even better ( 20- 30 yrd.) . I did not expect this from a 35 dollar air gun , I shoot it with Gamo raptor PBA so it has a nice little pop, but delivers a good shot .

This is a very accurate pistol and the trigger is nice.

The rear sight moves around a lot in its stock form.

I epoxied (with shredded fiber glass filler) the small hex nut for the rear sight elevation adjustment to the top pump arm and applied Teflon tape to the elevation adjustment screw. Now it is stable. Just did a general deburr, cleaning, and lube job before shooting it. It only took an hour. It has held up fine after 2000+ pellets. Accuracy is very good even with the inexpensive Crosman hollow point pellets. I tried a dot scope in the middle of the rails on the top pump arm but it was inaccurate since the top pump arm flexes and the amount of flex changes between each pump. The stock sights remain stable after doing the above modification since they are close to the hinge point and pump arm locking hammer. This turned out to be a very nice and cheap air gun but you do have to work a little to get it there.

Ordered another one

Use rws basics some pellets jam in the barrel and blow the seals plus basics shoot accurate and I get 450 fps

Deadly accurate with adjustable sights! This pistol is more accurate than my Crossman 760 BB/pellet rifle! Very happy with design, quality and features of this product.

Make it easier to cock. This thing is a bear to cock and its very hard to locate the pellet in the barrel.

Shipping was a nightmare with Fedex home delivery. They tried to deliver 3 times to my house in the middle of the afternoon. We work, so no-one is at home. We called them after the first delivery and told them to deliver after 6pm. I guess this was to inconvenient for the delivery guy. He delivered in the early afternoon on the 2 subsequent attempts also. I ended up driving 40 miles round trip to the Fedex facility in Tamp on Saturday to pick up a package that I paid to have deliverd to my house. For this, I would like a refund for the freight I paid on this gun.

great gun especially for the price-good power -very accurate-- as a pneumatic it is more stable than a springer gun this size

not much without major increase in price- ?easier access to chamber pellet , large fingers are challenged

takes some muscle to cock the gun- - if you mount a scope it reduces the space for your hand for cocking

Inexpensive!! For the price the pistol has a great trigger and nice feel. No kick and easy to shoot

The o-rings!! They are cheap and will start to leak. How hard or more expensive would it be to put in descent o rings? Not muchThe good thing is that they are easy to replace yourself. If you aren't willing to replace them, then you are throwing away your money.

Go to Harbor freight and pick up an assortment of Viton o-rings. You will have to shim the oring that seals up against the breech of the barrel. You can shim it with dental floss or PTFE tape. You know when you've shimmed enough when you the fps levels out. Mine shoots, when shimmed well, around high 380's to mid 390's with the pointed 7.5g crosman pellets.

Great value for the money. Nice, light trigger with short travel. Adjustable rear sight. Nice weight and balance.

Add 11mm scope mount. I bought a scope thinking that the notch along the top would work for it. It did not, it's narrower that 11mm mount.

Takes some muscle to cock it but getting a bit lighter over time. Someone with bigger fingers might have trouble dropping pellet in.

A direct authorized Chinese copy of the Weihrauch HW40 PCA ($200) and the Beeman P3 ($230) single stroke pneumatics. The P17, at the insanely low price of $35, is an absolute steal. The gun's trigger, accuracy, sights, and balance are simply not obtainable on any target pistol until you reach the price level of the P3 and the HW40.

More positive click indents when adjusting the rear sights.

Most single stroke pneumatics are not meant for those with weak arms, but any healthy male over the age of 13 and female over the age of 15 should be able to handle the cocking pressure required to charge the P17.

roll the dice with this pistol! before buying this gun i heard of people having no problems for 2 years and others saying the piston went bad very quickly. this gun was very accurate and i liked the one pump to get 400 fps

use better parts and raise the price of the gun. maybe something around $100

the piston in mine started leaking after around 2 or 3 months. If the gun lasted 1 year then broke i would buy a new one every year since it works great when it works. this broke way too early so i wouldnt recommmend this pistol even though it has great potential

I reviewed here before and don't usually but I think everyone should have one of these and get youngsters into shooting so we can keep our common sense exercised. I got two of these. One right away and another after a long wait b.o. First one, while impressively accurate, had seals leak after 50 shots, fixed w/O rings from carb. kit. Cool. Second one seems better and has already lasted longer than the first. Get one and teach a kid to enjoy hitting where he aims. Will hit a quarter at twenty paces if you can hold still.

My hands are big and the grip is not. A white dot or triangle on the front sight would help see it better.

These are inexpensive and very accurate as well as serviceable. Get two and have a pop can shootout at thirty paces. I can stay with the IZH 46 with either of mine at this distance and it's fun to see how good a shot grandma is too.

Very accurate. Easy to cock. Best deal for a sub-$40 air gun out there. It is a bit of a pain to load. A multi-shot clip would have been a good improvement to the design, IMO. But , then again, it IS only $40.

It has two potential defects that you need to be aware of. Both are easily fixable, though. One is if it won't hold pressure properly. There are two tiny adjustment nuts that work themselves loose after about 100-200 shots that need to be tightened. My guess is that the factory in China doesn't put a drop of loc-tite on the threads and the German version does or has an extra retaining screw. Look online for instructions on where this part is and consider applying a drop of the lower strength(so you can readjust it later - just don't want it creeping back out slowly is all) loc-tite on the nut(s). The other is the trigger. I've heard grease and other explanations for why this happens but the real reason is obvious with the grips removed. There are two springs that give tension on the trigger assembly. The larger one is held in place by pretty much nothing except the outer case and has a LOT of play in it. If it slips too much or if the thing works a groove in the plastic over time, it can slip enough to not cock reliably. If it doesn't fire when it is cocked, open it up fully, remove the grips and gently nudge the firing pin/valve to its fully extended position. With the cover off, it's clear that they cut corners and the stamped pieces are cheap and quite loose. So it gets a bit sideways/bent and won't work. I think a solution might be to put a shim around the screw post that the loop in the spring goes around to make it fit snugly/with no movement.

It likes to shoot moderately heavy pellets. I got almost the same FPS out of 10-11gr pellets as 8gr ones. Super-heavy ones did lose about 100fps, though they had a definite "rainbow" arc to them. This appears to be true of pneumatics and PCP in general - use as heavy as you can be accurate with. Note: The reason why is that as a spring-piston design moves forward and compresses the air, pellet weight and resistance matters more and slows the mechanism down a little bit. It it cocked and when you fire, it slams the piston down the tube - so resistance that it is pushing against is a big factor. Pellet weight is critical in a spring-piston design, and doubly so for a single-stroke type like the IZH, FWB, or other match/competition type rifle. Often a specific gun will only "like" a couple of pellets. A pneumatic or PCP generally is more efficient as it lets the pressure go at once in a quick blast. There is no resistance on the mechanism. It lets X PSI go every time no matter if it's 5gr or 50gr. So the only real issue is friction in the barrel and being hard to aim when shooting heavier pellets with one. Pellet weight is really not a huge factor any more, which is why most competitions have moved to PCP or pneumatic designs(also the lack of recoil is a plus)

The price! The amount of service info available on the net. Easy to disassemble and reassemble without extra parts left. Fun little gun! Not for everyone though. Cocking effort while avoiding ANY contact with the rear sight assembly. from the factory the elevation adjustment moves with the slightest touch or after as few as 12 pellets you can watch your shots go higher and higher but I LOVE the Gun.

Things I Fixed/Changed: 1. Drift pins will drift from use - Fixed added (4) 4-40 3/16" set screws 1b. Piston Rod Pin was loose and drifted to a point case would hump when closed. Fixed - Centered pin and tightened set screw I may use LocTite if this happens again. 2. Gun WILL leak fast Hiss after light use (mine at 100 shots) Most common cause - Partial Fix -Tightened nut in valve assemmbly with LocTite Blue. 3. Slow leak head a fizzle sound- Fixed disassembeld the entire pistol found a brass "swirley" from brass valvebody threads cross thhreaded and stripped during assy was blocking the valve from closing completely. Cleaned out the valve and assembled using teflon tape. 4. While cylender was open an piston out checked O-Rings and cleaned heavy greasy Gunk from the cylinder tube, Piston, Valve Assy. lightly greasd seals and oiled gun via intake port. checked for rough edges on any surface O-Rings com in contact with. 5. To-Do need to polish the barrel breach to smooth breach seal seat 6. To-Do need to prevent rear sight elev adj from moving during normal use WARNING - DO NOT OVER TIGHTEN GRIP SCWEWS - can cause a fail to fire on the first pull but may fire on subsequent pulls.

This is a great value if you don't mind working on air guns. If you do not or can not work on small to medium mechanical things. This is NOT the gu for you. However if you enjoy it once complete you'll have a decent little shooter for only $35.00 + minimal parts that is fairly accurate and the confidence that you can fix most issues down the road. Only time will tell how reliable she'll be. I'll try too check in and comment every once in a while.... Bill