Cobra System Self Cocking Pistol Tactical Crossbow, 80-Pound

Great little crossbow. Saw one of these on Mythbusters and started to check these out. Was surprised how little they cost and read some reviews and figured it would be fun to try one as I'm an archery enthusiast shooting recurve bows but figured it would be fun to have one of these too. Hardest part was putting the string on and was able to do it with me bending the limbs while my wife put the string in place. Did take a few times but that was a one time issue. Once we figured out how the cocking mecanism worked which was a little hard at first but got easier each time, it was great. Love the safety mechanism and it's easy enough for my wife to cock and she loves that it has no kickback. It has more power than I thought as we were able to hit a target 60 yards out and even had one of the bolts go into the target up the the vanes. The bolts seem a bit cheap and the vanes could stand to be glued in but the crossbow itself is top notch and really fun to shoot

I in no way affiliated with the supplier or amazon.com. This review is 100% my own impression:From the picture and description, one would think that this was a dinky, Asian made toy that would be ineffective and short lived. I only purchased mine after being pressured by a friend. I was still skeptical during the unboxing and assembly. After assembling this product and firing my first few bolts I was amazed. This crossbow is amazingly powerful and accurate. Let me be perfectly clear, this this is NOT a toy.POWER- It will fire a bolt with enough force into wooden targets that a grown man will have difficulty removing the projectile. At close range, this crossbow has enough force to break/bend aluminum bolts. I have already killed 4 birds and 2 squirrels without feeling like it was inhumane. The bolts are moving at a high enough velocity that they have a clean entry and exit on small game. Aside from live targets I purchased a standard archery foam block target. this crossbow buries the bolts all the way to the back end at over 20 feet. Long story short, this thing is deadly. It should not be in the hands of inexperienced persons.ACCURACY- The attached iron sites are not perfect, but they get the job done, after a small amount of recalibration, I was able to produce 1" groups at around 20 feet with 3 arrows. Moving back to around 50 feet I can hit a 3" target with minimal effort. After about a week I removed the posterior iron site and attached a very cheap red dot site previously used on an air rifle. This allowed for a more comfortable eye relief, and easier target acquisition. With that in mind the accuracy did not improve. Recently my brother and I tested the long range use of this crossbow for fun and we were both impressed with the results. At 90 feet, there is a decent amount of drop in the projectile that requires some adjustment in aiming. However, once we were dialed in, we were able to hit within 5-7 inches of the center of our archery target 100% of the time. While I would not feel comfortable using this as a long range hunting/self defense weapon, I would be very worried to be 90 feet away from the wrong end of this crossbow if it were in skilled hands.The only negative things I have found with this product is that the safety is atypical, it is a gold rod that you must push forward to allow the trigger to release the string. I had an issue with bolts breaking if fired into hard targets or when fired from close range. but given how powerful it is and how cheap they are, I am not surprised. I also had to replace the string after 150 shots, which is fine given that they cost around $5.00 USD, and are in no way a representation of the crossbows reliability/durability so I still feel like this product deserves 5 starsPROS- dirt cheap, powerful, accurate, lightweight, easy assembly, durable.CONS- default sites are not great, strings break after 150 or so shots, safety is clunky, bolts can break

It's OK, it's not great. I'm giving it four stars because it's OK enough. It's mostly made of metal and seems to be fairly sturdy but the sights that come with it are a joke. The rear sight broke off after a slight bump so I had to replace it with a red dot sight. The rail is the smaller 3/8 inch dovetail type that is found on .22 rifles and airguns, it is not a Weaver or Picatinny size rail and will only accept accessory sights that work on the 3/8 inch dovetail, which is sometimes also called a "tip off" mounting rail.The bolt/arrow retaining clip is held to the bottom of the PLASTIC sight mount rail with a screw that is quite long and is part of the elevation adjustment of the open rear sight. To mount a red dot scope I had to clip that screw off with a side cutter as it cannot be removed without the bolt retaining clip also falling out. That clip is also an integral part of the safety so you would be best advised not to try to use the crossbow without it. The fact that this screw must be permanently altered for a scope of any sort to be mounted on the rail indicates that the rail isn't really meant for mounting a scope, it's an afterthought at best.The plastic rail that a dot sight mounts to is only held in place by one screw and it can pivot enough on that screw that the sights will not be reliable without modification. I used a line of superglue on each side to secure it in place and centered and this seems to be working OK so far.You HAVE to treat the string the same as any crossbow string if you want it to last. Which means you have to wax it with BOWSTRING WAX and use a rail lube on the rail and center serving or the string will fall apart after relatively few shots. This is exactly the same as this little crossbow's "big brother" hunting bows. I have a full size, full power crossbow so I already knew about this and had the proper wax and rail lube. Do NOT use paraffin wax, it's a petroleum based substance that will eat your string. In a pinch you can use genuine beeswax but real bowstring wax is the best bet.It would have been a good idea to mention this stuff about wax and rail lube in the directions/instructions, which are adequate if you're familiar with this kind of thing but if not can be somewhat lacking in detail. If you look CAREFULLY at the instructions you can figure out how to put this together but even being familiar with such things I had a couple minutes of head scratching before I finally realized how things were supposed to fit.With the dot sight I can group three arrows in about a 2 inch circle at 15 yards firing from a bench rest. I would say 15 yards is about the maximum effective range for this little guy because after that the trajectory of the bolt is increasingly parabolic and impossible to gauge. Silly claims about miraculous accuracy at 30 and 40 yards being achieved with this little crossbow are ridiculous. With my full sized hunting crossbow I can stack bolts in groups no bigger than an American Quarter Dollar coin at 30 yards. I have to only shoot three at a time before retrieving them so that I don't destroy expensive hunting bolts by hitting them with another bolt. That's real accuracy from a real crossbow being fired by someone who's been using this kind of gear for many years ... me. This little crossbow doesn't come anywhere close to that but it's a fraction of the cost of a serious full power hunting rig too. Just don't expect to be taking head shots on gophers at 50 yards and ignore anyone who says this bow will do that.At 15 yards this will bury the bolts to the vanes or deeper in a crossbow target meant to stop much more powerful bow shots. That's a lot of penetration coming from this small prod. Power-wise this is pretty impressive all considered. I have a target in my back yard made of cedar siding that I shot with this at about 40 yards and the bolt buried itself down past the metal head in the cedar. That's about 1/2 to 3/4 inches of penetration on wood at 40 yards. At 40 yards the bolt dropped about 4-5 feel below the point of aim, so that's not really anything that could be considered effective range but the penetration was impressive even so. If you could hit a varmint at that range you would likely end it's varmint ways.The bolts that come with it are fairly fragile, I ordered a 50 pack of the after market plastic bolts with metal heads. If I lose a few I'm not concerned. I fitted Rage Slipcam broadheads to the aluminum bolts that came with the crossbow. It was fairly easy to remove the metal head and epoxy a Rage Slipcam into the tubular aluminum bolt body. I don't know if they'll work or not but it looks cool as heck. I'm sure even if it works it's a one shot thing so I'm just keeping them around to impress people. Can't do that broadhead trick with the plastic bolts because they're not hollow like the aluminum ones. This will drive a bolt clear through a bunny or a squirrel at any reasonable range so the practical effect is that the vanes will act pretty much the same as broadhead blades as far as wound channel creation goes.All in all, this is fun, has plenty of power for dispatching marauding bunnies in my garden and it's a blast to play with. I wouldn't consider it a practical weapon but it is a real weapon nevertheless. Be careful with this thing, if it will bury the metal tip in cedar at 40 yards it would also have no problem penetrating a skull if you let a bolt get away from you and go where it should not. This isn't a toy, it's a long way from a good and practical weapon but it's as far away from being a toy as it is from being a practical weapon.I might carry this with me when I'm deer hunting with my full size crossbow so I can shoot rabbits, squirrels and game birds from my stand without scaring the deer off or wasting an expensive full power crossbow bolt. At those ranges it will most likely pin those types of targets to the ground ...