Why would you buy an air pistol....
For the ownership such as a replica?
For target shooting?
For small pest control?
Most of these needs can be met with a co2 pistol, but they can be low on power, subject to temperature change and costly over time if you are constantly buying co2 to feed them. Not surprisingly one of my all time favourites is the PP700 pcp air pistol, accurate, powerful and rewarding fun.
But.... it is only single shot and a magazine on board would make it a real winner, but of course the price is going to go up........
...... wrong, enter the PP800 multishot pcp pistol from Artemis.
Now I’ve started out by comparing this new PP800 to the PP700, which is fair and is real competition for it, but I’m going to add in a third option, just because I can. It’s the pcp CP2, don’t think there is such a thing? Think again, because here it is all the benefits of the CP2 but in precharged format. I’ll come back to this little beauty a little later.
Firstly, this is a review of the new Artemis PP800, so let’s start with the stats, claims and walk around.
It is 520mm or 20 and a half inches long and weighs in at 1kg of 2.2 lbs. it is available in .177 and .22 calibres it has a slim 40cc air cylinder and they claim this is capable of 30 shots of over 500 FPS. Well now we’re getting into the realms of manufacturers claims, the first one is a rather strange way of claiming the velocity, because they state greater than or equal to 700 fps in .177 and greater than or equal to 600 fps in .22. The problem here is if it achieved those figures it will have to go straight back, because it would be higher than the U.K. max 6 ft/lb legal limit. But we’ll put it through the chrono later, and you may be surprised. They also claim precision shooting, well the barrel is about 240mm or about 9 and a half inches long and rifled so I would expect good results. The price on this is around £229 U.K. , is it worth it?
As we’ve already said, the barrel is long and rifled and also comes fitted and supplied with a silencer, which gives the pistol its long look, it is surprisingly efficient and quietens it down considerably. It is a non standard thread so not an easy job to fit your favourite silencer, but this can be achieved using an inexpensive adapter. Below this is the air cylinder with filler port and gauge on the front. The gauge shows a max fill of 220bar before it goes into the red.
It comes with open sights front and rear and the tears are fully adjustable or removable to allow you to fit a red dot or scope if you prefer, along its 9-11mm rail. It has a lovely little bolt action, which is really quite smooth, with the bolt on the left side, which will please the right handlers, no ability to swap over though I’m afraid to be able to please the left handers.
There is a single shot tray in the box, along with a multishot indexing magazine. Which is the familiar rotate style, with the feed the first pellet backwards method, and whilst not a real favourite of mine, it is fully functional, if a little fiddly in the .177 calibre, but, I must say that is only me being ultra picky and my personal feelings. It has performed really well during my time with it and didn’t deform any pellets during this time. After saying I don’t care for it, I will say how much I do like it because of its lock open after last shot, which leaves you in no doubt about it being empty and safe.
Talking about safe, this has a metal trigger with a built in push safety, which simply and efficiently locks the trigger, push through reveals the red indicator on the 2 stage trigger to show it is in fire mode. This isn’t woolly or vague, it is simply sure footed. Then we come to the grip, which is a real handful and resembles a competition or match type grip. This suits an adult size hand rather than a junior shooter, infact I found this very comfortable and left the pad of my finger exactly where I would want it to be. This along with the very nicely set 2 stage trigger should help make this a pretty accurate pistol.
Well, this brings us nicely to the target work, and if I’m going to give this its best chance on the 10 m indoor range, I have fitted a Hawke red dot to the top.
Really really nice, rewarding and great fun and that is Pellet on Pellet, what more do you want from a pistol, this is a very capable gun and is restricted only by my skill or lack of it.
Power then, because the claim on the box is not what I would expect from a U.K. spec pistol if it did achieved these figures it would be more than twice the legal limit. So let’s take a look at the chrono results.
In .177 calibre, it saw a 556 fps maximum figure which is 5.79 ft/lb or xxx joules
In .22 calibre it saw a max 401 fps which is 5.68 ft/lb or 7.69 joules. Both of these are absolutely spot on for a U.K. pistol and capable of doing some rat damage if required. This gun would also appear to be capable of much higher power levels. But at this power level actually showed a good 80 useable shots. Which would hint again that this is aimed at and capable of much higher power figures.
The conclusion on this is pretty simple, it is a genuine multishot magazine fed pcp pistol running close to the U.K. legal limit, and is usable for some nice accurate target work, simple plinking or even some up close rodent pest control. It is great fun and of course it is very competitively priced for a multishot pcp pistol with silencer.
But what about that claim of a CP2 in pcp form, well here it is,
Sadly this is not a production item....at this moment in time...
It is infact a prime example of how these pistols are made in the same place using the same tooling, set up and in many cases ..parts. Because this is a standard CP2 stripped down and the main body replaced with the PP800 innards, the pcp and the co2 are more or less identical, down to the exact placement of the screws to fix it to the stock. So what happens if we then add the stock of the CP2 and it’s longer barrel to this in both power terms and accuracy. Over to the chronograph first.
The .22 version as we have already seen, this is 401 fps max with a 5.68 ft/lb power figure, but with the longer barrel rose to 503 fps which is 8.93 ft/lb, which is a 50% increase in power from just adding the longer barrel. Don’t forget that high shot count too, which you probably won’t get with the co2 version.
This becomes a higher shot count, powerful enough and accurate enough item to be a real contender in small vermin control. It is very lightweight and of course not as affected by the temperature variances. I realise you could argue it is easy to carry spare co2’s rather than an air tank or pump, but 80 shots is surely enough for a spot of rodent work. Yes I have cannibalised two guns to make this, but I haven’t finished up with just the one gun, because the CP2 mechanism also drops straight into the PP800 stock. And the magazines and single shot trays are all interchangeable too.
Now I was always a fan of the CP2 for its interchangeability, well its now even more changeable. And probably one of the most underrated budget guns out there today. And again shows just how cheaply you can put a full pcp package together and finish up with a co2 pistol too.
All I can finish by saying is..Watch this space to see if Artemis actually make this a future standard item, I will be feeding this back to SMK, oh and bagsy be one of the first to have a go...
see the full review here: https://youtu.be/q8g7Trx7Y0Q