Air Arms has a product very much worth talking about, the TX200 MkIII, and boy do I like this gun. So what is so great about it?
The TX200 MkIII is a highly accurate springer airgun which owes its accuracy to a fixed barrel design, carefully balanced spring, and just the right power level. Dime sized groups at 25 yards are easy to produce with this airgun, making it one of the most accurate springer pellet guns on the market.
Throughout this article, I speak very highly of this airgun for a number of reasons, but mostly because its features add up to make it highly accurate. We are not sponsored by Air Arms, but they did well with this one.
Would I Recommend This Air Rifle?
The TX200
is an impressive air rifle, and I have very little issue recommending this gun. Though it is a springer, it comes with a fixed barrel design, vastly improving the accuracy of these guns. Indeed, I was able to get dime sized groups easily at 25 yards, with barely any effort.
Even though the pull weight of the lever is 29 lbs, it does not feel like that is the case, which just adds to the sweetness of this airgun. The trigger is quite the treat as well.
If we were to rank the trigger it on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the best, 1 being the worst, we give it a 5 easy.
These are just some of the highlights of the gun, and we’ll jump into those in a moment, but it is worth talking about price.
This is a $600 airgun, which is definitely expensive for a springer ($300 is expensive for a springer), but that is the case for a good reason. If you are willing and able to put down the money for this gun, and you are, you know, an adult, I have no reservations about recommending this thing to you.
Core Features
Okay, starting out we see the fixed barrel nature of this gun, opting for an under lever design. Why would they do this, diverting from the norm?
Well, the break barrel design of most springers keep the barrel moving of course, and when the barrel comes back into the firing position, the barrel may or may not be off by a fraction of a fraction of an inch. Not a big deal until you move out to further ranges. By having a more fixed barrel design, the gun is able to retain more accuracy than most of its springer cousins.
The gun does this by having an under lever, and you can see as you charge the gun, that there is a breech that slides open on the right side of the gun. Fortunately, this gun also come with a bear trap guard.
For those of you who are not familiar with this, the bear trap guard is a short series of ratcheted grooves on the breech that keep the spring from closing the thing on your fingers.
The likelihood of that was already small, but in the event that there is some sort of failure inside of the gun holding the spring back, your fingers are safe, just be sure to press the release button right next to the breech when you close the gun.
Next, looking at the top, we see the standard issue dovetail rails for your optics system of choice. You will need to mount a scope on the gun, as there are no open sights. Other than that, not much to say about this part of the gun.
The trigger, of course is really nice. I already mentioned it before, but it works fantastically, being smooth, short, and light. It just has a general feel that is high quality and rewarding, making it easy to stay on target while pulling the trigger. If for whatever reason you do not like the trigger weight, you can adjust it with a screw just behind the trigger.
While we are talking about the trigger of course, we should mention the safety. This little device rests above and behind the receiver, right next to your thumb. It activates when you pull the lever and cock the gun, and to put it to fire, just press it to the side, and you are good to go.
You cannot, however, set it back to safe without shooting the gun and cocking the lever again, which makes the safety a bit unsafe in my opinion.
The stock of course is another high quality piece of work, coming with different woods, the one on Pyramyd Air, and the one that we have being made of stained beech wood, which just adds to its ambiance.
Probably the final core feature worth talking about is of course the mainspring. Coming with a more balanced design, this spring does not vibrate as much as the mainsprings in other airguns often do, further lending the gun accuracy.
Performance
Okay, so here we might end up talking a bunch of numbers, but I’ll try to make it interesting. Trust me, it’ll be pretty cool.
When I was accuracy testing this and several other airguns, I went out to 25 yards to see how tight of a group I could get. With this gun, I got dime sized groups easy, with hardly any effort. In fact, I kept it on hand several times to use as a benchmark while testing other guns.
If I was having difficulty getting a tight group with a certain airgun, I would break out the TX200 to see if it was me, the wind, or the gun. If it was me or the wind, the group from the TX200 would be off, if it was the other gun, then my group would still be tight, and it was the case that the other airgun was the one having issues every time.
Every time, my testing-to-see-if-I-am-a-bad-marksman-groups were still tight, leading me to believe that this gun is far superior to many other springers in terms of accuracy (which it is of course, being used for tournaments and so forth).
When it comes to speed and power, this thing is still a formidable foe. We have the .177 version and saw our pellets traveling at about 880 fps. For those of you who don’t know, about 850 is the most ideal speed for a pellet in terms of accuracy– if it goes too fast, its trajectory becomes chaotic, and if it goes too slow, then gravity is able to pull it down faster.
So this is fantastic news, as the pellet moves at just the right speed to get a great balance between power and accuracy.
Coming out to be about 14 ft lbs of energy, this gun is great for not only targets, but also pests and small game hunting. The .22 caliber is of course recommended for small game. I have a friend of mine who shot whistle pigs with one and they stood no chance.
As with most springers, this one is kind of loud though. Weighing in with our testing at about 110 db, the volume level of this is about the same as a car horn from a yard or two away– but where it is legal, they sell moderated versions of the gun (guns with built in silencers).
Things I Like
Overall, the look and feel of the gun gives off an aura of well made reliability. It isn’t hard to tell that Air Arms put effort into making a simple, elegant machine that looks, feels, and works great.
The bear trap guard is a very nice touch, and one that I greatly appreciate, because I like two things about my fingers. I like them, and I like having them.
Generally, it is standard safety practice to keep one hand on the end of your lever while you have your other hand tied up in loading the pellet through the breech, as this will help you keep the lever from swinging suddenly shut if there were some kind of failure to keep the spring safely compressed inside of the gun.
Even with the guard, you should still keep your hands on the end of the lever, but this added layer of security is definitely welcome.
Gotta admit, I am also a fan of the under lever design of this gun. The fact that you don’t have to have the barrel tied up in acting as the lever makes it great at what barrels are supposed to do: put pellets where you want them.
Have I made it clear yet that I am a fan of this trigger? I was a little surprised the first few times that I shot this gun, as the trigger was just so much easier than most other airguns out there.
Things I Would Have Changed
If it were up to me, the safety would have an overhaul. I don’t really care where it ends up or what it looks like, it is kind of nice sitting where it sits already, but if it were able to switch back and forth between being safe and ready to fire, then it would not be an issue for me at all.
As it stands presently, once you flip it to fire, the only way to get the thing to go back to safety is to pull the trigger and re-cock the gun. This, as you can imagine is not very safe at all. I can easily imagine a scenario where I have my sights on a target, I stand ready to fire, flip the safety off, and the pest animal I am hunting moves. In that scenario, the gun is not safe until I fire my shot.
Maybe this was installed as a way to incentivize people to keep from keeping their springs compressed too long, but whatever the case, I hope the MkIV has a way to switch back and forth easily.
Is this a deal breaker? No, of course not, especially since there are few airguns that can match this one in performance, but it is something that you should be aware of.
