Ricochet Hopper Review

The Ricochet arrived in its box in great condition. It had a users manual, registration card, and a piece of sandpaper. The graphics and box were well designed with all the proper labeling and information. Why the sandpaper? The hopper is designed to fit newer elbows and receivers, the sandpaper is used to sand down the hopper for a perfect fit into older receivers. We found the sandpaper very useful, even though our receiver was a new one. It helps everything fit together well.
We read the instructions manual, popped in one 9 volt battery, and tinkering with the hopper. It was very easy to use. It offers a very rich set of features, yet within seconds you can be up and running properly.

Features:
The Ricochet 2K offers more features than you can possibly use. Some features we enjoyed, others we enjoyed even more!

The first feature, and most notable one, is the design. The hopper looks like a stealth bomber. In fact, the angles and design were probably inspired by the design of the stealth bomber. Stealth bombers are designed to deflect radar signals, while the Ricochet is designed to deflect paintballs.

Obviously, it has ball-churning feature. It uses 4 rotating slightly flexible thin rods to churn the balls around when they don’t feed. Balls don’t jam or get stuck, as they do with other models. Because the hopper can monitor the balls as they are fired, it can churn the remaining balls upon each ball leaving. Hence, it does not wait for a light sensor or “eye” to tell it that there are no more balls loading. Get it? It churns right away. Balls are always available. Also, some markers have an interface that allows them to notify the hopper that they have fired, that is no longer needed. For example, some WDP Angel can be rigged, by wire, to the VL Revolution hopper to get it to turn every time balls are fired. This contraption is no loner needed, the Ricochet does this without any unusual wiring or rigging.

It uses one 9 volt battery, as opposed to more than one. We have used the hopper for more than 6000 rounds of paint, and are yet to run out the battery. Battery life is very important.

It gives you a game timer. You no longer have to buy a game timer add-on to attach to your old hopper. It is easy to use and configure. Before a game starts you can easily set the timer for the number of minutes you want.

It has a shot counter. Every time you fire a paintball, the counter logs a ball. This is an often-overlooked feature. How many times have you had to guess how many balls were fired?

The on and off switch is not easily switched by accident. Some hoppers have a switch that protrudes, allowing activation or deactivation by accident during game play. It sucks to be in the middle of a heated firefight only to have your hopper stop feeding because you switched it off last time you slid into a bunker.

It is truly “top-fill”. The hopper is the only one on the market that offers a true top filling technique, rather than an angled filling method. This is important because the hopper will not spill paintballs if the lid is not closed tightly, unless completely upside down. We find this to be very useful, especially for newer players.

The lid can be flipped back into to different positions. It can be opened fully or partially. This is helpful because it locks into an open position at 45 degrees so that you can reload without worrying about it closing on you. Great feature!

The Ricochet hopper holds exactly 173 rounds of paint. Other electronic hoppers can’t do this. It can hold more, but it won’t agitate properly. Other hoppers fit only 170-180, depends on the brand.

Truly remarkable 10-12 balls per second feed rate. More in the review section.

The battery can be installed backwards for storage. This is a under appreciated feature. Why? You won’t lose the battery, and can quickly switch the battery around to play. Further, you don’t lose the battery by inadvertently switching on the system. Sometimes paintball players forget to switch off the hopper, or are afraid that if they leave the battery in place, the hopper may turn on during storage or transportation and run the battery dead.

Automatic shut off. If you do forget the battery in place and the hopper on, it eventually shuts off. Phew! Finally and intelligent hopper!

A low ball warning sound. Because it fits exactly 173 paintballs, it can also warn you when you have only 50 paintballs left. The sound is easily distinguishable from other sounds.

All of the settings can be manipulated and tinkered with. If you don’t want warnings or beeping sounds, you can turn them off.

Enough about the technical stuff, how did the hopper do?

Review:
As always, we put the Ricochet 2K through a rigorous review. We spent 3 months with the hopper and have thoroughly enjoyed using it. We used it in extreme heat, and even blistering cold. We even froze the hopper in a freezer at 0 degrees. Mud, rain, dust, and all the rough and tumble of rental players put the Ricochet to the test. To our surprise the Ricochet performed like a Sept. 11 hero. All work all the time.

We were very impressed with the feature set. “You just don’t find this many features on a hopper,” said Jerry Gaston, our Features Editor. “It’s really amazing and has held up really well. I’ve always wanted a hopper with a game timer. It just makes sense. And the price is very reasonable, you get so much for so little.” At the time of publication the Ricochet 2K was retailing at $99, but you can get them for around $89.

We tried the hopper with different length games. We played short 3 minute games, and longer 20 minute games, the hopper had no problems.

The ball counter was not exactly accurate, but can be adjusted. It was about 2 balls off. After we followed the instructions and adjusted the counter and it was right on target. Sometimes if you have a partially filled hopper, and turn your gun over, the hopper will churn, and therefore, inadvertently count balls as being fired when they aren’t. But that was a rare occurrence. It is designed in a certain way that will do that, but this helps keep the balls flowing and counting very accurate.

We ran the hopper on an Angel and on two Autocockers. We used a standard slide trigger Autococker and a snappier hinge trigger to try to outshoot the hopper.

With the Angel, we turned it up to 13-14 balls per second, and tried to outshoot the hopper. Did we? We were close, for every hopper worth of paint, we’d have two hiccups. We were very delighted. At the normal Angel operating rate of about 10-12 balls per second, we were not able to outshoot the hopper. Why? The technology used is outstanding. Like we mentioned earlier, the hopper does not wait for a “gap” in the ball feeding area to begin turning. It reacts right away.

On the Autocockers we attempted to out shoot the hopper. We were not able to do it. The most we could get was 9-10 shots per second.

We also tried to have the hopper just empty into a bucket. We were advised against this. Because the Ricochet uses a special technique to count balls, if it were continually being emptied into a bucket, it would not churn. Why? It waits for a brief pause in the action in order to know when to churn. But we decided to try and empty into a bucket anyways.

We were pleasantly surprised to find that the Ricochet emptied very quickly and could keep up with our speed.

Go out and buy one today!