CZ Shadow 2 Review

Thanks again to reevo17 for accepting my offer for the gun.

I first saw this gun back in June (I think) when I met up with flatrajectory for the gun swap. We met at Solware, and we had a look inside while we were there. The Shadow 2 caught our eyes. Very hefty gun, and with a very lovely light trigger. Fully adjustable sights. And that's all I remember about it! It certainly ticked all the boxes on a gun that I would like. If it is SSP-accurate, I would be extremely pleased.

Got it last Friday. And finally found some time to unload 2 magazine worth of BBs with it. 









Yes it does look lovely, if you are into modern firearms. The real Shadow 2 are "colour coded", with different variants having different grip colour. I honestly can't remember which one is which, but I'm going to guess this is the top of the range model! Because why not!

Full blowback as expected. 



Fibre front sight



And fully adjustable rear sight. Notice the "Novak" dovetail (or one of the variants). I'll see exactly which one this is, and see if I can get a red dot plate (and red dot) for it.



I'm going to be really picky and say the trigger is very good, but not amazing. Yes, definitely very light. It is a 2 stage trigger, and both stage are very light. I would guesstimate about 1.5lb at most, probably less. My "problem" with it is that 2nd stage is a bit "spongy". ie there is a bit of travel before the break, when I hope it would be more of a clean break. Getting the overtravel sorted does help a lot, making it feel less spongy. But this is an airgun, not the real thing. For an airgun the trigger is better than most if not all my other replicas.


Trigger is not adjustable, but here is an overtravel screw.

[EDIT] I'll take back my comment about the spongy trigger. See below.



Fully size dropout mag with a mag "bumper". It's made of hard plastic, and is slightly wobbly. Still, it does looks nice, keeping the race gun feel.



The bumper can be removed without tools, revealing the CO2 cap.




There is no "catch" for the BB "pusher" thing, so you will need to hold it down while reloading.




So far so good.

And how does it shoot I hear you ask?

I don't know, is my honest answer.

I recently got some new glasses as I needed reading glasses. Ended up with a pair of varifocal to correct my very mild short sightedness and astigmatism. Let's just say I'm still getting used to them. I can definitely see the front sight alright. I can't say I can see the gaps between the front and rear sight as well though, and against the dark background (it as 1630 ish when I tried it) I don't think I had a perfect sight picture.

Oh, and I haven't shot properly for almost a year now. Getting a bit rusty.

Anyway I'll show you what I have done. All 5m weaver stance.

First 10 shots:



I didn't notice some power drop from 8th shot onwards. And it does take a while for it to recovery in terms of power. The next few strings isn't much better either. 

Tried it with a laser:



Nope. 

As a test, just to make sure it's me and not the gun, I had a pop with my trusted Tanfoglio Gold Custom with a red dot mount:



Not the tightest group I've done with it, but it is better than the Shadow 2. 

Tried it with my Tanfoglio Limited Custom, which is iron sight. This time without glasses:




Some stray shots but I think that's me rather than the gun.

And then finally went back to the Shadow 2, without glasses:





I seriously think it's me and not the gun. Ideally I would test it rested, but I have too much stuff in the garage to set it up. 

I will give this another go on a sunny morning some time this week (I'm off on a few days this week for a change). 

What I must add is that I have issues with power drop off. It is almost winter, but I expected a bit more from it to be honest. The power drop seems to be worse with the Shadow 2 than the Tanfoglios. I can get 30 (10 x 3) full-ish power shots with 1 CO2, then it becomes quite weak. The problem is there is still fair bit of CO2 inside, as I found out when I tried to take the capsule out. The capsule was initially stuck in the mag, but literally flew out of the mag out of the blue and gave me a loud hiss. I tried to empty the CO2 the next time round by pressing the discharge button, and there were still plenty inside despite the weak shots. The problem seems to be similar to the one that plagues the P08s. Hopefully it will work better in the summer.

So is this really a £200 gun? I'm not so sure to be fair. Yes it looks nice, got all the bells and whistles, but until I do a proper accuracy test on it, taking myself out of the equation (as much as I can), I don't know if this really is a £200 gun. If you can bear the looks of a Tanfoglio Gold Custom, then that definitely shoots a lot better. The Limited Custom is currently outshooting the Shadow 2 also.


Let's just see. Give me a few days...