Review: Obsession Lawless Compound Bow + Video
Lucas Cooney 08.21.19
I’ve been shooting the Obsession Lawless for more than eight months now as part of ArcheryTalk’s 2019 Hunting Bow Project. This bow is outfitted with a Black Gold Pro sight, QAD Integrate arrow rest, Titanium Archery Products String Stop, and a peep.
This bow has a compact axle-to-axle length of 30 inches, brace height of six inches, and IBO rated speed of 343 feet per second. I am shooting the Vertix with the draw length set a hair longer than 30 inches and a draw weight of 70 pounds.
What sets Obsession apart are the options you have when it comes to color. The Lawless is available with 31 different riser colors, 18 limb colors, three cam colors, and nine string colors. You can set up a Lawless and end up with literally the only one like it in the world.
Drawing the Obsession Lawless back feels pretty much like you would expect from a speed bow. The draw is definitely on the stiff side, but you’ve got to pay for that speed somewhere.
As the draw cycle wraps up, you end up in a fairly short valley and are greeted by a rock solid back wall thanks to the Lawless’s limb stops.
Stability at full draw was definitely better than I expected out of a bow with such a short brace height. The shortish valley means the bow will get jumpy on you if you relax too much. That tends to make me stay stronger on the shot and results in better downrange accuracy and overall consistency. However, it can make holding at draw for long periods a bit of a challenge.
After the shot, the Lawless is on the noisy side and produces a bit more vibration than I’d prefer.
I had some concerns with how easily I’d be able to tune a bow with such a short brace height, but I was pleasantly surprised with how easy this bow was to set up. I still like to have yoke cables or some method of moving the cams left to right without using shims, but I honestly had zero need for either of those things while setting up the Lawless for my Gold Tip AirStrike arrows.
To test for speed, I shot a 350-gran Gold Tip Platinum Pierce and a 475-grain AirStrike through the chronograph. The lighter arrow produced an average of 335 feet per second, while the AirStrikes saw an average of 295 feet per second. Those are great numbers out of most bows, but nowhere near the 370 feet per second advertised speed. This, unfortunately, has been a reoccurring theme for me with Obsession test bows.
Regardless, the Obsession Lawless is still speedy hunting bow with impressive downrange accuracy and an almost limitless number of ways to personalize it.
Products Used in this Video
