Review – Mantis Blackbeard Dry Firing System for AR-15
Morgan Rogue 12.07.21
Are you looking for a dry firing system for your AR-15? I honestly never knew I needed this until I got it. The system by Mantis is extremely smart, too.
I first saw Mantis at SHOT show several years ago and was blown away by the accuracy and ease of use. It gives so much information to help you improve your shot.
Dry firing with an AR can be done indoors or outdoors, as you might need to be practicing your close quarters range as well as your longer distance.
I think we should all be dry firing at least once a week to keep our skills sharp. Hitting the range isn’t always an option and dry firing is the next best thing.
For this particular review, I only had the ability to dry fire indoors inside of my tiny cabin, but we make do with what we have. The main purpose of dry firing is to get familiar with your weapon, increase your skills, your confidence, your draw, etc.
So many great reasons to be dry firing!
Let’s dig into the Blackbeard and see what kind of features we’re working with.
Specs, Per Mantis:
You want to be able to do dry fire practice with your AR-15 without having to run the charging handle between shots. An auto-resetting trigger sounds like the perfect thing.
This is not a drop-in trigger kit that you can swap with your trigger. This is not a modification to your existing trigger. This is a drop-in Bolt Carrier Group + magazine that works with your existing trigger. It has the same weight, break, and reset. Your dry fire practice just became 100x more effective and engaging.
Using electromechanical wizardry, Blackbeard allows you to take up to 10 dry fire shots per second, quickly resetting the hammer between each shot. The ultimate AR trigger reset machine.
Installation takes less than a minute. Break open your AR, remove the bolt carrier group, drop in Blackbeard, close your baby up, and put the magazine in place to provide the power. It’s a 20 second change-out. Dry fire away, counting how much money you’re saving with every sweet trigger break and reset that you hear.
Note: all Blackbeards support both direct impingement and piston-driven ARs.
Technical Laser Details:
650 nm, 60ms pulse duration, Continuous wave for the Red laser
520 nm, 60ms pulse duration, Continuous wave for the Green laser
780 nm, 60ms pulse duration, Continuous wave for the IR laser
It’s a simple setup. Total items in the box are three and one of them is the charging cable.
It replaces your bolt carrier and magazine. The charging cable is used to charge the magazine portion of this setup.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t use my AR as I have a side charger. Not many people have side chargers so I don’t put this on Mantis at all for not having this option. It’s incredibly rare.
And yes, I’m aware my poor AR is a little dusty. Needs a good wipe down for sure. Spent a lot of time in the desert and it’s tough to get that desert dust completely off for good.
Anyway, I was able to use my husbands AR for this review.
First step is to unload your rifle and take out the bolt carrier group. Editor’s Note: Be sure to check that your chamber is empty as well
We built our AR’s so we are very familiar with how ours function and gets taken down and put back together. However, I realize not everyone is familiar with this process so Mantis was kind enough to have detailed instructions inside on how to take out the bolt carrier group. It’s extremely easy and takes a few seconds.
It will be replaced with the Mantis bolt carrier group.
Next, you’ll place the Mantis bright orange magazine into your AR magazine well.
There. You’re ready to dry fire! It really is that easy. You can be up and running in less than a minute.
This system is designed so it auto resets the trigger, there’s no pulling the charge handle. It was smooth and worked flawlessly.
It also has a laser setup which tells you exactly where your shots are landing. The laser comes from the bolt carrier group so it travels down the barrel and out onto your target.
The magazine battery pack is good for around 100,000 shots per charge! That’s a huge life span without needing to recharge it. I had it on the wall for a full day before it was fully charged. It’s a heavy duty lithium battery which should last a lifetime.
The trigger can be reset as quickly as 10 seconds per shot. So you won’t be doing any rapid fire, but that’s really not the point of using this system. It’s to be as familiar, comfortable and accurate with your rifle in a dry fire setting.
You can actually get the Blackbeard in a variety of laser colors and options. It comes in red, green, infrared and no laser. I got the red laser which is perfectly acceptable to me.
This does not connect to their app, which was slightly disappointing. I wish I had the same data offered with my rifle through the Mantis app as I do with my handgun. But, it does have a laser, so that mostly makes up for it.
I love being able to see the laser, I knew I had some adjustments I needed to make, especially since my husband only had a front iron sight! Hah.
But seriously, as far as dry firing systems for an AR, this is the easiest setup I’ve ever used and would highly recommend it.
Video of how it works, courtesy of Mantis:
