Video: Weihrauch HW44 Air Pistol

The HW44 is a PCP pistol destined for greatness in your backyard range. Based on the action of their prized HW110, the HW44 gives airgunners the power they want and the accuracy they need for plinking and small game hunting.

Weihrauch HW44 Air Pistol Video Transcript:

Welcome to the Pyramyd Insyder. I'm Tyler Patner. Today we got a brand-new air pistol from Weihrauch in Germany, the HW 44.

So, the HW 44, guys, was announced at IWA Germany this year in 2017 and we wanted to get it in before the end of the year as kind of the final new offering that's come in in 2017 here at Pyramyd Air. The gun is a little bit different than what we saw at IWE but very interesting nonetheless. This is a high-powered pre-charge pneumatic hunting pistol that's got a lot of really nice features. Let's take a look at them.

Now starting at the front of the gun, this is probably the only departure that you'll see if you looked at pictures of this gun from IWE, is the fixed suppressor on the end of the gun here, it's about a six-inch suppressor, gonna keep things nice and quiet because without it the gun barks quite a bit. The gun's putting out about 17 foot-pounds of energy in .22 caliber, obviously a little bit less in 177, and those are the two calibers it's available in. So, the suppressor is a really nice addition, and while it does make the gun fairly long at just over 19 inches, it doesn't make it unwieldy, and we'll show you that here on the range a little bit later. It still shoots very well. Just back at the suppressor we do have a fixed front sight and that matches up very nicely with your rear adjustable sight unit, and it is fully adjustable windage and elevation all in one comes very nicely into the sight line very low-profile sight there. Although we do have a Picatinny rail up top and then on the underside of the gun for any optics, you're gonna want to mount, we're probably going to go ahead and mount a pistol scope for the accuracy portion of this review because we were expecting very good accuracy out of this gun and it certainly deserves it but you could also mount a red dot if you didn't want to go with the open sight setup and of course the rail underneath is gonna be good for your lasers, flashlights, things like that, heck, you can even mount a bipod on it if you really wanted to. As far as air capacity goes, we do have a very small cylinder on this gun, important to note. We should be getting very good consistency, although I'm not expecting a heck of a lot of shots out of this gun, probably about 15, that said you do have a colorful pressure gauge on the front, 200 bar max fill pressure, about 2900 psi, and the gun does come with a fill port cover which I love, it's little things that get me, guys, and the fill probe itself. We have it decked out here with a quick disconnect fitting. It does not come with this quick disconnect fitting so note that you will need to get one if you're running a QD setup on your hose to fill it, but just goes right in the end there, you hook it up and you are good to go, very easy to use. Moving on back to the trigger, this is a two-stage, definitely a match grade trigger and it is adjustable as well so important to note there, but the trigger right out of the box guys this is probably breaking right about a pound, maybe a hair under. This trigger is awesome, alright breaks like glass first stage, second stage, you can perfectly define them with your finger and it just breaks super clean, a very nice trigger. Now, the safety unit on this gun you do actually have to cock the gun to engage the safety and it is ambidextrous. One thing you'll notice about this gun is that it is fully ambidextrous so the grip you can actually switch the cocking lever over the loading lever. You can switch everything over, but the safety is the one thing you do not need to switch. It's fully ambidextrous so we're just gonna flip that down, that puts it on safe. We can go ahead and try and pull the trigger, nothing happens, really easy to operate system, and then when you're ready and you want to go shoot it, you just flip it back up. It's very easy to use. So, the HW 44 is built on the same frame as the HW 110 basically so your actions gonna function and feel the same and it uses the same 10-round magazines. So, magazines look just like this, ten rounds in 177 and 22. Obviously, we have the 22 here. There is a bit of a trick to loading it though. So, on the side of the gun we do have this kind of loading lever here which actually keeps a pin that retains the magazine in place, so to go ahead and load it you just kind of flip this into the upward position and then slide your magazine in till it seats, and you'll know it's seated properly when this guy flips back forward, and you're all set to go. You push this forward you're loaded hot and ready to go. The gun does come with two magazines, really like that. Overall the gun feels pretty good, yes, it's a little bit long, but it's not too heavy. I want to say it's right around 2 pounds or so but ambidextrous grip so whether you're a right-handed or a left-handed shooter this is going to fit into your hand nicely. I don't have the biggest hands but there's still room for me to get to that palm shelf there, but a very nice feel putting it out there, points well, and again other than being a little bit long, this gun doesn't handle too poorly for such a long pistol and the fully ambidextrous nature of everything, whether it's the safety that I can get too easily or the mag release or the lever itself, everything on this gun can be swapped to the other side so that feature in and of itself has me won over right there. So, whether you're righty or a lefty this HW 44 should perform very well for you guys. There's one other thing I want to mention before we head out to the range. There is actually a way to D gas this pistol which is very neat. There's actually a little cutout here in the molded plastic here and you can actually fit an Allen key right into there. You twist it and you go ahead and degassed the cylinder, whether you need to do so for travel or maintenance, whatever you may need to do that for, you do have the ability to do that without having to just fire off a bunch of shots, so I do like that feature as well. Again, wire rack nails the little details here, guys, which is really cool. We're gonna head out to the range. Now, I have a Leapers 1.25 to 4 pistol scope here so it's going to give you that longer IRA leave, so we can fully extend out away from the gun, got some Picatinny mounts here to go ahead get this mounted up. We'll see you out at the range. Alright guys, just real quick wanted to show you a couple things before we get to the accuracy. To be able to get our best accuracy and see what this pistol can do, we're gonna go ahead and bench it just like you're seeing it here so got a bit of a front rest that's about all we're doing here, nothing too extensive, but one thing I did want to show you guys was the muzzle flip on this this gun seems to pop quite a bit when you pull the trigger on it, and I wanted to show you guys that right here, so check this out, so two-handed grip off the bag and you can see that gun jump as you fire it. There's a fair bit of muzzle flip so that is something to consider. It's not seeming to affect my accuracy at all, but definitely an interesting feel out of this HW 44 when you pull the trigger.

Alright, guys, it's starting out with our groupings here. At 25 yards, our Predator GTOs did very very well, under a half inch group of 0.45 7/16s or so, very accurate pellet. This is again ten shot groups here, the JSB 15.89s also pretty impressive about 0.6 inches or 5/8 so a nice little grouping there so you definitely got some pellet options. It seems to be favoring the JSP although these Crosman premier 14.3 domes did very well. I was quite surprised by this as a lower cost alternative pellet 3/4 of an inch at 25 yards, you know this is going to be a squirrel's head all day. Moving out to 45 yards, really testing the accuracy at long distance of this HW 44 pistol the GTOs, I was a little disappointed after that grouping at 25 yards, just barely under an inch here for 10 shots decent spread. You're still going to be able to hunt with this at that distance with those GTOs. The Crosman premiers put down a very nice group except for two little Flyers up top there 8 out of 10 in about 11/16s inch group, but overall 1-inch for 10 shots and probably our best pellet out there 45 to JSB 15.89 7/8s inch group right here for 10 shots, very accurate pistol, very impressed out of this gun. At 45 yards, you're definitely gonna have both the power and the accuracy to go after small game with this guy, with the JSB 15.89 zero looking at an average feet per second of about 690 or so which is pretty good. It's about 17 foot-pounds with those JSB 15.89 and again very, very consistent on that regulator. You're gonna get about 15 or 16 shots from 200 bar with a very tight extreme spread and obviously a very good standard deviation. The HW 44 is making very good use of a very small air capacity with that regulator.

Alright, guys, pretty impressed here with the HW 44, very accurate, very consistent chronograph numbers, super smooth operation, and obviously the fact that it's very quiet is a big plus in my world. The ambidextrous grips and the fact that you can swap everything over it is very nice in my opinion as well. A couple gripes though I'm not a huge fan of this kind of magazine retention lever system. It just makes getting mags in and out a little bit clunky almost, but other than that the gun really functions well. Again, I'd like to see a quick disconnect, you know, fitting on these guns, but I get it. You know, fill probe is whatever it is and at least they give you that fill port cover there to keep dust and debris out of the gun, but overall, I mean, those are very small gripes when a gun's doing sub half-inch groups at 25 yards and under 1-inch groups at 45 yards. This is a pistol remember that guys so off the bench of very impressive results here for the HW 44 and one you guys are definitely going to want to check out. The high price point is well justified in my opinion if you are looking for something that is going to be able to hunt or target shoot accurately in a pistol format so check it out on PyramydAir.com. For the Insyder, I'm Tyler Patner. As always, guys, don't forget to comment, like, and subscribe. We'll see you at the next one.