HFC VSR stock performance review

There's just something more satisfying about shooting bolt actions compared to automatics. One of these is the HFC VSR. Is it a very good gun? Not really.

G36 for scale

This gun was bought from spraythemag.com for £90, probably the cheapest new VSR-clone gun in the UK. In the (cardboard) box you get a speed loader, a box of five hundred .2g bbs, and a magazine (as advertised).

The gun doesn't feel like it's going to break, but at the same time doesn't feel like everything fits together perfectly. There's very slight wobble in the rear sight, cylinder (when cycling the bolt), bolt handle, and trigger guard. The magazines (30rd) click into place, and don't drop freely. While removing them requires you to press the mag release button and then pull them out.

The stock isn't flat blue, the color is sort of textured and marbled with streaks of darker blue. Looks kinda nice in my opinion. There's a massive seam line down the middle.

  The black stock pad seems to be really hard rubber. The magazine, safety, mag release, and trigger guard are plastic. Other than that, it's all metal. I'm guessing pot metal (including trigger box) based on the price and the fact that none of it is magnetic other than the screws and spring. Speaking of the spring, the bolt pull is pretty light. I can actually pull it with my pinky:

I cannot do this repeatedly and comfortably though

The box says 90m/s with .2g, the site claims 480fps, but the fps readings I got (with provided .2g ammo, actually decent quality) were:
406.6
399.2
400.7
403.8
396.5
400.5
395.7
392.8
397.8
398.2
395.9
394
396.9
304.8 <-probably an error somehow, ignored
396.9
393.2
So ignoring the obvious outlier, it shoots  roughly 400±7 fps (average 398fps). No noticeable joule creep with .3g ammo, kinetic energy remained the same. 

Stock, it has a bad quality aluminum barrel and pretty awful hop. It's extremely inconsistent and wouldn't even lift .3g bbs properly. To give an idea of how bad it is, I set up a simple shooting test. Indoors, 50ft away from target, ASG 25g bbs, eight shots.

This is what (one of) my G36 gets using the stock SRC barrel/hop assembly.

This is the same G36 with an IR-hopped core tight bore barrel (just quickly swapped the barrel assemblies, didn't really adjust it, this is my regular barrel setup that was already set for .25).

And this is the VSR. The hop basically failed to apply backspin twice, completely missing the target. Also, shots curve to the right (more obvious when shooting outside at further distances), which is apparently a common problem for all VSRs.
Not a particularly great test as I don't have a way to clamp the gun, but it's obvious how inconsistent the HFC is by just shooting outdoors. Shots will curve in completely random directions, with "good" shots curving slightly to the right.

So really, if you wanted to be effective at a distance with a stock gun, an SRC g36 would actually do better. That's kinda sad. I would not recommend this gun for use stock. That really applies to all bolt action rifles I guess, but this one is really recommended to not be used stock.

UPDATE: Well, the cylinder head is glued to the cylinder. This'll make upgrading a pain unless you want to buy a new cylinder set (not cheap), I'd highly recommend going for a JG instead of this.