It’s the end of the year, and if you’ve got any young ones in the house, now’s the time to reward them for being good little members of the family with the most obvious gift of all: A gigantic NERF blaster that looks like it was ripped straight from the vault of Destiny 2. Nerf’s blasters have always looked fantastic, but it’s latest one has a new trick up its sleeve: It’s basically a semi-automatic sniper rifle.
The Nerf Ultra One is able to gloat about having one of the furthest firing ranges ever, with Nerf proclaiming that it can reach a distance of 120 feet. In metric, that works out to an effective attack range of 36 meters or roughly 327 cricket pitches. My maths may be slightly off with that last number but the gist of this is that it shoots fast and far.
The blaster itself is a good-looking piece of kit. It’s actually hefty, the construction features a rotating drum for ammo, and the handle cradle has a surprising amount of room to slip your hand into. It’s a solid, chunky piece of battery-operated kit that can hurl foam darts at your competition with incredible speed…but there is a catch.
Nerf ammo has been pretty much universal amongst its various weapons. For the Ultra One blaster however, the ammo drum can only accept a revamped foam dart shape. It has a new texture and a tail at the base of its design, and if the gun detects that you’re using different ammo then it’ll refuse to fire that particular round and will rotate to the next available piece of foam.
Is this a change that was created to help put a damper on the third-party market where you can buy knock-off foam darts for mere pennies right now? I could certainly see that being the case, especially when these new darts command a more premium price. That being said, these darts are robust, and you’ll get 25 of them to fill the ammo drum up. Prepare to let loose!
As for performance? It’s fast. The heavy weight of the trigger will give you an easy two-shot rate per second, which helps prevent any darts being smashed into the firing chamber. Accuracy was also high, with targets being hit from a comfortable range in my yard. Overall, I like the Nerf Ultra One Blaster. It’s a fun piece of tech to use, and proof that Hasbro’s foam blaster is still an industry leader.
Nerf’s new foam dart design remains controversial, especially in the face of rising competition or cheaper knock-offs, but the toy is a quality piece of plastic and electrical engineering. It looks great, operates brilliantly, and is surprisingly accurate. It’s definitely an unusual addition to the Nerf arsenal, but it’s an interesting new direction.
Last Updated: December 9, 2020
