HK Army Pinokio Speed Hopper Review

For players new to tournament paintball, it would be easy to get the idea that a high-end, competition-ready paintball loader should cost two hundred dollars. After all, many of the best loaders in the game do cost that much, and the best players and teams use them to compete. Loaders like the Bunkerkings CTRL and Dye R2 offer impressive features, feed fast, have proven reliable and are sitting on top of the paintball guns used by teams like the Ironmen, Edmonton Impact, San Antonio X-Factor, the Russian Legion and Damage. However, one loader has broken the mold. The Speed, created by Pinokio and now manufactured and sold by HK Army, has proven that a competitive paintball loader can deliver pro-level performance, all the features a serious paintball player needs and do it at a price anyone can afford!

Looking at the HK Army Speed it’s clear to see it’s different than the rest of the high-end paintball loaders in paintball. Created by Pinokio before the brand was acquired by HK Army and envisioned as the smallest, lightest, fastest hopper they could produce, the Pinokio crew checked each box off with a mixture of proven technology and a willingness to do things just a little differently in the design department. Using simple internals that have proven to be reliable, fast and able to feed consistently in practically any weather, the challenge of creating an incredibly small, light loader, led the design team to rethink how a loader is configured, moving the feed tray from behind the loader’s feed neck to the front. The result, the Speed, was found to be one of the lightest, smallest, most balanced paintball loaders available and, with the feed system moved forward, a player using the loader no longer has a huge loader in their face while trying to sight down the top of their paintball gun!

Weighing under a pound with its two 9volt batteries installed, the HK Army Pinokio Speed loader adds almost no weight to the top of the light tournament paintball guns it’s designed to be used with, and it doesn’t affect balance. Standard with a flip-lid, the HK Army Speed is compatible with speed feeds already on the market, including the Universal Feed gate from Exalt and HK’s universal speed feed. Changing batteries and cleaning the HK Army Speed loader is simple: while it doesn’t split into top and bottom sections like many other modern high-end loaders, the Speed’s battery door pops off easily without tools, and the front nose section slides off with the push of a button to allow access to the inside of the loader for cleaning, which takes little more than a wipe-down. A simple, single button at the rear of the loader switches the system on and off.

Unlike other modern loaders, the HK Army Pinokio Speed loader utilizes a hard-wired sensor system to operate. This system, with a bend-sensor located in the feed neck hard-wired to the loader’s circuit board and impeller system, allows the loader to spin while firing and match the firing rate of the gun as it shoots, enabling the system to achieve feed rates easily approaching 20 balls per second and more, without jams, and without any force feeding of paintballs, making the system extremely gentle on brittle tournament paintballs. A byproduct of this type of operating system creates a loader that is very efficient, allowing a single set of batteries to last game after game, and in many cases, weekend after weekend!

Light, fast, reliable, gentle on paint, perfectly balanced, simple and offering better field-view than any other loader – and that’s not all. Perhaps the very best feature of the impressive HK Army Pinokio Speed loader is its price. At $79.95 retail, the Speed loader costs well under half the price of loaders that compete with it at the professional level! Indeed, the Pinokio Speed has recently won an NXL World Cup, as legendary team San Diegy Dynasty used this loader to defeat the very best teams in paintball and hoist a World Cup trophy!

For a serious tournament competitor looking for every ounce of edge they can get over their opponents, for an up-and-coming tournament paintball player on a budget, or any paintball player that simply loves a great deal, the HK Army Pinokio Speed paintball loader is one piece of paintball gear that truly delivers a remarkable combination of performance, features, ingenuity and price! Fair warning – once you’ve tried one it will be very difficult to use anything else!