Paintball Equipment and Gear
The choices for Paintball Equipment and Gear can be overwhelming to a new paintball player. The large selection of paintball guns, masks, and accessories makes finding the perfect setup a bit daunting. If you’re new to paintball, we recommend checking out your local paintball store. This will give you the opportunity to try on some of the paintball equipment.
Our indoor paintball store in Minneapolis has a large selection of paintball gear to check out, including paintball equipment from companies like Planet Eclipse, Tippmann, Exalt, and Virtue. Air Assault also has a great paintball store in St. Paul which has the largest selection of paintball gear in Minnesota.
Before you head out to your local paintball store, it’s worth taking a moment to learn some of the basics about paintball gear. We have put together a basic guide to paintball equipment and gear that will help you understand the terminology.
Paintball Masks
Paintball masks are perhaps the most critical piece of safety equipment. They protect your eyes and head from paintball impacts. Paintballs travel at velocities as high as 200 MPH and can cause irreversible eye damage. That’s why it’s important to have a good mask.
Most paintball fields have rental masks available to use, but it’s nice to have a mask of your own. If you’re planning a budget for your first set of paintball equipment, plan to spend $100-150 on a good mask. You can find cheaper masks, but you’ll quickly find that cheaper masks aren’t as comfortable or durable.
The best paintball masks on the market will have a thermal lens instead of an anti-fog lens. The thermal lens consists of two panes, with a vacuum between them. The vacuum prevents the transfer of heat between the two lenses, resulting in a lens that is less likely to fog.
Paintball Markers
When you think of paintball equipment and gear, you probably think of the paintball gun. The official term for a paintball gun is paintball marker. Paintball markers come in three categories: pump, semi-automatic, and electronic. Pump paintball markers require the user to cycle a pump handle to cock and reload the marker. Semi-automatic paintball markers are typically mechanical. They automatically cycle and reload with each pull of the trigger. Electronic markers use circuit boards and solenoids to cycle and load the marker.
Paintball Tanks
The other major category for paintball equipment and gear is the paintball tank. Paintball tanks provide the propellant used to fire a paintball from a paintball gun. Three types of compressed gas are used in paintball: CO2, nitrogen, and compressed air. Compressed air and nitrogen are interchangeable and there’s no real difference between the two when it comes to paintball. It’s simply a matter of which case is most cost-effective for a paintball store or paintball field to use. Compressed air is the preferred gas used in paintball, but the tanks are more expensive than CO2 tanks. Additionally, some high-end paintball markers are not compatible with CO2.