Mantis has taken dry fire firearms training to a completely new level with their tracking sensors, apps, and trigger reset products. Dry fire has entered the digital age with Mantis and there’s no turning back.
It’s nice to finally see the tech industry and the gun industry merge together to benefit gun owners. The products from MantisX Training System program are likely the most professional attempt I’ve seen to blend tech and firearms without costing an arm and a leg.
The MantisX training systems (of which there are four) are small but tough electronic devices designed to fit on the picatinny rail of any gun. If your gun does not have a pic rail, Mantis also sells adapters to fit the product to your gun. There are also adapters for equipping it to a shotgun barrel instead of a piece of rail. The purpose of the system is to track how much your barrel moves while firing. The free App (Available for Android and iOS) connects to the device and then allows you to track how you pull the trigger and move the barrel during live or dry fire.
Table of Contents
What’s in the Box
The first thing you notice is that the creators of the MantisX are serious about protecting their equipment. Inside the box, the device sits well protected by a foam cutout. You also get instructions and a USB charging cord for the device.
My first thought was that it’s very light, which is good. You do not want to toss the weight of your firearm off after the unit is attached. It weighs just a hair over an ounce and it’s only two inches long. Attaching it is simple: remove screw, fit over rail, reinsert screw. Nothing to it. The device has a single solitary button that activates it, and allows it to connect to the MantisX Training System app on your phone or tablet.
Getting it up and Running
The app is very clean and very easy to use. The device connects in seconds and gives you a short tutorial on how everything works. You can select your gun and set up a profile for it. You also need to input a few things about yourself, like your dominant hand, where the device is mounted, and the position it’s mounted.
You can also set it to dry fire, live fire, and airgun modes.
The overall purpose of the device is to judge any and all movement you make when you pull the trigger, assign a score, and tell you what you are doing wrong. So, if you use too much trigger finger it will let you know, and assign you a score between 1 and 100.
The more movement, the lower the score. If you’re not sure what things like “thumbing” and “pushing” mean, you can actually look them up on the app and see what they mean and how to correct them.
There’s also a ring around your score that will turn red based on the direction your barrel moves when you fire. It shows different degrees of movement based on the severity of the movement. It’s the most modern version of old school correction targets.
Does it Work?
The best way to see if the diagnoses are right is to create controlled situations where I knew I was pulling the trigger the wrong way. I purposefully used too much and too little trigger finger, I heeled it, tightened my fingers, and flinched. The MantisX Training System correctly diagnosed every failure and offered helpful corrections.
Color me impressed. Not only does it track your failures and successes that day, but throughout the entire time you use the MantisX. It tracks your trends and failures and graphs them in several different ways. It tracks your failures by percentages, and tracks by bar graph every trigger pull.
Downsides
There are a few downsides to this system, two of which are tied to the sensor’s sensitivity. First, there is no way to manually adjust the sensitivity. I think if there was a manual sensitivity control the next downside would not exist.
Sometimes when conducting drills that involve reloading, or clearing a failure, the sensor will detect these motions as shots. This can mess up your ability to measure success and failure over long periods of time with the graphs. It’s just kind of annoying. The good news is that this app-based device is being updated all the time to improve it, and there’s even a shot detection troubleshooter you can use to help remedy the situation.
The third downside is it won’t work in holsters when mounted to a pistol’s forward rail, which makes it difficult to train for that perfect draw and fire shot. The way around that is to buy an adapter that allows you to attach the unit to the baseplate of your magazine. (This is also the option you’d use if your gun had no rail.) Of course, the holster concerns are a moot point if you’re doing the drills with a rifle.
Dry Fire Academy
Overall this is a fantastic device, and the application is stable, clean, and well designed. It’s perfect for shooters looking to sharpen their skills, and even better for instructors trying to diagnose issues with shooters. The Mantis X is likely the future of firearms training, and is mixing tech with firearms seamlessly.
Laser Academy
One new product from Mantis is their Laser Academy. This utilizes another app, special targets that are read by your phone’s camera, and a laser cartridge that goes in your bore. It allows you to take the MantisX Training system to another level when it comes to dry fire training. This way, you can incorporate solid, repeatable drills time and time again. It can be used with or without the MantisX system.
Blackbeard Trigger Reset
By far, the biggest problem with dry fire is the need to manually reset the trigger on your firearm. When using an AR-pattern gun, this is cumbersome at best because you have to rack the charging handle each time.
The Blackbeard system from Mantis eliminates this problem entirely.
This drop-in bolt carrier group and magazine allow you to train effectively using your AR, your trigger, and your sights. The battery pack to power the unit is in the magazine, which lasts for thousands of trigger pulls before needing to be recharged via USB.
The Blackbeard system is capable of performing up to ten dry fire shots per second, so you can channel your inner Jerry Miculek for some speed shooting. When the trigger is pulled, a red or green laser (your choice) emits a dot to show where your shot landed. The unit is also available with no laser or with infrared. When the trigger is pulled, a red or green laser (your choice) emits a dot to show where your shot landed. The unit is also available with no laser or with infrared.
