Review of the Nerf Hyper Series (and 3 Best Guns Revealed)

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Last updated: August 16, 2023

A review and explanation of the Nerf Hyper series of blasters, plus the best guns in this exciting new series revealed.

The introduction of the Nerf Hyper series in 2021 comes after the somewhat disappointing introductions of Ultra and Elite 2.0 in the preceding years.

Blasters in the Nerf Hyper series have a refreshing new look, and they shoot with balls instead of darts. They are similar to Rival blasters in many ways, but there are also some key differences.

In this article, I will decipher the unique Hyper range, share my honest opinion about it, and reveal which Hyper blasters are the best ones to buy.

If you’re reading this, I’m sure you’re familiar with the Nerf Rival series. Rival was a huge game changer when the first blaster was released back in 2015.

At last, we got to enjoy Nerf blasters that were actually powerful and were able to shoot reasonably accurately. Funnily enough, to achieve that high performance, Nerf had to throw their classic darts away and replace them with balls.

Nerf Rival has been a very successful range of blasters, and I am a huge fan myself as well. So you may be wondering, why on earth did Nerf feel the need to come out with the Hyper series if it’s so similar to Rival?

Hyper Rounds

As mentioned, Hyper blasters don’t use darts; they shoot with balls, so-called Hyper Rounds. These balls are specifically designed for the Hyper series and are not compatible with any other blaster.

A Hyper Round is slightly bigger than half the size of a Rival Round. But where Rival Rounds are made with foam, Hyper Rounds are made with a soft rubber-type material and feel denser.

The funny thing is that they are so small and bouncy that they get lost quite easily. Rival Rounds are much easier to track down after a firing session than Hyper Rounds are.

The other thing worth mentioning is that Hyper rounds feel a bit sticky. And this mild stickiness can lead to jamming and feeding issues because they can stick onto the inside of the hopper chamber or even onto other rounds. And because of that stickiness, they also tend to get dirty quite easily.

More Ammunition

Because Hyper Rounds are significantly smaller than their Rival counterparts, Hyper blasters offer a much higher firing capacity. For example, the Hyper Mach-100 can officially hold up to 100 rounds, whereas the similar Rival Perses can “only” hold 50 rounds.

In other words, with a Hyper blaster, you will get to enjoy more firing stock, which is a pro for the Hyper series.

Performance

Okay, let’s talk about performance.

The marketing behind Hyper has mainly focused on speed (firing velocity) and firing capacity. I’ve already touched on firing capacity and how good that is, so let’s now focus on firing velocity.

Nerf is absolutely right when they claim that Hyper blasters can fire Hyper rounds at up to 110 feet per second. Under ideal circumstances, that is achievable. Hyper blasters do indeed fire with excellent speed, probably because of the design of the rounds.

But what about accuracy? Sadly, this is where Hyper blasters are being outperformed by their Rival counterparts. The six Hyper blasters that have been released so far are not able to impress in regards to firing accuracy.

That is probably also because of the design and the materials of the rounds, which would mean that future releases in the Hyper series will likely not offer much improvement.

My Verdict

So, to answer my question above, Hyper and Rival can co-exist because Hyper blasters are generally more affordable than their Rival counterparts, and they are perhaps a bit more child friendly.

With that in mind, I must say that I do like the new Hyper series. They are great-looking guns that are fun to shoot with, but they’re far from perfect. It’s a pity that Rival is so good that it’s almost impossible to meet that same standard.

I would argue that it is the Hyper Round that has kind of ruined the Hyper series. The Hyper Round was designed with the best intentions, but the Rival Round is much better in many ways.

By all means, get yourself one or more Hyper blasters. In all likelihood, you will like them as long as you don’t compare them to Rival.

Right now, Nerf has six blasters available in the Hyper series.

In this section, I am going to share the top three, starting with the best one, the Hyper Rush-40.

1. Nerf Hyper Rush-40

That’s right, the Rush-40 is my favorite Hyper blaster right now, and it’s a blaster that I would highly recommend to any Nerf fan out there.

Like the Rival Kronos, the Hyper Rush-40 is a spring-powered, single-fire blaster with an impressive 40-round firing capacity. It’s basically a pistol-style blaster that can hold a ridiculous amount of ammo.

The Hyper Rounds are loaded into the gravity-driven hopper-style magazine that sits on top of the blaster. This magazine is also part of the overall priming mechanism, as it moves back and forth as you prime before firing.

The Hyper Rush-40 is an impressive weapon with good looks and ergonomics. The priming and firing mechanism is smooth, and the performance overall is more than excellent.

My rating: 4.6 out of 5.

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2. Nerf Hyper Mach-100

Second on this list is the Mach-100, a fully automatic, flywheel-powered blaster with a hopper-style magazine that can hold 100 Hyper rounds. As mentioned, the Rival counterpart of the Mach-100 is the Perses, which can hold up to 50 rounds.

As with a lot of other fully automatic Nerf guns, the Hyper Mach-100 isn’t the most ergonomic blaster, but firing is still a lot of fun. A drawback is that the hopper is slightly inefficient in the sense that the rounds don’t always flow to the front very smoothly. A bit of shaking is often required to be able to keep firing.

Note that the Hyper Mach-100 requires a staggering amount of 6 D batteries to operate and doesn’t (yet) offer a much lighter rechargeable battery pack as the Perses does.

My rating: 4.2 out of 5.

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3. Nerf Hyper Siege-50

The Nerf Hyper Siege-50 is a pump-action single-fire blaster with slam-fire ability, and features an integrated hopper system that can hold up to 50 rounds.

This is my least favorite of the currently available Nerf Hyper blasters, mainly because the firing mechanism feels a bit clumsy and inefficient. The slam-fire option doesn’t really add value, and the single-firing mechanism works okay but misses the fun factor.

It’s still a cool blaster for what it is, with a fantastic design and more than respectable firing velocity.

My rating: 4.0 out of 5.

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To conclude this article, let me quickly summarize the general pros and cons of the Hyper series of blasters:

Pros:

• Strong firing velocity.
• Fantastic look and feel.
• High ammunition capacity.

Cons:

• Disappointing firing accuracy.
• Vulnerable to jamming issues.
• Hyper rounds can disappear or get dirty.

What do you think? Do you agree with my assessment?

Always happy to hear your thoughts, and in the meantime, I will keep this article up-to-date as more Hyper blasters are released.