Is the Adventure Force Maxim Pro the Nexus Pro of flywheelers?
Forgive me if you have heard this story before: Dart Zone released the Adventure Force Tactical Strike Nexus Pro in the summer of 2020 for less than $50, and it forever changed the nerf hobby…
Talking about the Nexus Pro’s legacy has become a meme at this point, with YouTube and Reddit comments of “just buy a Nexus Pro” being almost as infamous as “Jolt Reskin.” But, four years later, it’s hard to see what the Nexus hasn’t done to advance the quality of high-performance, hobby-grade blasters. At least, that is the case when it comes to springers.
Flywheelers, however, have been a different story. While the popularity of the Nexus Pro was perhaps analogous to the Nerf Longshots, Alpha Troopers, and Retaliators that came before it, nothing seems to have come close to the ubiquity of the Nerf Stryfe as the standard flywheeler modding platform.
Several other flywheelers have had a brief heyday over the years. Even Worker basically cloned the Stryfe’s internal geometry in their Swordfish shell kit. Each blaster arrived with hype about their potential, only to fall short of surpassing the now ten-year-old blaster. Some had more obvious flaws, including problems with the pusher, but what dashed all of these blasters' chances was availability.
It’s hard to compete with a platform available on store shelves for so long, ready to fire out of the box, and compatible with so many existing mods. The flywheelers that, perhaps, have come closest to beating the Stryfe ultimately couldn't because of their prohibitive price and retail exclusivity; other blasters still needed a lot of work done to break even in terms of performance and reliability. While many have tried to design and supply mod parts for these Stryfe alternatives, the support for those blasters died down quickly.
So, forgive me if you’ve heard this story before: Dart Zone released the Adventure Force Tactical Strike Maxim Pro in the summer of 2024 for less than $50, and it forever changed the nerf hobby.
On its face, the Maxim Pro looks and behaves much like a Stryfe-oid should. It has a single-stage flywheel cage, a semi-auto mechanical pusher, a secondary rev trigger, a magwell seated forward of the grip, and it can run off Alkaline batteries. The blaster’s furniture also seems somewhat familiar, with tactical rails, a passably comfortable grip, a sling point, and an N-Strike stock lug. But that’s where most of the similarities stop.
Right up at the front, there’s no N-Strike barrel lug (miss you, Coop). However, the muzzle isn’t only cosmetic. The muzzle itself is three pieces joined together, with the center section looking quite similar to Dart Zone’s own BCAR rifling attachment. While the BCAR does fit in place of this center piece and seems to fire okay, we probably wouldn’t recommend anyone install it for themselves. Aside from some tolerance differences, our experience has shown that rifling attachments don’t increase accuracy enough to warrant what they decrease in performance and reliability. You’re much better off swapping your flywheels and motors for the performance and accuracy you need for an event’s FPS cap.
Speaking of the flywheel and motors, This is the first sign that the Maxim Pro is here to stay: The flywheel cage geometry is virtually identical to the Stryfe. In fact, if you want, you can find a Stryfe cage in your pile of modding supplies (we all have one) or go onto our site, get a Worker cage and wheels, and put them in this blaster. This one fact alone sells this blaster to some hobbyists more than anything else!
Now, it’s not quite so cut and dry. While filming our mod guide, we discovered enough fit and tolerance differences that Luke still decided to design a custom cage, but such changes are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things. Still, this is a valiant effort by Dart Zone to make this blaster the next modding platform for the hobby at large!
On down to the magwell, the Maxim Pro has a short-dart-only magwell, which has been a trend among pro-level blasters in the last couple of years. Like previous releases, the magwell is standard-talon compatible, which can fit most straight and curved mags, including our 23-round Koda mags. Earlier this year, with the release of the Nexus Pro X, Dart Zone abandoned their earlier Katana-like magazines in favor of a talon-compatible option. I imagine this is mostly for cross-compatibility with other brands, like Nerf and X-Shot. If you still have some earlier Dart Zone mags made from 2020-2023, they will still fit, and there is a mag release catch in the magwell for them. However, this extra catch is trivial to remove if you don’t need it, making gravity-dropping your mags easier.
This magwell can fit up to a 39mm length short dart. However, we only recommend you use darts with narrow heads and standard Ethylene-Vinyl Acetate (EVA) foam. The stock flywheel cage has a high crush (39mm between each motor shaft), so darts with harder tips, wider heads, waffle-heads, and Expanded Polypropylene (EPP) foam -- like Dragon Darts and Siren Darts -- are likely to get stuck, stall, and burn out your motors. Please be mindful of which darts you use from the community pool, especially if you replace your cage or bypass the PTCs.
Moving farther back, the pusher itself has a few surprises. In addition to a regular mechanical pusher for basic semi-auto action, Dart Zone has left shell bossing for a gear motor and switches, making it compatible with a pared-down version of Worker’s full-auto kit for the Stryfe and similar flywheelers. You don’t need to swap out much hardware, as the top of the installed pusher has a rack gear that mates perfectly with the sector pinion gear on the gear motor. We’ve naturally included all you need in a mod kit and will go over installation in our latest mod tutorial.
Additionally, while unintended by the designers, the simple squared-off nature of the shell makes it a perfect candidate for a solenoid pusher. Luke and I got a bit sidetracked a week ago and went to town demoing. Luke later refined the installation process with a solenoid cage, which is now available separately and as a kit. Especially when paired with a two-stage trigger mod kit, adding a solenoid makes for a satisfying and controllable trigger pull.
Another standout feature of the Maxim Pro is the versatility of the battery compartment! In stock form, it accommodates an 8 AA-sized battery caddy, but that caddy is removable with a single screw, leaving an XT30 battery terminal and enough space for a 1100mAh LiPo. Even the battery door is like some of the expanded battery doors we’ve made for previous flywheelers, with a little more headroom than a flush battery door would have (we offer a slim battery door option on the shop for those who want to lose the extra bulk).
Between both the caddy and the XT30 connector, this blaster is compatible with various battery options, including Alkalines, NiMHs, IMRs, LFPs, the Dart Zone 2s Li-Ion packs (like the one included with the Omnia Pro and Venom Pro), and nearly every 2S and 3S LiPo battery we carry on the shop. This flexibility in battery options is almost unheard of, with the main exception being the Dart Zone Pro MK-3 released in 2021.
While we’re talking about batteries, performance-wise, this blaster shot an average of 156 FPS with a standard deviation of only 3 FPS on 3s LiPo (12v). And a 2S dropped the average down by less than 10 FPS. Our aforementioned custom flywheel cage with Krakens and Daybreaks promises us up to 165 FPS, lower noise, and better accuracy. We will be updating our Daybreak-compatible cage FPS numbers soon using our standard testing procedure, so check back for more updates!
The secondary trigger has been moved to the rear as a backstrap-style rev. This is a new thing that Dart Zone is trying in their flywheelers as an alternative to the standard middle finger rev you see on the Stryfe and other blasters. They’ve also made a version of this rev style on their Venom Pro mini-flywheeler. However, unlike the Venom Pro, this one is much more comfortable and intuitive. You don’t have to choke up on the Maxim to activate the rev. In fact, it feels almost as natural as a standard rev trigger for those familiar with them.
Joining the hobby in the era of Worker blasters, I have no personal affinity or nostalgia for either style of separate rev, so I will probably convert mine to a two-stage “Worker-style” trigger with a solenoid pusher. Unfortunately, you cannot use the two-stage with the stock mechanical pusher at this time because you would need to completely redesign the trigger to allow for enough of a gap between the rev switch and the pusher arm.
If you’re keeping the backstrap rev, while perhaps counterintuitive for some, you should strongly consider upgrading the trigger lock. Because of the novelty of the backstrap, a few people -- some experienced hobbyists included -- have accidentally tripped the PTCs, or worse. After hearing of some early adopters having issues, I quickly diagnosed that the trigger lock was activating too late to be helpful if someone revved down their blaster while pushing darts into the flywheels. So, I designed an upgraded trigger lock for peace of mind.
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That’s pretty much it. The Maxim Pro is the budget pro-Stryfe-oid we’ve been waiting for since the mass-market availability of short darts. The features it lacks are few and far between. If anything, it allows the community to mod the blaster into something even greater, just like the Nexus that came before it.
In 2020, the hobby rejoiced because it got the budget 150 FPS springer it’s always wanted, with enough backward compatibility to work with existing loadouts and still have room to add the few features it didn’t have. The Maxim Pro delivers on the same promise. It’s an affordable 150 FPS short dart flywheeler, ready to fire out of the box, using existing hobby standards, with tons of space and shell bossing to customize the base blaster to your liking. Even going all-out with a solenoid, new cage, and two-stage trigger, you’re out less cash than other pro-level Stryfe-oids have gone for.
Overall, Dart Zone has done a commendable job with the Maxim Pro, and this is going to be an extremely popular blaster for many people. Whether you want an updated, versatile modding platform or want to plug in some batteries and hit the field, the Maxim is the new nexus of short dart flywheelers in multiple senses of the word. - JPH