Quick Review Steyr H5A

Finally got to inbox this thing. It’s a mishmash of Styer quality and stupid “features”. 

The A in 5A is for automatic, in the sense that it’s an auto loader. In many senses it really isn’t. The pellet is never loaded into the breach/chamber via a probe, it’s more like an auto advancer...the magazine is really the “chamber” for each round. In doing a quick look at the rig, it seems moderately similar to the B56 mechanism. The aluminum mags are long and stick out pretty far as you get to the end of the mag which isn’t great. 

Accuracy is Styer good. It can put them on target, right where you want them every time and fast but to what end? I rarely hunt with a semi-auto rifle...and if I do, it’s more for the other features of the rifle, not because it’s semi-auto. 

I’m not inclined to do so with an airgun. 

For all the Styer goodness, there’s a lot wrong with this gun, stupid and needless things that reflect poorly on Styer.

1. The stock isn’t actually a solid piece of wood. If you look very closely after taking the action out of the stock, it seems to be a laminate made of “Turkish walnut”. As I have time I’ll take pictures but the stock has two distinct grain patterns and is almost two entirely different colors, left to right.

2. The magazine system is delicate, complicated, and prone to failure on the 5th round. There’s a tiny screw that index aligns the magazine and it seems they forgot to loctite it down because after 300 or so rounds, the thing came loose. This manifested itself as a “blooper” of a 5th round. Every 5th round would be a flyer as the magazine would not advance and index. As the pellet was not perfectly aligned with the bore, the pellet firing would “rapid swaged” the pellet shaving off fine slivers of lead that then gummed up the action. I took the whole thing apart, cleaned it, and hand adjusted the indexer and loctited it. The cocking mechanism is dumb as well even the Aeron folks made a better, less obtrusive cocking mechanism for their 5 shot pistol and rifle  

3. The trigger is garbage, there’s so much plastic in there it’s a wonder it works at all. A perfect example, the trigger bar, on this rifle it’s plastic on other styers I own, it’s aluminum. The bar actually flexes and is “spongy”. 

It’s a decent hunting trigger but no challenge trigger, not by a long shot.

4. The barrel is not threaded on the compact or scout barrel. That’s just plain stupid. You have to buy an aftermarket adapter that slides on and can be grub screwed in place or glued on I guess. It came with two sided tape and instructions on how to attach it using lighter fluid. ???

Overall this rifle is an expensive plinker. Its not the match quality rifle the LG series is, it’s trigger is heavy, and the mag system is needlessly complex. It will be relegated to the back of the safe, wear the worst scope, and will probably get used at picnics for shooting pop cans.