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I was at the Academy yesterday and noticed these on the shelf. 30 rounders for a mini-14. They were all steel and about $25.00 which seemed like a decent price. I was wondering if anyone has used these products and what your thoughts were good or bad. Should I buy a few or pay almost twice as much for the factory mags?

I owned a Mini 14 for a short time before selling it to buy my AR. In my short experience (a few months) the ONLY mags that gave me trouble-free operation were the Ruger factory 20-round mags. All other non-Ruger mags gave me feed problems. But I don't specifically remember if I used a Pro Mag or not.

I have also had a similar experience with my Ruger 10/22 - only the factory Ruger 10-round mags seem to work in that gun (all the larger capacity non-factory mags cause problems).

Only other experience I have with Pro Mag is I used one of theirs on a Bersa Thunder .380 and it worked just as well as the factory Bersa mag.

If occasional failures are okay to you then buy A magazine or so and test them out, if you don't like them you can always unload them and not usually loose but a few bucks in the flip. If not for $10 more you can have factory Ruger mags from 44mag.com

Bad. All the aftermarket mags were bad in my Mini. All my Ruger factory mags work fine. The only aftermarkets that I know of with a good rep were PMI ( I think). I never bought any and they were expensive. Someone else may know more about them.

The magazine if often dismissed as an accessory, but in reality it has a huge amount to do with the gun's ability to feed rounds; and reliability is P1 for me when it comes to choosing and carrying a gun. With that said, I've heard generally unfavorable things about ProMag, so I would only use them at the range if someone were to give me one.

Embalmo

Every ProMag I have bought had to be manipulated in some way to be reliable. I think their quality control is non-existent because each mag seems to have different problems. The welds are bad and they never seem to fit just right. You should be able to get them to work reliably with a rubber mallet and some time but they are not good enough to trust your life with.

http://shopruger.com/Autoloading-Magazines/products/98/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; is a link to the Strum Ruger store. I hate that the mags are that expensive but to me they are worth the cost. You may want to get a PROMAG and try it but I would buy factory if I thought I would ever have to rely on the rifle for self defense.

I have an early (180-series) Mini-14 that - so far - seems to work with every type of cheap afternarket magazine out there. But for an additional $15, you can get Ruger magazines, which probably are the best ones out there.

In terms of general ProMag quality (not specific to the Mini-14) I have some 13-round ProMags for my Browning 9mm, purchased during the dark days of the AWB. Took a high round count class with four of these, and in well over 1000 rounds I had exactly zero malfunctions of any kind.

Ask yourself, "If I have to use this gun to protect myself will this cheap mag work? Am I or my loved ones worth $10.00 more?" I f you can honestly answer yes to the first question and no the second then buy the Promags.

Factory mags all the way for a defense gun.

MoJo wrote:Ask yourself, "If I have to use this gun to protect myself will this cheap mag work? Am I or my loved ones worth $10.00 more?" I f you can honestly answer yes to the first question and no the second then buy the Promags.

Factory mags all the way for a defense gun.

Not really a defense gun but I guess it would be / could be in a pinch. I think I pretty much got the answer to my question based on the responses. Basically they sound hit or miss. I don't have much in the way of patience and expect my stuff to work regardless of what I paid for it. Think I'll just bite the bullet and go with the factory mags.

Thanks folks.