To enjoy a good game of paintball one has to understand the style of paintball that one wants to play. If you are speedballer, The Dye DM series, the new Angels are pretty nice. The Ego is a crazy SOD for a gun. If you are looking for something with a smaller profile the Smart Parts Shocker is a great gun.

There are many guns in the market to choose from and the prices are set higher for a reason. And the price should not be a problem if you truly want the best paintball gun in the world. You cannot rate a marker (paintball gun) without first defining the field. If you have played in both speedball and woods ball games you will understand that while some markers are good for woods ball, they are certainly not the best for speedball.

If you want to play speedball - a clean tight field with loads of artificial structures, you want a marker that is light weight, relatively short in length and can sustain a high rate of fire. For this game an Intimidator, Spyder, Ego (e.g. the new Tippmann Triumph) etc. will do quite nicely.

However if you want to play woodsball - field with trees, rocks, wet ditches and patches of open field you want a marker that will fire accurately over relatively long distances and can handle physical punishment like being dropped, mud and neglect (reflect on the AK-47).

For this game you want a Tippmann A5 or X7 with a flatline barrel (for range) and for higher rates of fire, a response trigger (if you need durability) or H.E. E-Grip (if you never crawl over the mud). These ladies and gentlemen are the makings of the best paintball gun.

Reliability

From experience the MOST reliable marker is the Sheridan VM-68, (the best paintball gun that can handle form of abuse). It's old but reliable, it has a unique mechanism which NEVER breaks

A Tippman with a Flatline or automag with a ceramic Taso barrel; that ladies and gentlemen is one excellent sniper paintball gun There is nothing worse than having to clean paint from a barrel in the middle of a fire fight! The old automag design (twist and lock barrel) was the best paintball gun- just switch the barrel in 5 seconds. The old auto cocker design worked will too with all that brute force to shoot the paint out.

Look, Feel and Weight

This is a preference, the second best paintball gun. Here's the bottom line, a reliable ugly, heavy, blocky hunk or metal over some light-weight piece of junk that chops every other ball any day is what you should be going for. You want to be using the marker, not displaying it on a stand. A good marker should have scratches, dried, crusty paint and dings.

That's how you tell a player from a poser. Unless, the anti-chop "vision" system that utilizes infrared "eyes" to sense the balls with its tourney legal and different firing modes and semi automatic. Boasting with the 3-burst, as well as a "rebound" mode which is much like a ramping chip. The quality is impeccable, as well as the performance. On the other hand the Tippman 98 and 1-5 is the best paintball gun, but cost too much to and kind of like the AK47 of the paintball world.