If you are new to shooting a high volume of rounds on the range with your AR-15, you may not be familiar with what a speed loader is and what difference it will make for your time on the range. A speed loader is, in essence, exactly what it says it is – a mechanism to load a great deal of ammunition quickly. With the best of these products, you can load multiple rounds and even a full 30-round magazine in one fluid motion.
Being able to do this provides several primary benefits. Loading a great deal of ammunition quickly will save you time on the practice range and make your shooting day a great deal more enjoyable because you spend more time shooting and less time loading. The speed loader will also reduce the thumb and hand fatigue from repeatedly hand-loading ammunition, and it will protect your magazines by preventing many misfeeds, which can bend or scratch the magazine lips and lead to malfunctions.
The Three Common Types of Speed Loaders
There are three types of common speed loaders: the benchtop/tray loader, the stripper clip adapter (also known as a spoon), and the handheld thumb-saver loader.
Handheld loaders are small, pocket-sized units often made of polymer, generally featuring a lever or sliding mechanism that assists in feeding loose ammunition more rapidly in fairly small amounts.
Stripper clip adapters (or spoons) work with bulk ammo that comes loaded on a multi-round metal or plastic stripper clip, using a simple guided piece known as the spoon that clips onto the top of the magazine to allow quick, efficient loading of those rounds.
Benchtop/tray loaders lie flat on a table and allow you to line up 20 or 30 rounds in a track, which you attach to the end of the magazine, using a pusher block (often magnetic) to push all of the rounds into the magazine at once.
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The Magzipp is superior to all of these products in one significant way: it allows you to feed multiple magazines at the same time, dramatically speeding up the process and giving you even more time shooting and less time spent loading.
