Virtue Spire 5 Review vs Spire 4 - Worth It?

Introduction

Hey, guys. John Jackson here with Pro Edge paintball. I'm at the NXL World Cup. Due to the Hurricane Nicole or tropical storm Nicole, all of our games on Thursday got canceled. I'm at the hotel room today and picked up the Spire 5 yesterday at the field before they shut everything down. I want to do a little comparison video. I have the Spire 4, good, solid loader. I'm curious what the Spire 5 offers to see if it's worth you all's upgrade, see if it's worth your money and see what they've changed to make it better. I know there are a few issues people had with the Spire 5, so hopefully they fixed that. Let's check this out. Price packaging as usual. Opener up here, comes with your rain lid and the new loader does come with a speed feed already attached, so it comes with an extra spring finger finger for it.

That's nice.

Product Details

Got the red lid to match the chromatic red loader. Let's take that out. Like I said, they do come with the speed feet on top here. So, new loader, some big notices or big changes that I noticed immediately, whereas the chromatic window, I like it. Big red, looks flashy. They changed the design a little bit. A little more graphics. It seems like on the outside of the shell make it look more modern. One of the biggest issues people had, and they've asked about this online already, is did they fix the latch issue? I'm not sure because I haven't actually dove with the loader yet, but if you notice, the back of the loader is actually different. It looks like they made, I would assume they make the latch system much better. As much system it actually has a locking mechanism in here now. You can unlock it and then you can actually slide the latch up and it won't open up on you. Compared to the old one, it was just one large button that hopefully worked or it didn't. I'll show you that again. You've got the latch here in the back. You can slide that down and you can open it up. Here, if you slide that latch all the way to the top, you can't open it anymore.

It's pretty good.
The on/off button, you can hear it very loud, very clicky, easy to handle. It's about the same as the Spire 4.

Put that on... I don't think there's really any issues with that. It looks almost identical. They've changed a few of the logos and the different designs on it. But, the back of the loader, the back of the button definitely or the latch, I'm sorry, the latch button is definitely a lot different. On the outside, you notice there's no more the sensors or the lights on the side compared to the Spire 4. You can see that here. If you never had a Spire 4 before, I believe the idea here was it would tell you if there's paint inside your loader, if you need to reload, if it was just spinning. So, you can see the lights flashing on each side. That is no longer the case on the Spire 5. You no longer have that. I feel like just looking at this is already, for lack of a better word, a dumb down spire four. Basically, got rid of all the bad things and hopefully improved on the things that people had issues with. Because as everybody knows, Spire 4 was an absolutely amazing loader. Almost never jammed, works well with re-balls, wasn't $500 and pretty much did everything you need it to.

Let's open it up. Slide down and open it up and you're good to go. They changed the tray on the inside now. You've got blue instead of your black. Let me pull this out. Same thing. Still hinges from the front, just like the Spire 4. I'm going to pull this out. Almost identical as far as that goes. The tray looks a little different. We've got more graphics on the inside. Like I said, they make it look, I'd say, look a little cooler on the inside. The drive cone here is magnetic still, so very easy to take out, just like the Spire 4. I never do anybody that had any issues with that at all. But if you turn it over here, you'll notice the biggest difference. I got some batteries in here real quick. You notice that the board location is different. On the Spire 4, it's going to be the one here on my right-hand, your left-hand side. As you turn it over here, you notice that the Spire 4 has the power button here and the anti-jamb button.

Well, the Spire 5 no longer has that. You have just the power button and no anti-jamb button. The main board looks like it's been moved up underneath the drive system here, whereas before on the Spire 4 is actually seemed much larger and has moved to the front. I don't know if this was to make it lower profile or anything like that, maybe just to move for, I don't know, logical or logistical reasons. One thing I noticed here, and I read on the box was, the old Spire 4 has what they call, I think it's called a G-Shock sensor. Basically, whenever you would shoot, it would sense the vibration and cause the loader to spin. The Spire 5 no longer has that. It has the infrared eyes on the inside of this ring. So, if you can see the difference and the height, so this is just flat right here, and this actually has a little piece that sticks up. And so if you look inside of here, you can actually see two lights or two infrared light sensors in there, sender and receiver side, I believe. And that way, when you turn it on, if there's paint inside your loader, it's not just going to spin. Some of the Spire 4, I know I had one where it would just continue to try to agitate the whole time and spin.

Obviously, I didn't care for that too much. The Spire IR2 actually has the infrared eyes in it, and I liked it a lot better. I used the IR2 for a good long time. Now, if there's no paint inside your loader, it'll spin. If there is a paint inside the loader, it'll stop spinning. I read on the box also, this has an accelerator. I'm assuming that it says there's two forms of basically ball sensing or spinning technology to tell it when to spin, how fast it spins. One thing I've always liked about the Spire 4 and the 5, and this is the same on both of them. Actually, the Spire 5 looks maybe a little bit easier. But, if you want to really do a deep clean on the Spire 5, you pull the battery harness here. I just grabbed the wire small there real slightly and pulled it out, and there's a small latch here. You're going to take that latch and push it towards the back of the loader. The inside of the loader comes out completely. If you really want to do a deep cleaning, which I would recommend, especially in the weather we're going to play this weekend, things are going to be wet, nasty, muddy, or if you have a rough weekend, you shoot a lot of paint balls or you break paint inside your loader.

You want to make sure that you clean the inside of your loader here, magnetic off and just wipe this down. This is really nice. This is one of my favorite features. Then it just hooks in the back here in the back piece. Two little hooks, pull it down, make sure your wires aren't in the way, and snap it back in place and make sure you put your battery plug back into place and you're good to go. So, same thing, one button on, good to go. When they're paint inside there, it's not going to spin. You do have your spring ramp. Forgot to mention that that's the same on both loaders. You're good to go. Some of the questions I've had so far are, does the new tray fit in the old loader? I'm not 100% sure on this. It looks very similar. We're going to open this up, slide it in. It seems to be going snug, snapped into place, power on. Seems to fit. Looking at it, it seems like it does fit. There is a small lip on the inside of the feed neck here. Let me see how the old Spire 4 fits in the new shell.

Because maybe if you like that technology better, you could throw your old internals into your new shell, so you get a new color. No button.
Yeah, seems to fit.
But, it's got to line up different, I guess.
Interesting.
It doesn't look like the new button works with the old internals.
Pretty straightforward, very sleek design.
Check that out, very clean.
Of course, I love the red.
Nice.

These are available in six colors. You're going to have red, black, blue, purple, gray and white. I heard a rumor, there's not going to be a 280 version of this. I know some people love the 280. I would imagine that is going to be a sales question for virtue. If they did not sell a lot of them, then maybe that's why they discontinued them. These loaders will be available at proedgepaintball.com. Make sure when you're ready to pick up a new loader, make sure you shop our website. Check this out. If you haven't checked this out before, we are a store in Houston, Texas. Everything we carry on our website is available in store and all of our online orders ship the same day you order on Monday through Friday, as long as the order is placed before 5:00 PM Central Standard Time.
If you have any questions, comment below. Otherwise, we'll see you guys around.