Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Air Guns Winchester 1977XS

I hadn't seen any threads about these on here in a 1 year search on here, so I just figured I would do a little review on the one I picked up last week. I'm a sucker for the old multipumpers, and I had seen/read the XS was basically a juiced up 880 so I grabbed one on sale online. Now that I've put several hundred pellets through it, I've got a pretty good grasp of what I've got, and as others have said, it really is an 880 on steroids, for better and worse.



I suppose I'll give a rundown on the things I like about it first. Foremost, it really does have some extra zap compared to the 880/901. I ran pellets between 7.6 and 10.5 grains through the chrono, and they outran my 880/901s by 100-120fps, depending on the pellet. At 10 pumps the 7.6s had a mean velocity of 831fps and the heaviest of the bunch 10.5gr were going 747fps. Velocities were also pretty consistent. I messed around between 4 and 10 pump tests with a few different pellets, and about the worst spread I had among any of them was 11fps, most of them were 5-8.

The thumbhole stock is a big plus for me, too. At the price point, it is obviously cheap plastic, but it doesn't feel like cheap plastic. There is a lot less wrist flex in it than any of the 880s or 901s I have. It shoulders and handles slick, and the trapezoidal forearm fits my hand very well, since it's a bit slimmer than the other models.

On to the bad. The trigger is the Achilles heel of this rifle. It's absolutely terrible, even by cheap airgun standards... terrible, terrible....terrible. Mine breaks at a hair over 7#, and the break point is extremely inconsistent. Despite the fact the trigger has a pretty short travel, you still never really know when it's going off.

The pump is quite stiff, as well. It's not the old Sheridan/Benjamin Streak stiff, but with the shorter pump handle, it's a bit of a teeth gritter once you get up past 6-7 pumps. The handle is beefier than the 880 pump, but it still has a LOT of flex by the time you get to 10. Mine doesn't shoot anything best at 10 pumps, but if it did, I have the distinct feeling the handle would end up snapping in my hand eventually. The last little knock is the scope; it's absolute garbage, but I expected that at the price. I ended up [bleep] it after a few days, because it's actually easier shooting good groups with the open sights. The optics are blurry, and any little bump knocks the zero off into outer space. Lastly, not really a knock, just a heads up. If you are looking for an in town/suburban backyard kind of plinker, this probably isn't the rifle for you, because it's pretty loud past 4-5 pumps.

Despite the trigger, the rifle is actually fairly accurate. It's definitely more of a bench toy than offhand plinker, though, when you combine its light weight and heavy trigger. Overall, I feel like this thing was really a missed opportunity, because it has a lot of potential If they could straighten out the horror show of a trigger, it would be one of, if not the best budget pumper out there, imo.

Anyway, just a few of my better 25yd bench groups from it. If you can overcome the trigger, it's capable of bugholes, but a lot of times I throw a pretty good flyer or two in there. I tried some 35yd groups, but between the trigger and front sight being pretty fat, they were not great, 2" or so. With my eyes, it's a 25 yard gun using the irons on it.

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