Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles AR Recommendations

I know it goes against the grain w/ most around here, but I don't want to build. Let's say I have $1500-2000 to spend, what brands of finished rifles do you guys recommend? My only experience w/ the platform was in the military. I want something accurate and dependable, probably 18" barrel, fairly lightweight. What brands should I be looking at? Let the suggestions fly, boys.

I have had good luck with LMT. WOA you can never go wrong with.

Your options are gonna be more limited finding a complete rifle with the 18" barrel, but they are out there.

You can also just buy a complete lower, and pick whatever upper you want. No more assembly involved with that than comes into play when you clean it.

For the money you're talking about, you can have a really nice rifle, with a good optic/mount on it.

Yup, I've been looking at separate uppers and lowers. What brands do you recommend?

I would go with a WOA complete upper and buy whatever lower floats your boat.

If I had $2K to spend on an AR I'd go with a RRA and spend the balance on ammo.

Something like this for your upper, with whatever lower you want, then get an optic. Defining what you consider "accurate" would help as well.

You don't have to spend that much on an upper, but you can. If you drop to a 16" barrel, volume pricing takes the price down some. 18" in a 5.56 is kind of an oddball.

Personally, I'd configure a 16" exactly how I wanted it from Palmetto State, and take the extra coin I saved and buy some ammo or spend it on a better optic. Something along the lines of this.

For reference I configured one with a low profile gas block and a long free float rail for 632.90 + shipping, add whatever kind of flip-up sights you want.

I think I meant 16"... like I said my only experience was the 20 incher I carried in the service, so looking for something shorter, whatever the next step down is. Thanks I'll check out those links.

The only problem to finding a quality 16" upper is too many choices, and finding one in stock alot of times.

You give up a little velocity with the 16" carbine versus a 20" rifle length, but they are lighter, and handle well. Using an optic makes the additional sight radius of the rifle length a non-issue as far as accuracy is concerned.

There are trade offs as well in chrome lined versus stainless barrels, the chrome being generally slightly longer lasting, more reliable, and easier to clean, while the stainless barrels are usually slightly more accurate.

The Remington R-15 Predator Carbines have a med weight 18" barrel but they make no provision for BUIS on the frt end.Having said that the other day I stumbled into a deal on a DPMS Oracle model with the 16" barrel 1/9 twist for $597.99 with case and 2 30 rd mags. I had a Red Dot sight(like an Aimpoint) that I mounted on it when I got home. The gas block has a picatinny rail on top and I just happened to have a little low profile lazer that fit right there and doesn't block the red dot thru the scope. I'll get that zeroed tommorrow. I got it on paper about 2.5" hi and a 1" to the left before it got dark. Seemed to handle 55gr fmj and 62 gr HP just fine without a bobble on the cycling. The forend is the old style A-2 type and short. There are many handguards out there to buy for replacement and I will with one that has a picatinny or 2 on it. I can see a Surfire light setup on it atleast. The Pardus telescoping butt is neat and it has a sling loop at the toe but nothing up frt, will need to do something about that in the futre. Only weighs 7 lbs loaded. Windham Weaponry makes one of the same config. that I looked at and it was very nice but $799 . magnum Man

I guess I'm thinking MOA... that's pretty much what it takes to make a rifle interesting to me. So I understand I could spend less, and there are no guarantees either way, but I pretty much have my mind set on a rifle that is a notch or two above average. I'm not saying money is no object, but if it wasn't, what would you guys suggest?

WOA on a RRA lower would work very well for me and wouldn't hesitate to take the plunge

Curious, sorry if I missed reading this, what is your intended use for this rifle? Generally speaking, that can have something to do with what choices to consider.

With money as no object, probably Noveske, LMT. Never had either one personally, but it's hard to beat their reps.

Mostly targets and plinking, a few 'yotes and maybe try it out on whitetails. It won't fill any particular 'need', just for fun. I don't own a lot of guns, but I like having a few that are really nice and get used.

I would recomend you build your own. The only reason why is because you get the exact componants you want in it. Going through a factory can be very costly. I am obsessed with accuracy, thats why I say build your own.

Check out G and R Tactical. Best prices and best customer service you can get.

For what it's worth, I disagree with the build your own crowd. It's usually more cost effective to buy a complete factory gun. And at the link above, you can get a complete Colt for under a grand. You can't beat Colt, Daniel Defense, or BCM in the AR world. Colt being the most affordable and the gold standard by which others are judged.

The other option is to buy the lower and upper seperate. It's not really a build at that point. Personally, I'm a self admitted BCM whore. So I bought the BCM lower from G&R and the complete uppper from BravoCompanyUSA.com.

I went with the lightweight 14.5 inch (perm'd A2X) standard FSB. Stupid simple. There's really no difference between 16 and 18 on an AR. Not a big enough one that 99% of shooters could realize the difference with. Especially with the type of ammo the average shooter uses.

Keep it simple. Check out M4Carbine.net for some great reading on AR's. Just search and read. Trust me, all your questions have been asked and answered there plenty of times. The SMEs there are to be trusted.

I'll agree that it's cheaper to buy a complete gun but only if one is available with the features you want. A Colt 6720 is one of the best general purpose carbines out there but they won't compete with a Krieger barreled 18-20" gun at 600 yards....

Figure out what you need and go from there.

RRA ATH(Advanced Tactical Hunter)