It’s amazing how many people will admit practice and training is the best way to improve your shooting. Then these same people talk about how they don’t get to the range very often or take training because it’s too expensive. Well, training and practice doesn’t have to cost you too much. Thanks to the Mantis X gun training device.
What is Mantis X?
Mantis is a gun training device. That’s the simple explanation. The problem is that it’s way more than just a simple training device. It’s a simple accelerometer that attaches to your gun. That’s just what gives the app it’s information. The Mantis app is where the whole package shines. Designed to help you improve your shooting, which does a good job.
What Does it Do
Mantis X tracks the movement of your trigger pull, your aiming, and records your time it takes to do all of it. From all of this information, it can tell you how close you would have come to hitting your target. Which direction you would have missed, and what you did wrong to cause you to be off. It’s like having your own personal training watching every single trigger you pull do. Only you don’t have to pay Mantis X by the hour, and you can dry fire practice at home without someone watching over your shoulder.
The Mantis App
The key to the Mantis X is the app. You can download it for free on the Apple or Android market for your phone or tablet. This app lets you connect your Mantis device to a phone or tablet over a Bluetooth connection. The key to owning a Mantis is all the features and information tracking built into the app. If you are the kind of person who loves looking a data and figuring out what it means then you’ll never be at a loss for data on your shooting sessions.
Features
The Mantis X app has more features than most people will ever use. However you look at the bottom of the main screen the main options are TRAIN, HISTORY, GROUPS, and SETTINGS. These are your main options and the great start to everything you can do with this app.
SETTINGS
The setting menu is where you set up what gun you have your Mantis X sensor mounted to. You can pick pistol, or rifle to start. From there you have options for the make and model of gun. After that, it’s which had is your dominant hand, whether you are dry fire, live fire, or using CO2 in your gun. You’ll also have to tell it which way it’s mounted, forward, or backward, top, bottom, left, or right. You also get to sign in with your own account so if you switch devices your stats can be synced to the new device. Not to mention audio feedback, a more advanced setting, and an instruction guide if you need it.
The people from Mantis didn’t skimp on giving you all sorts of options on setting the app up. Nor did that act like some companies and try to force you to buy more than you need just so you can use it on multiple guns or with other people. It’s clear they wanted to make this as user-friendly as possible.
TRAIN
From the Training menu, you have lots of options. All the training can be done live fire, and most of it can be done with dry fire also. Giving you the option to do a lot of training without having to be on the range or costing you money for ammo.
Every time you do any training session all of your trigger pulls are recorded. You are giving a grade on how well you did and helpful hints on what you did wrong. Such at Breaking Your Wrist down, or too much or too little trigger finger. You’ll also get to see a chart of all the movement in the gun. This means you can see how much you moved getting on target, how much you moved while pulling the trigger and how much you moved after the trigger broke.
It’s like having an instructor with a high-speed camera, watch everything you do and instruct you on what you did. Only without the cost of the instructor or the price tag of a high-speed camera.
Training Options
At the top of the list of training, options are Open Training. This is where you shot or dry fire, no timing or any goals just pull the trigger and try to get better. You then get a shot timer and a few benchmarks. From there it gets fun.
You have a compressed surprise break where you are given time to line up your shot and when you hear the beep you are to pull the trigger as fast as you can. This works great to help you practice if you are looking for help with competition shooting.
Next, you have three different ways to practice reloading while shooting. In battery, out of battery, and tactical. All things that help you train for self-defense, and competition.
There are also primary and support hand only options. With the last three options for shooting at a cadence of 2.0s, 1.0s, and 0.5s cadences.
Optional Courses
If all the open training you can do isn’t enough. You also get the option of taking three different training courses. These courses are Introduction, Basic Marksmanship, and FBI Qualification. These courses require you to do various drills and times shooting to prove you can reach specific goals.
My Experience the Mantis X
I’ve owned the Mantis X for roughly a month at the time of writing this review. I’ve done 703 shots, mostly dry fire, in 25 sessions, with an average score of 92.7. Now I can’t say I’ve done any drastic improvements in my scores. I would have improved almost as much had I dry fired my gun that much without the Mantis X. Where it’s really helped me out is going from dry fire to live fire practice.
I’ve always noticed that for the most part during dry fire my trigger pulls seem good, the Mantis X proved I was right. The problem has always been for me when I get to the range my hits on paper don’t seem to coincide with my dry-fire practice. Before the Mantis X, I never know what I was doing wrong. Try all I could, I just couldn’t figure it out. A few minutes of looking at the data and it was clear. I was anticipating my shots. Now, of course, I could have loaded a few dummy rounds randomly into my magazine and learned the same thing. However, even when I tried that it still left doubt in my mind. Mantis clears up all doubt.
I’ve also learned that during compressed surprise break I was healing my gun or better know and my support hand was pushing the gun. This means as I try to shoot faster I’m going to have to watch for my hands moving the gun instead of holding it still. All information that is going to help me become a better shooter, without gaining a bunch of bad habits to change later. My cross-eye dominance is hard enough some days. I don’t need to gain anymore.
Why buy a Mantis X
I would love to tell you that owning and using a Mantis X is going to make you a world-class shooter, but I can’t. If you don’t know the basic fundamentals all the Mantis will do for you is tell you what you are doing it wrong.
It won’t really tell you how to fix them. It’s a great add on training device for those who have had some formal training, and want to get to the next level. Mantis will help you improve faster than if you just went to the range and shot 1000’s of rounds. You will save money with Mantis because you’ll shoot less ammo for the same amount of improvement.
So then why buy a Mantis X? Simple because it’s like having someone that tracks everything you do. Giving you hints on how to improve. It’s the best of both worlds when it comes to training. It’s not just for dry-fire and not just a for live-fire. It does both, and for a price, lower than many dry-fire practice systems. Add all the information it tracks, plus the three courses designed to help you get better. Short of a personal firearms trainer, you can’t find anything better to help you improve your shooting for the price.