Review: Polish Radom Magazines (Updated)

Some friends and I had gone into a group purchase of the Polish Radom Circle-11 magazines for the AK-47/AKM style rifles. Aim Surplus had them on sale for $7.95 each.

My initial impression was actually quite good. Although they don't have metal reinforced feed lips, the construction appeared to be sturdy, and the floor plate is steel. The follower is a non-tilt style, and the spring appeared to be strong. In short, clean, well-made, polymer magazines.

The problem I had was that I could not get them to fully lock into place. After checking that the feed lips weren't pushing up against something, I decided it must have to do with the extra plastic right above the locking tab.





My suspicions were confirmed when one of my friends sent me this from the AK Forum gun board: 

“I had a little time today so I did some work on the polish radom 11 mags. Had to file right above the locking tab on all of them and get them to fit all my rifles. 10 seconds per mag took care of it. Actually, I prefer doing this. You can get your mags nice and tight as apposed to having sloppy mags. Anyways, they fit the same with the mags loaded or empty. Tells me there is not that much flex in them. Which is fine and unlike the Korean mags that flex alot.

Asmodeus is correct. These are identical to tapco slabsides. I haven't had any problems with tapco mags in the past so I don't think I will have any with these. I ran 90 rounds through them without any problems.

All in all, would I buy them again? No. They will make good range mags but that's about it. I wouldn't say I would trust my life on them but you get what you pay for.”

Anyway, I will work on filing that portion down a bit to see if I can get it to lock into place, and let you know what I think of the functioning.

Updated (9/29/13): So I took a hand file to the magazines for a few minutes (pausing to check the fit ever little bit). It didn't take too much effort to get it to fit; and only a couple more minutes and I had the magazine fitting to my satisfaction where it was easily inserted, but solid.

With this correction, I have to say that I was impressed that there was no side-to-side movement of the magazine. Now I just need to get some range time....