In recent years, Turkey has been a hotbed of air rifle development. There’s Hatsan of course. Then Kral burst onto the scene, and recently Reximex and Niksan Defence have thrown their hats in the ring. It’s fair to say that collectively, Turkish air rifles are aimed squarely at the budget to mid-price market, offering good value for money and plenty of choice. In fact, I just checked and Range Right, the UK distributor for Kral and Reximex, offers well over 100 different models and variants. One of the latest is the Reximex Ixia Compact, a tactically styled bullpup that’s somewhat incongruously named after a South African iris.

Many will dismiss it simply as an FX Impact clone. But I think that’s a well-worn argument now and the only reason why plenty of companies are making tactical bullpups is because plenty of people want to buy them.

The one glaring difference between the Ixia Compact and other rifles in the category is the price. You can expect to pay around £915 – about half the price of an FX Impact M3 Compact. And that’s lovely. But is it any good?

 

Reximex Ixia Compact – key specifications

Maker: Reximex, Turkey (reximex.com)
Distributed: Range Right Ltd (range-right.co.uk)
Model: Reximex Ixia Compact
Price: £915 (Black. FDE also available)
Type: Pre-charged pneumatic (PCP)
Calibre: .177 and .22
Overall length: 695mm
Barrel length: 380mm
Weight: 3.3kg
Trigger: Two-stage adjustable post and shoe match style
Power: 11.5 ft-lb

 

Model range

There’s no denying that Kral and Reximex have some common DNA. You only have to look at some of the shared components, such as the magazine and scope rail. 

However, as good as many of the Kral rifles I’ve put my hands on are, it seems to me that Reximex has the edge when it comes to build quality and design. It’s like a Toyota and Lexus thing. Both are good, but one carries a slight premium.

The Ixia Compact is certainly well made, and we’ll get to that in a minute, but to cover the options, you should know that in 12 ft-lb the rifle is available in .177 and .22 calibres. FAC versions are also available in 18 ft-lb and 30 ft-lb respectively, along with a 40 ft-lb .25 calibre model.

Two colour options are also available – ubiquitous black and a Flat Dark Earth (FDE) model in which the black chassis is complemented by lighter coloured bodywork. There’s no hard and fast rule of course, but I suspect the black version will appeal to hunters whilst the FDE is more likely to spend its time on the range.

 

Stocking up

The Ixia Compact follows the successful introduction of a longer version, now marketed as the Ixia Standard, that has a 580mm barrel, weighs 3.75kg and comes as standard with an aluminium 425cc air bottle that is less elegant than the Compact’s 300cc carbon-wrapped aluminium alternative.

By contrast, measuring just 695mm without a silencer and tipping the scales at 3.3kg, there’s no denying the Ixia Compact is very comfortable in the shoulder, with a neutral point of balance falling almost exactly on the pistol grip. At 373mm, the length of pull is similar to most other full-sized rifles, meaning even large shooters should find it comfortable.

At the rear of the polyurethane stock, the shoulder pad is height-adjustable. Pushing a button allows you to slide it into one of seven different positions. Although it lacks the engineering finesse of other rifles, it works just fine, with each of the seven positions snapping into place securely.

There’s no separate cheekpiece, but sighting down the rifle is comfortable enough as you don’t have to put your face on any bare metal and a raised 200mm scope rail delivers good scope to eye alignment. Like many other Turkish rifles, the hybrid rail is designed to accommodate both 22mm Picatinny and 11mm dovetail mounts.

The butt section has a couple of steps to the ambidextrous pistol grip that has sections of large, moulded chequering on both sides. You can’t swap it out for an aftermarket alternative, but I found it very comfortable with a separate section for the middle finger, and shelves for your thumb and trigger finger.

Like many similarly styled rifles, there’s no real forend to speak of. A Picatinny accessory rail on the underside provides a comfortable leading hand hold, as does the air bottle itself a little further forward. However, with a bipod attached you’d have to hold onto that instead.

The bullpup configuration means that despite its diminutive size, the Ixia Compact has a 380mm barrel. The aluminium shroud adds another 140mm and screws into the main block. Thanks to baffles running almost the full length, it does a commendable job of reducing the muzzle blast, at least on our 12 ft-lb .22 calibre test rifle. If you want even more peace and quiet, unscrewing a muzzle cap reveals a ½in UNF thread for a silencer.

If for some reason you wanted to make the Reximex Ixia Compact even more compact, you have the option of removing the shroud and attaching a silencer directly to the naked barrel. That said, you might struggle to find one slim enough to clear the bottle.

 

Features & functions

Power adjustment is a feature on all Reximex rifles. However, usually this is achieved by choking the transfer port and the Ixia Compact is no different – there’s a five-position wheel on the left-hand side. However, the rifle also offers the ability to adjust the hammer spring via a larger, 10-position wheel located further back in the stock. On the ‘max’ setting I was able to extract 11.5 ft-lb of muzzle energy from the test rifle and on ‘min’ the output was 8.4 ft-lb. It’s been said before that most UK legal-limit shooters will turn the power up to full and leave it there. However, the ability to dial things down is useful if you plan on shooting short distances in the garden. 

Incidentally, there is what looks like a third dial just forward of the breech. In fact, it simply screws into a hole to conceal another screw underneath that retains the barrel. Don’t get excited though as changing the calibre is not a DIY option and additional barrel kits are not available.

The Ixia Compact is rated to take a maximum 250 bar air fill which is channelled into an 18cc pre-chamber via a regulator – which is the first to be fitted to a Reximex rifle – that was set to 100 bar on our test rifle. 

Clear gauges – overall air pressure at the front, regulator pressure at the back – show you what’s going on at a glance. The fill valve is located forward of the trigger. Removing a basic yellow plastic cap allows you to snap an air line on directly with no need for a fill probe. 

As you’d expect, there is no external adjustment for regulator pressure on UK legal-limit rifles and any over-enthusiastic amateur gunsmithing is not only likely to ruin your Ixia Compact, but could also land you in hot water with the police and will definitely invalidate the one-year warranty.

The sidelever is located on the right side of the rifle and left-handed shooters will be pleased to know it can be swapped over. The throw is nicely weighted with an ergonomically shaped drop-down handle and is positive to operate with a sprung first stage. 

Operating it cycles pellets through a 12-shot .22 or 14-shot .177 drum magazine that is easy to load with pellets, but a bit of a fiddle to insert – until you get used to it that is. 

The first part is achieved by rotating a clear plastic faceplate clockwise as far as it will go. Hold it against the spring and insert the first pellet into the uppermost chamber nose-first, but make sure to keep your finger under the hole to stop it falling through. That will hold the inner rotor against the spring and allow you to fill the remaining chambers as you rotate the faceplate back again.

Once loaded, the magazine inserts into the breech from the left and goes in with the round end first. A raised line on the back has to line up with a slot in the breech otherwise no amount of wiggling will help. It took me a while, but I soon got the knack.

The sidelever and magazine work well together and cycling each pellet is smooth and fuss-free. And once you’ve been through all that, all that’s left for you to do is to pull the match-style post-and-shoe trigger that is fully adjustable, albeit the stock has to be removed to do so.

Incorporated as part the trigger guard is the safety catch, which has to be pushed down to make the rifle live. The benefit of this quirky design is that the catch is extremely convenient to operate. 

However, on the range I inadvertently reapplied it a few times as I placed the Ixia Compact on a rifle bag, and carrying it around at night on a couple of pest control jobs, I knocked it unknowingly into the live position once or twice. 

 

Power & performance

Prior to those pest control sessions, I spent several hours on the range. Having cleaned the barrel I fitted an MTC Optics Cobra F1 scope which has traditional eye relief, but is also relatively compact.

Having put plenty of pellets through the Ixia Compact, the .22 calibre test rifle was tolerant of most brands. RWS Super Fields were acceptable, but the best was a toss-up between Air Arms Diabolo Field and JSB Hades, with the latter having the edge.

From a 200 bar fill I was able to extract 120 shots before running down to the 100-bar regulator threshold, which incidentally is more than the 105 shots Reximex says you can expect in this calibre (95 for .177).

The power output was a consistent 11.5 ft-lb and a 10-shot string at the top of the air fill showed a variance of only 16ft/sec. A second string when the fill pressure had fallen to a little more than the 100-bar regulator setting showed a variance of 19ft/sec.

Triggers can really make or break a rifle’s reputation, especially the ones on a bullpup, but I found the unit on the Reximex Ixia Compact to be one of the best I’ve come across. Out of the box, the two stages are short and devoid of any creep. 

The transition from the first to second stage is well defined and the let-off only required a little more pressure rather than any truly appreciable travel.

Although there is the tiniest puff of air from the breech after each shot, the Reximex Ixia Compact is extremely comfortable in the shoulder and has that hard-to-define quality of being very pointable. On the range that translated into five-shot group sizes of 18mm at 30m and 39mm at 40m.

I seem to spend half my life shooting rats at the moment as the populations on my permissions have suddenly exploded. So, it’s hardly surprising that field tests with the Ixia Compact saw me stumbling around farmyards in the dark.

With a Pard NV007 IR adapter on the back of the Cobra F1, the rifle thankfully retained its balance, and its compact size was a definite bonus to my hunt. Since I was shooting from a set of sticks, it was very easy to hold the rifle on aim, as the rather full bucket of rats at the end of the night proved. 

 

Summing up

As Turkish rifles go, the Reximex Ixia Compact is pretty expensive. But in the wider context it is great value for money. If you really want a tactical bullpup, you’ll like the fact that it costs two-thirds the asking price of the recently launched Brocock BRK Ghost and half the cost of an FX Impact.

All I can say is that based on the way it performed during my short, but intensive test period, the performance at 12 ft-lb rivals that of more expensive alternatives with pellets flying through the same hole for as long as you want to keep putting air in and pulling the trigger.

Of course, the one thing you can’t test with a newly launched rifle is performance and durability over time. And although more expensive brands are not immune to problems, quality engineering and more expensive components will prove themselves in the long term.

If you look closely enough you can see some aspects that illustrate the variance in price. The magazine, although it works well, is not as refined as it is on more expensive rifles that also address the fill valve design more elegantly. And there’s that little puff of air from the breech.

But do those things really make paying twice as much worthwhile? I’m not so sure they do, and the Ixia Compact is the best Turkish rifle I’ve come across so far.