For years, the conversation around battery-powered shooting fun has been dominated by plastic BBs and gel balls, the soft-shooting cousins of the BB world that have kept airsoft players and garden warriors thoroughly entertained. What hasn't been on the electric menu, until now, is a proper steel BB rifle running off rechargeable power. Crosman Corporation, one of America's longest-standing names in air-powered shooting sports, has changed that with the arrival of the Raiden: the company's first-ever electrically driven, fully automatic BB rifle.

The Raiden slots neatly into Crosman's growing range of full-auto platforms, a line that has been quietly building momentum over the past few years. Rather than simply rehashing what already exists in the CO2 segment, Crosman has taken a deliberate step sideways by pairing electric power with steel BB performance, a combination that, on paper at least, addresses several of the more tiresome limitations that CO2 shooters have grumbled about for as long as cartridges have been pinched out of cold fingers on a winter afternoon.

Powering the Raiden is a 1,500mAh rechargeable battery, and it is here that the electric platform makes its most compelling argument. With CO2-powered guns, velocity drops off as the cartridge depletes, meaning your first few shots and your last few shots are not quite living the same life. The Raiden sidesteps this entirely: velocity holds steady at up to 430 feet per second right the way through until the battery finally calls it a day. What you get on shot one is, more or less, what you get on shot two thousand.

And that figure, two thousand, is not a typo. On a full charge, the Raiden is rated for approximately 2,200 shots before it needs to be plugged back in. At a rate of fire of 500 rounds per minute in full-auto mode, which represents a rather meaningful session at the target range. It is, to put it plainly, not the sort of gun you walk out to the garden with and find yourself reloading five minutes later whilst the rest of the family wanders off in search of biscuits.

The firing modes themselves give the shooter a decent degree of flexibility. The Raiden operates as either a semi-automatic or full-automatic, toggled via a selector, which means it suits both the deliberate, considered plinker and the person who simply wants to hold down the trigger and see what happens. The latter group will find the 500-rounds-per-minute full-auto rate perfectly satisfying without being so frantic as to feel entirely out of control.

Magazine capacity is one of the Raiden's quietly significant selling points. Where many full-auto BB guns including a fair few competitors make do with a modest 20-round magazine, the Raiden carries an 80-round drop-out magazine. That is more than three times the capacity, which translates directly into fewer interruptions and more actual shooting. Crosman has included a speed loader in the box to take the tedium out of refilling, which is a sensible inclusion for a gun that can empty eighty rounds in less than ten seconds when pushed.

The hardware itself is built around a black tactical-style nylon-fibre stock, giving the Raiden a purposeful, no-nonsense appearance. Running the full length of the barrel is a Picatinny rail, and a pair of flip-up sights are fitted as standard, ready for use straight out of the box. The rail also accepts compatible optics and accessories for those who want to kit the thing out further. The Raiden is clearly designed with the understanding that some people will not rest until they have attached at least one additional piece of equipment to whatever they own.

Weighing in at 6.1 lbs. and coming in at $299.90, the Raiden sits at a considered price point for an electric BB platform of this specification. Setup is genuinely simple: the gun ships with a USB charger alongside the battery, meaning there is no scrambling for the correct cable or a trip to the hardware shop before the first session. The .177 calibre steel BBs it fires are, of course, standard fare and easy enough to source with Crosman's own Copperhead BBs being the obvious pairing.

The Raiden represents a logical and rather sensible development in the full-auto BB space. Electric power in airsoft has been the norm for decades, and it is hard to argue with the practicality of consistent velocity, no consumable cartridges, and a battery that can be recharged rather than binned. Crosman has brought those same benefits to the steel BB world without sacrificing performance, and the result is a gun that offers a full afternoon's plinking from a single charge. Whether you're tin-can hunting in the back garden or setting up a more structured target range, the Raiden has enough in it to keep things moving at a satisfying pace, which, all things considered, is exactly the point.