Springer

From Airsoft Community Wiki

"Springer" is a slang term that describes an airsoft gun that has to be manually cocked (i.e. compressing a conventional spring) before firing each shot.

Due the the single-shot nature of springers, they are impractical as a main weapon, however spring powered shotguns (such as those made by Tokyo Marui) and sniper rifles are quite common.

Because no electric motors are required to pull the spring back in a springer gun, the power to weight ratio can be a lot higher - typified by the high power 500FPS+ sniper rifles that are manually cocked. The downside is that the rate of fire on a rifle such as this is considerably lower, requiring effort from the user to fire the rifle.

Given the fact that there are many low quality, cheap springer pistols on the market, they are often associated with Newbies.