AR-15 Magazine Followers – Magpul vs. Brownells USGI Tan

Some time back Brownells began producing USGI magazines with a tan no-tilt follower. As soon as these were released, many people, myself included were interested, as no-tilt followers tend to run more reliably in AR-15 magazines than the old USGI green and black followers.

One of my first purchases after buying some USGI magazines with the green followers was a handful of Magpul no-tilt followers for them. I was having some feeding issues with the green followers, and I’m one of those guys that has to have the newest, coolest thing, and at the time the Magpul no-tilt followers were just that.

I’ve run the Magpul followers in seven of my magazines for about a year now, and since doing so, my feeding issues that I was having have went away. Now, I’ve not done a complete torture test on these magazines, but I have used them in multi-gun matches, and action rifle matches where they have been tossed into the dirt and mud, and banged around, etc. No issues.

I am always shopping for magazines, and while walking through a local gunshow back before Christmas 2011, I picked up a handful of Brownells AR-15 magazines with the tan no-tilt follower that they were producing. Upon a cursory inspection at the gunshow, the followers appeared to work well, and they were super cheap ($7.95 each) so I grabbed a bunch of them, and went along my merry way.

I had read some forum posts where the tan followers were mentioned, but nobody seemed to have much to say about them, good or bad. I really wanted to give them a try, and see if they were worth the $8 per mag.

So, Its the middle of April 2012, and I’ve been exclusively running the Brownells mags with the tan followers for about 5 months, and somewhere around 1500 rounds fired. I know thats not a huge amount of rounds fired, but I think it is enough to say that these magazines work great. No malfunctions at all in these 1500ish rounds. They appear to work every bit as good as the Magpul followers, and when I include the price of the original magazines I purchased, plus the Magpul followers, the Brownells magazines with the tan follower come in a good bit less expensive, and they work just as well.

With all of that said, there is one drawback to the Brownells magazines with the tan followers, and that is the fact that they use a proprietary spring. If you look at the picture below, you will see the standard USGI spring on the right, and the Brownells spring for the tan follower on the left. The spring for the tan follower attaches directly in the middle of the follower, where the USGI spring attaches near the rear. The only reason this is a downside, is that the parts aren’t interchangeable. I’m certain that if I spent 5 minutes with my Leatherman tool, I could make them work, but it is something to think about, especially for those of you who take your magazines into harms way. Me, I’m a fat guy that shoots competitively, so its really of no concern to me.Above, you can see the different attachment points for the springs on each respective follower.

The Magpul follower is constructed of a more slick plastic than the Brownells tan follower. I’m not convinced that this offers any sort of advantage over the Brownells follower, but it does make the Magpul feel a little smoother inside the mag body. I have no failures with either of these, so if it is an advantage, it is a very, very small one.

I run both of these different followers in Brownells magazine bodies. One of the things I like to do at gunshows is to dog through the bins of old sandy, gritty USGI magazines, and find the ones with Brownells bodies, and buy them for about $3 each. I then toss in a Magpul follower, and I’m good to go. Not something I’d go to war with, but for range/competition magazines that are going to get beat up, why not save a couple bucks for more ammo?

Anyways, I’m not sure what else to say about these, so I’ll toss up some pictures that I took of them, and call it a night. Thanks for reading, and make sure to sign up in the email box on the sidebar to get updates whenever I update the blog. Just blog updates, I won’t spam you!

Tops of the followers:

Front, and rear of the followers respectively:

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