A good trigger can make all the difference in the world. A high end precision AR-15 rifle might be mechanically capable of shooting 1/4 MoA groups all day long, but if the shooter can’t properly interface with the firearm through the trigger then it all goes to hell pretty quickly. Hiperfire is a very new company from the land of MST3K and walleye that has started making triggers for the AR-15 platform that have a very interesting design — a design that might put them on the top of your shopping list.
In the world of replacement triggers, the big players are Geissele and Timney. They make the best replacement triggers out there for AR-15 rifles, but their triggers aren’t exactly what I would call “perfect.” They are designed for a specific purpose, and while they work well for that purpose they don’t do very well when you start going off-label. The Geissele S3G trigger isn’t ideal for precision long range shots. The Timney triggers are unable to be adjusted, and the trigger pins can work themselves free. There is room for improvement, and Hiperfire thinks they have found the solution.
The very first thing you notice about the Hiperfire trigger design is that there are some extra springs. The standard AR-15 trigger only uses the main spring which coils around the hammer retaining pin, but Hiperfire have included two additional springs as well as some extra parts on the trigger. It definitely looks… different.
Those two additional springs are what enables a Hiperfire trigger to do the two things that make it interesting: have a light trigger pull yet a heavy hammer stroke for reliable primer ignition, and an easily adjustable trigger pull.
Selling point #1 is all about reliability. Light triggers are great for precision shooting since the less force used to pull a trigger the less sympathetic movement there is in the rest of your hand to throw your shot off target, but in order to pull that off you need a lighter hammer spring. The more tension exists on the hammer, the heavier the trigger will be.
Hiperfire’s solution is to use a second set of springs that work like the arms in a compound bow — when the hammer is cocked over halfway, the toggle springs work against the hammer torsion spring making the force applied to the hammer’s primary sear lighter compared to the hammer springs alone as found in other FCGs. You can easily feel the change in hammer pressure when cocking the hammer manually for dry fire (most heavy when cocking is started and lighter as the hammer is laid back, just the opposite of other’s products, where the cocking force increases with layback). This lowered sear pressure results in lower sear friction which the user feels as lower trigger weight. When the trigger breaks and the hammer passes through about 50% of its travel to the firing pin, those same toggle springs — which were working against the hammer spring when cocked — are now adding more power to the hammer’s stroke, which results in high energy hammer fall.
Those springs are also essential to the adjustable trigger weight. Instead of needing to uninstall the entire trigger and fiddle with some set screws (like with the Geissele adjustable triggers) the end user can quickly and easily adjust the trigger pull by swapping out the springs while the trigger is still in the gun. All you need is a small implement to move the bar off the rest on the back of the trigger, and you can immediately swap out the springs with ease. Its easy as pie.
Installing the trigger is the toughest part of the process. There are a couple more pins and cams required than with the standard installation, but even with the extra parts I found that it was quicker and easier. I usually get stuck for a few minutes trying to line up all the things around the trigger retaining pin and it takes me forever to get that installed, but with the Hiperfire trigger everything drops in as one self contained group. The only thing I had to fix was when I installed the hammer without the cross bar — but even that took less than a minute to fix. Follow the instructions and everything works out.
Hiperfire sent me two triggers to test, the 24E and 243G. The 3G version is specifically designed for 3-gun, so I slapped it in my 3-gun rifle and decided to take it out to the local 3-gun match to see how it fared.
Once installed, the trigger hits all the high points. The blade of the trigger is curved for a nice comfortable placement of your finger and control throughout the firing process, but the face is flat to promote good trigger control. The trigger pull itself is crisp and clean with the tiniest amount of creep, so small that it is only really noticeable on the workbench and not during a competition. The trigger pull weight is easy to adjust, and the break and reset both feel very light — where the ALG Defense trigger goes “CLUNK” during the reset, the Hiperfire trigger goes “click” without sacrificing anything. It’s everything you want in a 3-gun trigger, more or less.
When I installed the trigger, I figured I would use it in a local 3-gun match and then do the review — nothing more. Well, I liked the trigger so much during that match that I decided to use it for the Crimson Trace Midnight 3-Gun Invitational as well, where I took 3rd place in my division. The trigger is light enough that it can be run hard and fast when you need it, but the pull offers a nice clean and clear break to allow you to make the longer shots. With the Geissele S3G trigger the lack of a proper break meant that I was constantly accidentally bumpfiring the gun when shooting long range targets — the Hiperfire doesn’t have that problem.
The trigger worked perfectly. Through two 3-gun competitions — one in the Texas dirt and the other in the high desert dust in Oregon — I had exactly zero trigger related malfunctions. The trigger worked properly every single time, and always succeeded in igniting the primers on my ammo. The only malfunction I had was due to an improperly seated bullet that put the bolt out of battery, and even then the hammer dropped just like it should. It made me wonder if it was even possible to make the trigger malfunction, and so I set about to test that question.
I popped the second trigger — the 24E — into my SBR lower receiver and then slapped on the 5.56 upper with a 10.5 inch barrel. The short barrel combined with my 762-SDN-6 provided enough back pressure to completely coat the interior of the rifle with carbon in a very short period of time. This same setup had killed the Geissele S3G trigger that I had been using in 100 rounds flat (it stopped resetting due to too much carbon on the parts), so I was curious to see if the Hiperfire trigger would do better.
Five hundred rounds later it still worked.
It looks to me like the Hiperfire guys have hit a home run. Their trigger is easier to adjust, more reliable in both operation and ignition of primers, and on par with the big boys in terms of trigger pull. Even the price is comparable — the 24E runs $215, which is within about $10 of the Geissele and Timney offerings. Hiperfire offers a product with equivalent performance and better features at the same price than the industry leaders, which in my opinion makes them the new top dogs.
If only they could make a website that doesn’t make me feel like my eyes are bleeding when I look at it . . .
Specifications:
Operation: Single Stage
MSRP: $215
Ratings (out of five stars)
Ease of Use * * * * *
Inserting the trigger is a little different, but each trigger includes all necessary instructions. Replacing the springs to change the trigger weight is a breeze.
Feel & Function * * * * *
A crisp clean break that works every single time.
Overall Rating * * * * *
If you’re looking for a great replacement trigger for your AR-15 and have $215 to drop, this would be the trigger to get.