Rifle Review: PSA 10.5" Carbine

The company people love to hate and hate to love: Palmetto State Armory.

When I came to Texas from a non-free state, the first thing I did was order up a 10.5" carbine. This one was one of PSA's "higher end" rifles and I think it was about 700 when I picked it up. It's actually on sale right now for 600: PSA 10.5" pistol

These days I am typically running rifles from Daniel Defense, BCM and SOLGW so I have a good standard for comparison. I.E. I'm not comparing this to other budget rifles and saying it's great.

I didn't change much out of the box aside from the Surefire Warcomp and replacing the whack pistol brace they sent with it, which was some PSA knock off of a SBA3. At the time I was using a Holosun 510 which was good but left some things to be desired. I also had an Inforce light on it, which has stood the test of time and I still have them on all my rifles.

I probably only put about 3k rounds through it before moving on, but this thing ran like a freaking top. The reality is that in the current manufacturing environment relative to AR-15's you have to try a little bit to make a bad one. Even so-called "budget rifles" are still really good compared to what we had in years gone by. We also now have a better understanding of the potential failure points.

For example if I had kept this I most likely would have replaced the BCG, the action spring but otherwise it's a very solid little 10.5 or MK18.2

Not sure if that math works out with the extra .2 inches outside of Crane specs but we'll just call it even.

Working out some reps on the 10.5 PSA gun. At this point I'd swapped out the Holosun 510 for a Holosun 403B on a Scalarworks 1.93" mount. I'll do a review on the Holosuns soon, but suffice it to say the 403 is a very good T2 alternative with some improvements over the venerable Aimpoint optic.

Final Verdict: This is a solid option if you don't want to shell out 1500-2000 for a "high end" 10.5 and if you make a few inexpensive mods I think it would run for a long time without issue.