I just received one of the $529 "Polytech" deals and all I can say is the quality of this thing is truly offensive to the AR15 platform.
Pretty much everything is cast, receiver alloy is lighter then any other AR I have in the stable...possibly recycled pop cans. It was "wire wheel" finished before anodizing....at least the spots that were finished and not left cast. Upper and lower wiggle like a MF. Stock is solid....and by that I mean it will barely move, stuck to the buffer tube like it's glued. Rear sight on the detach handle will not move for elevation, the housing if jammed on it crooked as #### and mashed into the handle ears. FSB, barrel, flash hider and crush washer all parked together as a unit. Flash hider has 4 ports, not 5 and is crooked as ####. FSB which is parked, has black touch up paint on it...wtf? Came with 2 mags, both painted.. even the plastic followers were painted black. Top rail also has the nice wire wheel finish prior to anodizing.
3 things I can say are good....bolt and carrier look OK, chromed on the interior of the carrier, bolt and carrier are tight, not much slop....finish is horrendous however inside and out.
Barrel is well chromed and the bore looks good, exterior also horrendous.
Buffer weighed exactly 3oz....yippie.
It's all in pieces right now until I can figure out what to do with it. Initially I was going to just keep the lower and the stripped upper to replace a POS NEA stripped upper I bought, but this makes NEA look like KAC...well maybe not that good....but #### this thing does not inspire even an ounce of confidence.
I don't want to be a ####, but I can't understand how anyone could be happy with this, or even recommend them to other people. #### it may work just fine, I'm not even knocking the function....its just sooo ####ily put together and finished I'm actually afraid to shoot it. The AR is a finely tuned precision firearm....this thing is not. My first AR was scraped together on a Dlask lower and DPMS complete parts kit, and THAT was what I thought was bottom of the barrel at the time. That cost me $800 total over 10 years ago, but it's 10 times higher quality then this $529 special.
#### I even had a CQ311 and despite the painted finish, was all milled and quite a solid gun...shot real well too, and it was $500 about 8 years ago. Hard to believe that Chinese quality could get worse but here we are....
I really gotta quit reading the reviews on here...I've bought nothing but junk in the last 6 months because of all the praise and "positive reviews". Nork 1911 that is just dog####, NEA upper that is all out of spec and ####ed up that I had to fit a new dust cover to it, NEA BCG that blew up on the 3rd round I fired through it, and now this CQA piece of ####....
I swear before you all, I will never EVER buy another piece of Chinese firearm ####, or NEA garbage ever again!!
And I can only assume that every positive review is due to that person only owning that one gun and nothing else to compare it to.... .