The MagPump: Essential Piece of Kit or Tactical Toy?

Has anybody tried the MagPump yet? Supposedly you put your mag in the bottom, your shells in the hopper, and crank your shells into the mag in record time.

Apparently there are two grades. The less expensive model doesn't mention anything about construction materials, which makes me think it must be all or mostly polymer (plastic if you must), while the Elite features aluminum billet parts:

https://magpump.com/products/rifle-m...agazine-loader

https://magpump.com/products/rifle-m...agazine-loader

The descriptions at the individual seller websites don't really clarify what part of the more expensive loader is made from aluminum billet. Unless my reading comprehension isn't working today, I can't see where anyone specified exactly what is aluminum on the more expensive model. Is it the loading mechanism parts? Or maybe the chute?

This guy loves it:
https://youtu.be/N1DvYRXl4Xs

Anyway, has anyone adopted this little tool yet? Impressions? Reviews?

More info:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN0aRf9Sjyg

A decent demo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NibdUy4e_qg

IIRC, the difference between the Alum and plastic version is just the body- the hopper has always been plastic on both versions, do not remember if there is any difference in the internals- you'd have to give Magpump/MITUSA a call about that.

As a couple videos briefly touched on, there can potentially be one specific problem, and that is when loading the hopper, if empty, the initial couple rounds that you put in can occasionally turn wrong and mis-feed into the chute, causing a jam. I believe in the third video the guy fed a couple single rounds in first, before loading the hopper. I would second that procedure- as shown in all three videos, technically you cannot just "dump' a handful rounds in.
(You could potentially dump straight from a standard 20-round box if opened from the side instead of the top, and poured in at the angle of the hopper sides- think the old Independence ammo boxes that were side-opening- but I have not tried it personally, so YMMV).

Other than that initial step, with the internal safeties to prevent mis-feeds/over-fills it's pretty fool proof and reliable.

The magdump is actually a very underrated item- especially if you hate having to unload leftover USGI mags by hand. It's brilliantly simple, and you won't realize how handy it is until the next time you end up having to shuck the rounds out of a mag by hand.


As far as if it's an "essential piece of kit"- depends on how many mags you need to reload at a time.
If I owned a range, or was running some sort of event, I'd have one or two onsite.
For my own use... it depends. If you like to preload all your ammo into mags before a class or event, it could be useful... depending on whether your frequency of doing said activities pays for the thing.