AllOutdoor Review: Excalibur Mag Air – Budget Friendly Crossbow

A certain kind of buyer chooses an Excalibur crossbow. They’re usually less fussed about scorching arrow speeds and fancy-pants features; although, since Bowtech bought Excalibur, the company has been working on updating its lineup. What most Excalibur buyers want is a simple, reliable crossbow that’s easy to fix themselves. For years, that meant basic recurve designs with aluminum risers. Unless you were unfortunate enough to break a limb, the only wear part was the string, and that was user-replaceable. Excalibur sold a lot of crossbows with this configuration, but they all had two basic problems: the aluminum riser drove up the cost of the bow, and it also made it more heavy. So, a couple of years back, Excalibur rolled out the new Mag Air. As part of Excalibur’s Mag lineup, the Mag Air is similar to the Mag 340, but with a plastic riser. This makes it lighter, and cheaper. The MSRP for the Mag 340 with its aluminum riser is $799. The Mag Air is $579.99, and sales push it below $500. It’s the lowest-priced Excalibur by far.

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Excalibur Mag Air Crossbow – What Do You Give Up?

The plastic riser cuts the price, and it cuts the Mag Air’s weight to 4.9 pounds without accessories. Nobody’s hunting without a scope, though, so it’s more honest to list the Mag Air’s weight as 6.7 pounds once you attach all the accessories in the box. Excalibur says the Mag Air is at least a pound lighter than any competing crossbow, once accessorized. For the sake of comparison, Excalibur’s own Mag 340 weighs 6 pounds without accessories, and 8 pounds once you’ve added the scope, quiver, etc.

That weight difference won’t mean much to a full-grown fudd sitting in a treestand, but if you’re lugging the crossbow all day on foot, or if you’re a younger shooter without the muscle of an adult, you will appreciate the trimmed-down weight.

You’re also giving up a bit of arrow speed. Excalibur lists the Mag Air at 305 FPS (with a 250-grain 16.5-inch Quill arrow, and a 100-grain broadhead). The Mag 340 makes, as its name implies 340 FPS.

The crossbow world is divided on the issue of arrow speed. Some want to get as much speed as possible, saying it helps them extend their effective range. Others, especially those who have experience with vertical bows or older crossbows, say 300 fps is more than enough, presuming you’re a good shot and you’re using quality broadheads. This is my position while the 305 FPS speed is definitely low for what some would consider a premium crossbow because of its brand name, I think it’s more than fast enough. It certainly had no trouble punching through a buck at 20 yards.

Excalibur Mag Air Crossbow – Buying a Mag Air

You’re best-off supporting a local bow shop, but I’m almost 90 minutes away from the local archery center. So, I bought my Mag Air online through SAIL, a Canadian outdoors retailer. I took advantage of a seasonal markdown; my price in fall of 2022 was about $400 USD, including tax and shipping. About three days after my order, the bow showed up. Assembly was easy: bolt on the limbs and attach the Dead Zone fixed-power scope to the Picatinny rail on top of the one-piece trigger housing/sight bridge assembly. Then, it’s time to go sight it in.

Excalibur Mag Air Crossbow – Shooting the Mag Air

With a 12.4″ power stroke and 136-pound draw weight, the Mag Air isn’t as easy to cock as a compound crossbow, so smaller shooters might need a hand. Most people should have no problem, but if you aren’t able to draw back the bow, Excalibur does sell cranks that fit in the stock, making the job easy.

Thanks to its light weight, the Mag Air is relatively easy to keep on target, but when you pull the trigger, you know you’re shooting a lightweight plastic bow. There’s a lot of vibration, which doesn’t immediately present a problem; it’s just not as smooth as an older, wide-limb Excalibur model, or a new compound bow from another manufacturer.

The Mag Air groups fairly well out to 25 yards. I’ve pushed it farther, and the arrows still had decent groups, but since I hunt from stands with shots at 20 yards or less, I spent 95 percent of my practice time in that range. While I had to be careful not to Robin-Hood my arrows at first, I started noticing the odd flier… and the problem started to get worse. It got bad enough that in the first fall I had the bow, I didn’t hunt with it.

After carefully going over the bow, I narrowed down the problem. The trigger group/scope bridge assembly was loose. Not only was this ruining my accuracy, it also presented a potential failure point; if the claw, which holds the bowstring in place, was to wiggle out of place somehow, there would be potential for a dry-fire. I shrugged, assumed the factory had simply mis-assembled the bow, and tightened everything down with some Loctite applied for good measure. Once hunting season was over, I didn’t think much of it until the next September, when I started target shooting again.

I noticed a similar problem; my older Excalibur Exocet 200 was grouping well for me, even with beat-up aluminum arrows, so I knew the problem wasn’t poor marksmanship. I checked the Mag Air as carefully as I could, and eventually realized the screws in the factory scope rings were loose.

I took everything apart again, and this time I used high-strength Loctite to secure all the machine screws at the rear of the bow. After doing some digging online, I realized I wasn’t the only one with this problem. The consensus I found was: shooters assumed the bow’s vibration was rattling its plastic chassis enough to back off factory-tight screws, even after a relatively low number of shots. Now that I’ve used the high-strength Loctite, the problem seems to have gone away for now, but I will be triple-checking the bow before taking it afield this year, as it almost cost me a buck in 2023.

Aside from the self-loosening screws, I also had an issue with the loop on the left end of the bowstring slipping open while shooting. I bought this bow because of its lifetime warranty, and Excalibur was as good as its word, shipping me a new string and limbs which I easily installed myself. The old limbs had no visible damage, but they were certainly suspect and I was happy to get a new set for free.

Excalibur Mag Air Crossbow – Hunting with the Mag Air

In the field, I think the Mag Air has advantages over Excalibur’s older, bigger bows. The weight savings are noticeable if you’re on foot. If you’re in a box blind or pop-up, the all-black finish (which keeps the price down) actually helps you blend into the darkness more easily than a lighter-colored camo bow. The narrow limbs (25.5″ at their widest) are easy to move around inside a blind, or even an open-air treestand.

The 305 FPS arrow speed limits you, but what matters is accuracy at the ranges you shoot at, not theoretical range. Spend your time practicing and you should be able to extend your range past the close-up shots I take in the thick woods and orchards of eastern Canada. If I was the type to take extended shots with a crossbow (I’m not), I would buy something with a magnesium or aluminum riser. I think the added rigidity would improve long-range shots, and longer arrows would likely also benefit here. For the average hunter, especially the growing number of hunters taking whitetails in urban areas, the Mag Air will do nicely for the 15 – 30 yard shots that most expect for archery season.

Final Thoughts – Excalibur Mag Air Crossbow from Bowtech

I have heard of other owners having both the self-loosening screw problem, as well as the string loop slipping loose. Despite this, I think the Mag Air is well-built and I believe I got my money’s worth, but owners will have to pay more attention to their gear if they are shooting this bow. Do that, and it will get the job done – I have the venison in my freezer to prove it.

For more details, check out Excalibur’s website HERE.

Zac K.

Retired sea salt with a taste for venison and fresh-caught fish.