6.5 Grendel - The Best DMR Caliber for The AR Platform?
Updated
31 months ago
Good morning, everyone, this is John with gun.deals, today we're going to be taking a look at the 65 Grrndel cartridge as perhaps the best DMR cartridge for the AR-15 platform currently available.
As of the time I'm doing this review Hornady has announced their new 22 ARC caliber and Sons of Liberty Gun Works has announced their new 6 MAX caliber, so we are getting a few new calibers for the AR-15 platform. That might outperform this, but even so the 65 Grendel is still a great cartridge, it's been around for a while, it is proven in the AR-15 with a few quirks here and there.
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Full disclosure on this build, this was actually a customer’s build that he sent in for me to assemble and do some testing on, and with that testing I have already taken it out to 1,000 yards, and done a bunch of shooting with it and I quite like it, it performs very, very well and matches the capabilities of the 65 Grendel.
Getting into the basics of 65 Grendel, this is based off of the same parent case of the 7.62x39, which is the 220 Russian. Some of the positives of having the 220 Russian as a parent case is that the 220 Russian is a much thicker case than say 5.56, meaning that you get more powder in the case, even if you're using the same overall length. Unfortunately, what that means is you have to take the AR bolt and remove a lot of material from it to accept the thicker case. While the advantage is you get more powder you can sling heavier bullets faster, the downside is you are going to suffer in long-term reliability, long-term durability, specifically on the bolts.
If we're to compare 65 Grendel to essentially its brother 7.62x39, 7.62 x 39 is a great general purpose round, its main problem is that with those bigger 30-caliber slugs it drops really, really fast, it's a fairly slow round, so out to distance it's doable but it's a little bit more difficult. The 65 Grendel obviously next down the 7.62 down to 6 and 1/2 and you get a much longer, thinner bullet, usually launching a 123 grain projectile at a little bit faster than your standard 7.62x39 and with about double to triple the BC, BC being ballistic coefficient which is essentially how efficiently it flies through the air.
While you can get very ballistically efficient 6.5 mm projectiles the main problem with these 65 Grendel is that you're not pushing very high velocities, most of the time, depending on barrel length, you're going to be ending up somewhere between 2200 FPS and 2400 FPS, maybe a little bit higher with a super long barrel and a really hot hand load, but it's not a particularly speedy round, so when we compare it with some other projectiles you will notice that it drops a little bit more.
Right now, its biggest competitor is the newer 6 mm ARC, which is using a 6mm projectile, usually ranging between 103 and 108 grains with about the same case capacity, meaning that the 6 ARC usually has somewhere between 100 and 200 extra FPS, depending on hand loads, barrel lengths, and a variety of other factors, but 6 ARC is going to have a flatter trajectory with very, very similar if not better ballistic coefficient. 6 ARC is a great round in concept and ballistically a little bit better than 65 Grendel, but its problems are that it has some teething issues with magazines, and getting it to run properly in gas guns, you need to get it tuned very well, especially when you're shooting it suppressed, and factory ammunition is very limited for 6 mm ARC versus the wide variety of available loads on 65 Grendel just because it's been around for a lot longer, has a lot more manufacturer support, and on top of that 65 Grendel does retain a little bit more energy with the little bit heavier bullets, and it's also going to have a much wider variety of projectiles, meaning that for hunting applications, for terminal affects, the 65 Grendel, just by virtue of having better bullet selection, better manufacturer support, is probably a little bit better for that, for small to medium-sized game.
When taking 65 Grendel out to distance, say 1,000 yards or so, one of the most notable things that you need to take into consideration is going to be the drop. 65 Grendel is not particularly fast to begin with so in taking it out beyond 600 yards all the way out to 1,000 yards you're going to notice considerably more drop than other faster cartridges.
One very nice thing about the 65 Grendel bullets is, even if they're not particularly fast and you do need to factor in quite a bit of drop at distance, because they're going to have very high BCs on the top end for 65 Grendel. Wind is not that big of a consideration, if we're going to compare it against a 5.56 in the wind, even a nice 5.56 round, you're looking at about half the wind drift with the heavier more ballistically efficient 65 Grendel loads than the faster but less efficient 5.56.
In terms of recoil 65 Grendel is a little bit more aggressive than 5.56, but it is going to be on par with 7.62x39 and 6 mm ARC, the biggest differences between those three rounds is going to come down to the individual setups and what round you're actually using. So, recoil is very, very easy to control, if you're set up in a stable position it is very easy to fire off rounds very accurately and quickly to get a lot of rounds down range if you need to do so and with a good muzzle brake and a setup with a decent amount of weight you can virtually eliminate recoil, it's going to be much softer than something like 65 Creedmoor or 308 or really any full power round as it's kind of in the mid-range in terms of power, and we've talked about this a little bit before but 65 Grendel does have a little bit more energy than 6 mm ARC, so it's terminal effect, which is going to be very dependent on what specific bullet you're utilizing, at what speeds, distances, so on and so forth, but in general its terminal effectiveness is very good.
What that means is when we put all that together is that once you compensate for your drop, which is going to be higher than other faster bullets, you get a very consistent round that has very low recoil compared to other precision calibers let's say with very good terminal effects The ammo selection that I used exclusively for this review was Hornady custom 123 grain SST, which is a combo precision/hunting load and it shoots right at 1MOA five round groups out of this setup.
Getting into the setup briefly, this is based off of the Ballistic Advantage SPR profile barrel, this is a 18-inch rifle length barrel chambered in 65 Grendel, this is part of their Premium series so it is a 416r stainless steel finish, and it shoots this Hornady custom right at 1 MOA, which is exactly what I need and with this ammo and barrel combo I took it out to 1,000 yards with very little issue, with my last five rounds I was four for five at 1,000 yards and so I'm pretty happy with that.
The optic of choice for this review, this is actually the new Vector Continental, so German glass, 1-10x 28 first focal plane optic, this is using a Eotech style reticle, at 1X you have this big outer horseshoe that kind of draws your eye to the center and then as you zoom into 10x magnification, because it is first focal plane, you get a very simple dot horseshoe and your mil drops, and for this review with the 1-10 I only took it out to about 600 to 50 yards, but I found that to be very easy to do, and if I wanted to stretch this 1-10 out further it would not be difficult.
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The only other real component of note on this build is the ballistic engineering trigger, this is their enhanced trigger, which is tunable from 4 pounds, all the way down to about 1 and a half. I currently have it set just above the minimum, so it's probably hovering right around 2 pounds or so, incredibly light trigger, very, very short reset for a match trigger, it is fantastic for the application.
