Best 5-star .22LR ammo at Midway spreadsheet

[Mr.CRC]

Hi:

Rather than a question, this time I have something which I hope is significant to contribute.

I spent many hours poring over .22LR ammo offerings at www.midwayusa.com a few days ago. Then I decided to try to make the selection process systematic, by compiling a spreadsheet of all the brands and types of ammo with prices normalized for 500 rd. boxes (if possible). There are 50 items on this list.

The most important aspect of this spread is that it 1. only incorporates the ammo which sports 4.5 or greater average reviews; 2. it includes the number of reviewers.

So this is a "best of .22LR ammo" list which doesn't include any ammo with less than 4.5 ratings. But since statistically a 5 star review from just 1 person doesn't tell us much, the spread also includes the number of reviewers. I have sorted the spread alphabetically (which correlates for the most part with the order in which things appear at MidwayUSA), and also into three categories of price (up to $0.10/rd, $0.101 to 0.15/rd., and more than $0.15/rd.), then sorted again by the number of reviewers. This allows one to choose the most statistically significant reviews.

Of course, one can re-sort this spread in any way you like in order to extract the information you desire.

Enjoy.

P.S. It was only with some disgust with which I chose to make these files Microsoft Excel compatible, as I don't like Microsoft. I created the spreadsheet in OpenOffice on Linux. It should be readable by those who use OpenOffice on any platform. I decided to export it to .xls as a convenience for the folks who use Microsoft software.

If you don't have Microsoft Excel, you can read and manipulate the files by downloading the OpenOffice program from www.openoffice.org

[westsiderippa]

lol, nice work. i just spent a couple hrs the other day on midway reading countless reviews on 22lr. and now you go and do this.. nice

[SikDMAX]

Sweet!

[Mr.CRC]

lol, nice work. i just spent a couple hrs the other day on midway reading countless reviews on 22lr. and now you go and do this.. nice

When you multiply that time by the number of other vendors, the optimization problem for cost and quality becomes intractable. The time spent checking different vendors to save a few dollars is generally worth more than the savings, so I just stick with a preferred vendor with plenty of choices and go with that.

I will be buying a whole bunch of different ammo from Midway to see how different types group with my guns. We'll see if I can come up with time to compile all that into something presentable... Not making any promises.

Hope the spread helps folks decide.

[killshot44]

Mr C, Thanks for doing this.....

Not knocking it or you but the weak point would be the reviews themselves. Some I've read were pretty laughable in their naivete.

[Mr.CRC]

Mr C, Thanks for doing this.....

Not knocking it or you but the weak point would be the reviews themselves. Some I've read were pretty laughable in their naivete.

Indeed some reviews are pointless. That is why the number of reviews is valuable. A very large number of reviews which average out over 4.5 basically indicates that the ammo is at least very likely to go bang when you pull the trigger, and that a majority of users have had a successful shooting experience using the ammo.

My plan is to buy a selection of the highest rated stuff over a range of prices, measure groups in my pistol and rifle, then figure out which are the best for my guns. One thing which will be very interesting to see is if there is any solid correlation between price and performance. I will be buying a modest quantity of >$0.15/rd Elay, Lapua, and RWS ammo for instance, as well as lots of AM22 (when it is available again) and other <$0.10/rd ammo to compare.

There is ultimately no way to tell beforehand which ammo will get along best in any particular gun.

[atto]

Great work. Any chance you have a blog or will you just be posting the results of your tests here?

Also, does your username have anything to do with hash functions?

[Mr.CRC]

Great work. Any chance you have a blog or will you just be posting the results of your tests here?

Also, does your username have anything to do with hash functions?

Unfortunately I don't even have a web site anymore. Instead I have a 4 year old. Since she came along my productivity at accomplishing much in the way of projects at home has gone to near zero. I have many electronics and programming projects on a list that hasn't gotten much attention for a few years.

It is a coincidence that my initials are also those for cyclic redundancy check. Since I have some programming background, I myself often think it means this when I see those letters.

I am in the process of purchasing a scope. I fear I will go off the edge and buy a Leupold. Hopefully I will find time to report results of my ammo tests once I'm confident that I am characterizing the ammo rather than just trying to master shooting the gun.

[usas12]

Thanks . That will work for some . Mostly the pricing index . the only thing is that in the 40 or so .22lrs that I have owned , from p.o.s's to match guns , they all want what they like . I meet a guy that had a older Savage / Anschutz that would do high .1's & low .2's ( at 50yds ) with some bulk ammo . I forget which one . But on the other end another guy used only Lapua Midas and it was holding .2"'s in a match gun .He wouldn't try the " cheap stuff " as he called it just to check it . thats why I buy ALOT of assorted ammo . test them all in a gun . when I find what that gun likes , I buy alot of it (1,000 min ). use the rest of the testing ammo in other guns . Its funny I shot my Kimber Gvt with Wolf target & Eley Tenex . The Wolf , for wahtever reason , groups better . The Eley goes it in the Winch 52d .

Andy

[USGI]

Mr. CRC:
If there's a quick answer to this question, maybe you could give us (me anyway) a clue: I know my way around Excel a little bit, but use Access for sorting stuff that I don't want to mess up. For example, is there an easy way to highlight a column, and say sort A-Z without messing up the rest of the data? Like I said, I gave up on sorting in Excel a long time ago, but know that some people do it successfully. I see that one of the workbooks has worksheet #1 sorted aphabetically by manufacturer, but the other file looks like it isn't sorted - maybe shows the data in the order you entered it? On that one, I could highlight the whole worksheet and sort it alphabetically by manufacturer without skewing the rest of it. If it's tough to explain, maybe I should just import your data into Access - I know I can sort columns in an access table without messing up the rest of it. Thanks!