Alexander Arms .50 Beowulf AR15

By Rob Pofahl

All right guys, this is my first review so bear with me on this one.

My initial reaction when pulling the Beowulf out of its case was, wow, this gun is incredibly light for what it’s shooting. Out of the box it isn’t much to look at. Just your standard AR

.50 Beowulf AR15 with Magpul accessories

style rifle. Right off the bat, we threw some nice aftermarket parts from Magpul on it. Including the MOE Grip, UBR Stock, Flip Up Sights and Rail Covers, all in Flat Dark Earth. After all that this the rifle is really aesthetically pleasing. I also added a Wolff Extra Power Buffer Spring combined with a Buffer Technologies Enidine Hydraulic Recoil Buffer to help tame some of the monster recoil from this beast.

Break-Down
Nothing fancy here, she breaks down just like any standard AR-15, exact same components. One minor complaint I had was while I was swapping out the pistol grips. For some reason Alexander Arms put an allen head screw in there to hold it on. I don’t know about most of you, but I usually don’t have allen keys that are that long. I had to buy one long enough. Like I said, a minor problem but most of us these days are not using the standard old school AR grips. A simple fix would be just to throw a flat head screw in, which is what I think EVERYONE else uses. I also bought an accu-wedge piece to make the upper and lower fit tighter, but honestly AA did a great job matching the tolerances, it was a very tight fit before I added anything and doing so was probably not even necessary.

General

5.56 Nato/.223 Remington Vs. .50 Beowulf

For our testing purpose’s we used 334 grain FMJ hand loads from Ammo Brothers. This is about the average size used for this caliber. The bullet weights range from 300-500 grains. I have only heard of guys doing hand loads with the 500 grain, so they might be a little hard to come by.  AA makes a 400 grain that I’m excited to see in action. If I had more time and the ammo was available I would have tested each variant, so I’m sorry we only got to try one, but more will follow. I’m just as curious as the rest of you. As you can see in our video the 334 grain performed exceptionally well on hard targets. We chronographed the bullets at 1850 fps with very good consistency between the 3 shot test. For as heavy a bullet as it is, its accuracy was good. I only zeroed it with a red dot sight(8moa dot) at 50 yards. I will be re-zeroing with the Trijicon RX34 Reflex sight which has a 4.5moa dot. So that will improve our accuracy a lot. Either way, this gun is really only good out to about 200 yards. But in that range, it’s a serious man stopper. I don’t care if you’re wearing top of the line body armor, this round is going to cause some serious hurt when it hits.

Recoil can be a bit of a handful at times but it is certainly manageable. It feels very similar to a hard hitting 12 gauge magnum round or slug. So follow-up shots are not that quick, but with a round this large, they don’t need to be. On the recoil topic, the hydraulic buffer I put in worked TOO well. Sometimes the gun would not cycle the bolt far enough back to chamber the next round. So I took that out and put a standard DPMS Carbine Buffer in; it functioned perfectly after this. Recoil was still about the same.  AA does make a compensator to help with the recoil which looks very promising,  I have yet to put mine on, but that is high on my list to test out.

So, here is my only real complaint about this system: the magazines. I can’t believe that for as long as the Beowulf has been around, that AA has not gotten around to a better design for this caliber. I understand the idea behind keeping parts similar to standard ARs. But I was having some serious problems with the 10 round mags I purchased from them. I think the only change needed is a different follower.  The current design is made of some sort of fibrous material that has been sheered on the bottom to allow for the fitting of 10 of these monster rounds. The problem with this is that the edges have not been smoothed out so when you get down past the 7th round while loading it starts to catch on the edges inside the magazine body. So then you have your top 3 rounds rattling around loose, without pressure pushing them where they need to go. This is absolutely unacceptable in my opinion and needs to be addressed by AA. On a better note, the 7 round magazines functioned flawlessly so at least you have those to fall back on.

Ballistics

.50 Beowulf slug mushroomed to .803 inches after hitting a 4" thick cinder block

The chart above illustrates the energy of this potent round compared to your standard AR15 round.  While bullet drop is considerably more than the 5.56, the energy of the 334 grain and the 400 grain Beowulf are almost double that of the 62 grain Nato round.

The Beowulf had no problem penetrating five 1 gallon water jugs lined up in a row.  That is the equivalent of over 20″ of living tissue.  A four inch cinder block was no problem as you see in the video.  We also lined up a normal cinder block -the kind used in building walls- and shot it length-wise to penetrate three walls rather than just the two you need to penetrate to go through the wall of a building.  Once again, the Beowulf blasted through everything in its path!  You can view the exit wound of a cow’s head in our gallery below, which shows the kind of damage this thing does to flesh and bone.  We also

From top left - Brass Jacket, two slugs from steel plate, slug measuring .803 inches and other fragments and slugs collected from our tests

shot some steel and were impressed with the work this did on it.  We didn’t get full penetration on our 1/4″ steel plate from 100 yards but the .50 cal left much larger pockets then our .308 with 168gr led did.  The .50 did penetrate both walls of our structural tubing which had 1/8″ thick walls proving the reverse theory of synergy by equaling 1/4″ of penetrated steel.  Just for S&G we shot up a Tonka truck which suffered a one inch plus hole in the steel plating after the first round tore through the cab of the truck.  Needless to say, after all the data, and the “controlled environment” trigger time, the ballistics of the .50 Beowulf caliber speak for themselves and it’s easy to be converted!

Overall
I was incredibly happy with this purchase. I bought this for myself and then decided to do a review for the site. It is a purchase I would do again in a heartbeat. For what it does, I don’t think there is a better gun on the market. It’s a big, heavy, hard-hitting bullet that will stop anything short of an elephant coming at you (hell, it might even stop that if you place your shot right). Recoil might be a drawback for some, since it is such a light package overall. But I only weigh 175 pounds and I handled it just fine. For guys or gals who want a plinker to shoot paper with, this is not your gun. Ammunition is reasonably priced, but you probably won’t want to shoot more than 20 rounds in a day anyway. I will recommend that if you buy this gun and take it shooting, to bring something reactive to shoot at. Once you’re zeroed, shooting paper just seems like a waste of bullets with a gun like this. There is just something a lot more rewarding about blowing up cinder blocks, cow heads, or whatever you can get your hands on. Just keep it safe and be smart about it. Thanks everyone, I hope you enjoyed the review and the video. If you have any specific questions, feel free comment below, and Garrett or I will promptly respond.

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