When it comes to my rifles I can be pretty particular what I put on them, especially my AR-15. Until recently I wouldn't even swap out the trigger for anything other than a bone stock Mil-spec until I got ahold of an ALG trigger. The main reason is that I use all my carbines to train with typically and want all of them to be ready and capable if I were to have to defend my life with it. Anything that can possibly cause a rifle to go from a functioning tool to having malfunctions is a big no-no for me, even if it increases speed or accuracy just a hair I would rather have a properly functioning rifle.

The first time I spoke with ODIN Works about doing some T&E they made it very clear that their XMR or Extended Mag Release wasn't particularly meant for a battle rifle or defense weapon but more along the lines of the 3 gun/race gun crowd. Admittedly that isn't my scene but I figured I would give it a fair shake and see how it worked. In the past I have had some extended mag releases that were flimsy, bulky and certainly snagged a lot. This was not the case with the ODIN offering.

The XMR comes with its own button that works and installs just like any other mag release button except it has two screw holes that are used to attach the extension piece. The lower this particular piece was going on was my JoeBob Outfitters billet lower and while looks are really just a bonus the two pieces certainly complimented one another well. The only issue I noticed was a slight bit of wobble in the XMR, not enough to bother me by any means and not enough to cause the button to hang up in the lower while dropping the mag but it was there. I ended up spinning the release one more time until it bottomed out on the extension and that was enough to take away a decent portion of the wiggle. Even with the extra tightening I had no issue with mags dropping free or not locking in when reloading.

I definitely don't think the XMR made my reloads any faster but it definitely made finding that button and dropping the mag a bit easier. I did all my testing with the XMR over a few days on which we never saw temps above freezing and even managed to have a major snow storm with 16 inches of snow. This is where I certainly saw the largest advantage of the XMR was when using a gloved hand in wet, slippery conditions. The face is machined with what I would describe as "stepped" machining which provided plenty of traction and a good feel.

The XMR sticks up a bit over the fence in the lower receiver but I never had a single mag drop from the gun when it wasn't supposed to. I dropped the rifle button down, did transitions to handgun and did various drills and was good to go, even when wearing the plate carrier with hard magazines for it to bump against. I am not saying it isn't possible as the ODIN button is 4 times the size of a regular button but short of setting up a scenario where I could blatantly make something hit the button I was good to go. Another nice feature was do to the thickness of the ODIN there was not a lot of room between the receiver and the button for things to snag or get caught between the two, which was an issue I had definitely had in the past.

Everything I have seen from ODIN had very clean machining and this fell right in line with that. The button fit perfectly in the extension and aside from the little bit of wobble was a very clean fit with no hang ups. They have a variety of color options including black, FDE, silver, green and red. The one I received was their green and it was bright and wild and certainly not the kind of thing I would normally put on one of my rifles but a cool option for a race gun or if you were building a rifle to teach the kid to shoot and wanted to add some pizzazz to it.

Overall I was pleasantly surprised by the Odin Works XMR and being the green was a little wild for me, am going to pick one up in black to continue to run on the rifle in the pictures. This is going to be my primary rifle that I do my testing on and also use in classes this year so it will have plenty of rounds through it and if no issues are found I will most likely be outfitting my other rifles with them as well. As I stated earlier I don't see the XMR making mag changes noticeably faster but the ease of use, especially when gloved or sweaty is certainly a benefit if I don't have any issues with unwanted mag drops. Not to mention the fact that we use the AR-15 as our primary defense rifle at the house so the added benefit of my wife being able to hit the mag release without having to slide her hand or adjust her grip is also great. At twenty dollars they are certainly a nice addition to a rifle.