What To Look For In Paintballs...
Shooting a good quality paintball is essential to success on the paintball field.  Junky paint that breaks too soon or flies inconsistently will give you nothing but problems - quickly reducing your game to a bunch of hassles rather than fun.  Low quality paintballs can break inside your paintball gun before it shoots will make a mess in your marker, causing you to have to stop playing and clean it.  Cheap paintballs can have warped shells and this will cause them to fly erratically and miss their target. 

If you want to shoot well it is important that you make sure that your paintballs are adequate and don't hold you back.  A very important quality of a good paintball is that they are perfectly round.  Also, make sure there is no visible line between the halves of the shell; it’s important the paintball is free of dimples or misshaping.  If the paintball is irregular, warped, or has any dimpled paint it will weaken your accuracy. 

To shoot well, you will have to pay for the higher quality paintballs.  If your paint is brittle it will break in your chamber or the barrel of the gun and can ruin the gun as well as your accuracy.  Typically, new paintballs outperform older ones.  Considering this, it may not be the best idea to purchase more paintballs than you will use in the near future.  Paintballs must be stored in a climate controlled environment; they will easily lose their shape (and get ruined) in spaces that are too hot, damp or cold.

Recently many manufacturers have created new recipes for higher quality paintballs, creating different ‘grades’ of paint.  As a general rule, the more you spend on the paintballs, the higher the grade and better quality you will get.  Fortunately, there are still some cheaper paintballs that work really well.  Try experimenting with different brands to find which paintballs are the most accurate for your marker and the easiest on your wallet.

Some brands of paint shoot differently in different paintball markers.  Some guns can shoot practice paint perfectly while others require a higher-end paint for consistent accuracy.  Generally, higher-end markers tend to be a bit more finicky; requiring more premium grade, tournament style paintballs.  These are the highest grades of paintballs and carry the highest price tags.  Keep trying different grades and different brands of paint until you find the right one for you.

Here’s a simple test to help determine if your paintballs are either too hard to too brittle.  Drop a paintball from about six feet onto a concrete surface and catch it after the first bounce.  Repeat this process and count how many times it takes for the paintball’s shell to break open when it hits the concrete.  Do this process for five more paintballs from the same bag and figure out the average number of drops for the paintball to break. 

A good batch of paintballs will break after 3-5 drops onto the concrete.  Paintballs that break after one or two bounces are considered too brittle; these are more likely to break in the chamber of your paintball gun.  Paintballs that break after more than 5 bounces have too hard of a shell and are more likely to bounce off your target without breaking at all. 

To make things even more confusing, paintballs come in a variety of sizes.  Beginner players are often confused about the different sizes of paintballs.  The .68 caliber is the most common and is considered the standard size for paintballs.  .68 caliber means that a paintball is .68 inches in diameter; it is used in .68 caliber paintball guns.  Most paintball guns made today (at least 85-90 percent of them) are .68 caliber.  If the gun you want doesn’t mention it’s caliber in it’s description, you can generally safely assume it’s a .68.

Paintballs also come in other calibers such as .43 and .50.  Most .43 caliber paintball markers are realistic tactical pistols, however there are fewer .43 caliber rifles.  Popular .43 caliber pistols include the P99, RAMX50, Combat Pistol and Desert Eagle.  Recently, the .50 caliber paintball has come into play.  This paintball requires yet a different sized set of paintball gear (.50 caliber guns & hoppers), however boasts much less cost, more accuracy and much more efficiency than any other size.