MantisX Daily Challenge for Community Members

Where can the x3 be purchased for, at that price?

You can find it at mantisx.com. It’s also available at Amazon. If you’re a USCCA member, you can get a discount at Mantis.

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Note that the only real difference between the X2 and the X3 is the ability to use the device in live fire — oh, and $70.

Verifying that your live fire performance matches what you do in dry fire is “kind of interesting”. For me that is mostly a curiosity, while messing with the MantisX at the range is kind of a hassle — interfering with my regular practice more than it helps. I don’t use it enough in live fire to make it worth more than twice the price.

The X10 evaluates a lot more, but at a significant price bump. Mantis has had a trade up program for quite a while. The X2 can be kind of a trial offer where you get most of your purchase price back if you’re having so much fun that you end up wanting the deluxe pack.

And you aren’t out so much if you don’t like it (prob’ly you will tho’ :grin:).

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Ok, that seems kind of useful and I don’t do it in live fire practice. It does require rethinking established dry fire practices — probably a new room, possibly a second gun present, where is everybody? where is a safe direction? am I sort of reproducing what the exercise is trying to simulate?

Ready, set, go. Beep…beep — I can’t get five shots in. Rush, rush. Wait a minute! I don’t get 20sec — the timer cuts me off at a bit more than 16sec. Run it a few times to figure out the actual time and pace needed, and finish with a decent score.


Last shot was right on the buzzer — maybe the 20sec is from when I push the StartEx button instead of from the timer beep. For me to follow-through one shot, reset the trigger, reform my grip, and sight a shot which makes MantisX happy takes almost as much gyration as a shoot-reload-shoot — at 2.5 to 2.8, I don’t expect to do much better.

But what’s with the short limit? What if I can’t finish while shooting carefully and the timer runs out before my third shot? Apparently, then I win the gold ring:


Maybe this reinforces that the real world doesn’t follow the scenario, and that hits count more than speed… Or maybe the exercise needs a bit of tuning.

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Yeah, I didn’t like the parameters for today’s challenge, 4 secs per dry fire shot less the time to retrieve the gun :-1:. So I just did my regular… and it went very well indeed:

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How I sometimes feel about dry fire… that scene from A Fistful of Dollars.

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I have no words. :+1:

I liked how I was hitting targets today,
but Mantis didn’t think I was doin’ it right.

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Defensive Marksmanship has nothing to do with Mantis feedback.

Gave up on the system weeks ago. In a critical incident, only the bad guy’s opinion of whether or not you were “doing it right” will matter.

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I don’t disagree, at least with regard to MantisX being the be all, end all. But it does help with at least one component of shooting, a steady aim. Whether or not you’re aiming in the right place is a different consideration entirely.

I’m still not sure how much I trust the system for accurate, quantitative feedback, especially after that BIG calibration error I experienced a while back. The drills too, are a bit subjective. Today’s, “Field Strip” challenge is a good example. My field strip is not necessarily your field strip, yet we’re all being ranked against each other:

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I’m more of a mind with @Alces_Americanus on this. I do believe that my defensive shooting has improved by working with MantisX — developing a “quieter” hand and having a timer to work on some manipulations in dry fire. But the “coach-in-your-phone” is pretty oversold — it’s just another tool. I still do about half my dry fire without it.

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I’ve done this one before, and it’s kind of interesting — and maybe educational for people who don’t take their guns apart. But I don’t aspire to speed on this particular task, and have other goals for my time. People must be figuring out that time is not a metric on these challenges unless a limit is specified — if 98.1 is not a top time, somebody else is shooting cool.

I made my Benchmark goal of 95 — barely, and I’m happier when scores are more even than when I have to pull weaker shots back up to average.

Rest of Mantis today was meh, again. Shooting at a target was, like yesterday, pretty ok.


Single shot from draw x 30. No timer, just what speed I need to make the shot.
Left is 8" circles scaled for the distance indicated; Center is 7yd to 4.5" circle; Right is scaled to 15 yards.

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Here is an example of how I think MantisX has helped me in a less than abstract way.
This is reaction time to an audible signal with a prepped trigger on target.


2800 shots at this exercise over the past two years has cut my reaction time in half, while increasing my score 5-6 points, and produced less variation shot-to-shot. The point score is kind of a meaningless, arbitrary thing — but low scores are basically consequent to poor grip, poor trigger press, or poor follow through. Any or all of those can produce poor hits on real targets in real time.

There is no “beep” in a self-defense incident, but being able to confidently make a quick and correct shot the instant you are on target leaves your brain free to work other parts of the self-defense puzzle.

No way was I going to burn 1500 rounds a year on just this one isolated thing — and I was probably not going to spend my evenings on Wall Drills. But I can see the results when I take real ammo to real targets on the range in real time. How that is measured in bad guys, I hope to never find out. I will keep the tool in my kit.

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When I started using the MantisX, I paid attention to the fault messaging. Beyond understanding the fundamentals of what errors can cause problems, I didn’t find them very helpful. The one we see above, “Slapping Trigger,” is a good example. I occasionally get this message even with a smooth, clean trigger pull – accelerometer readings alone aren’t sufficiently diagnostic. So I think when we start achieving reliably consistent scores above a particular number, a good live coach becomes necessary to improve further.

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Right. Deciding how meaningful MantisX advice might be is deciding what you think about trigger charts.

That’s where the MantisX tips come from. I can decode somewhat to decide whether the device is complaining about my grip, trigger, or followthrough — but sometimes, who knows? Maybe MantisX is just in a bad mood, or I’m doing something beyond my observation that only a skilled observer could identify.

My personal peeve is “Too Much Trigger/Too Little Trigger” — I can run my trigger finger all the way from the very tip to middle of the second joint and get randomly mismatched advice. I think that one may be about some lateral slop in my gun’s trigger which is nearly impossible to perfectly balance. I smack the trigger around some, pull up my lucky sock, and go back to doing it right. Sometimes.

A giant pile of MantisX dots tells me that I have a vague low/left tendency, which is a sort of common thing. But if holes in my targets are all centered — which do I think is the most useful feedback?

In the end, the device can only teach you things you already know, but it provides some structure and feedback to the otherwise mind-numbing repetition required to develop strong hand-eye habits.

So the MantisX lost its mind again tonight. I took a set of comparison screen grabs, a good session, and bad-calibration session.

The last is a trace of movement, blue = hold, yellow = trigger press, red = post trigger break. Every single one of the ten bad-calibration shots followed a similar wiggly pattern, running right to left, and down to up. I must have been dry firing from a carousel.

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With such a recent repetition of the same pattern, my guess is your inertial navigation system might be going out. I don’t know how many tens of thousands of shots you might have on this single device, but there might be a hardware lifespan issue involved. I lose more FitBits that way… :unamused:

If you are seriously Mantis-dependent, best keep a replacement handy.

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Wrong icon… Needs :muscle: or :running_man:
:laughing:

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No, that’s me when FatBit says “avg 98.7”

When the hardware says “too little trigger — 44.6” I am
:couch_and_lamp: :potato: :rage:

And we haven’t even started talking about Holster Draw Analysis and scores of -400. :dizzy_face:

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Well, today the device, the gun, and I were all hot at the same time. :fire:


Personal best for MantisX Benchmark — not for high score, but for consistency.

And that wasn’t the end of it…


Not exactly fast, but I was picking up off a loose hand towel and didn’t want to drop the gun on concrete. 4th shot I forgot to reset, and waited for a repeat signal which did not arrive.

But wait — there’s more…


Can’t explain it. I might do any one of those on a given day, but not all in a row. If that is suddenly my new plateau, I’ll have to start working on BJJ or simultaneous 3-gun. Expect I’ll be back to earth tomorrow.

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Too bad you won’t be able to shoot for a few days because of the blisters on your hands!

Bengals or Rams?

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