What Are ELEY Trial Packs and Which One Should I Buy?

ELEY trial packs exist to give shooters a cost-effective introduction to the ELEY brand. Rather than committing to a case of one product, you buy a selection, shoot them through your own rifle and see which one you prefer. The ELEY brochure puts it exactly: “Discover your perfect ELEY round.” Try them all, and let the target choose.

Trial packs are bought like any other ELEY product, from participating retailers listed at eley.co.uk/retailers. What they save is not the price of the ammunition but the cost of finding out: buying a full case of a product before you know whether your barrel favours it.

[ELEY TO ADD: the current trial pack names, exactly which products and quantities each pack contains, and the pack price by market.]

Why Trialling Is the Right Way to Buy Rimfire

This is not a marketing device. It follows directly from how .22LR behaves.

ELEY’s own guidance is explicit: “Because every barrel has its own unique characteristics, and each batch of ammunition performs differently, a thorough testing process is essential. What performs flawlessly in one barrel may not deliver the same results in another.”

Two variables are in play whenever you buy .22LR:

1. The product grade. ELEY tenex, match, team, club and sport / target differ in their published maximum Radial Standard Deviation (RSD), at 3.75 mm, 4.74 mm, 5.50 mm, 5.50 mm and 7.00 mm respectively, and in profile and lubricant. tenex, match and team use the patented flat-nose bullet with beeswax-tallow; club and sport use a round nose with paraffin wax, which is drier and less prone to picking up debris.
2. The individual batch. Within a grade, batches vary, and barrels have their own dimensions and harmonics. The interaction between the two is what decides your group.

A trial pack resolves the first variable cheaply. Batch testing resolves the second.

How to Get the Most From a Trial Pack

• Shoot it from the bench, on a calm day. You are testing the ammunition, not your position or your wind reading.
• Fire a few fouling shots when you change lubricant type, particularly moving between beeswax-tallow and paraffin products, so the barrel is settled before you score anything.
• Record the batch code from every box. The format 10 26-04 244 over 1045 reads as loaded product, year 2026, loader 04, batch 244 for that loader, and 1045 mean velocity across four barrels during proofing. That code is how you re-order the same lot and how you look up its proof data.
• Group, then group again. A single small group is luck. Consistency across strings is the signal.

Then Take It Further, for Free

Once a trial pack has told you which grade suits your rifle and your discipline, two ELEY services narrow it to the exact lot.

The Lot Analyser at eleyxshot.com. Create a free account, enter a batch number, and you can see the full 200-shot proof group ELEY fired for that batch. All lots are published for ELEY tenex, tenex pistol, tenex biathlon, tenex rapid fire pistol, match, semi-auto .22LR benchrest precision, ultra and club, and the record includes X and Y coordinates for every shot, velocity, group size, shot distribution, ballistic coefficient and radial dispersion across four barrel types.

Batch testing at eley.co.uk/vip. Open to anyone, at five centres in the United Kingdom, Hungary, Germany, the United States and Canada. You shoot up to 20 batches through your own barrel, 10 shots each, best shortlisted, then a further 30 shots until a 40-shot group size and consolidated score is recorded.

The Bottom Line

An ELEY trial pack is the cost-effective way to work out which ELEY product suits your rifle and your discipline before you commit to a quantity. Once you know, every ELEY round is available in 50-round boxes, 500-round bricks and 5,000-round outer cases. Ask a stockist at eley.co.uk/retailers for a trial pack, shoot it carefully from the bench, and write down every batch code. Then use the free Lot Analyser, and a test range session if you can, to answer the more valuable question: which production lot performs best in your barrel.