Your first speargun in Thailand: a buyer’s guide

Most spearos I talk to in Thailand made the same first-gun mistake. They bought too much gun, too little warranty, and no local support. This guide is the one I wish every new spearo read before handing over their money.

What your first speargun actually needs to be

A first speargun is a teaching tool. It teaches you how to load, aim, shoot, retrieve, and maintain gear. It is not a lifetime gun. It is not an heirloom. It is the gun you will make mistakes with.

What matters:

1. Right length for your water. Not the water in YouTube videos.
2. Reliable mechanics. If the trigger, muzzle, or line release fails, nothing else matters.
3. Real warranty in Thailand. Not “ship it back to Italy and hope” warranty.
4. Parts availability. Rubbers wear out. Shafts bend. You need replacements on a 3-day timeline, not 3 months.

What does not matter for your first gun: carbon fibre, roller muzzles, cammed triggers, roller-reel hybrids, matte black anything. Leave all of that for gun two or three.

Sizing: the single most common mistake

New spearos routinely buy guns 20 cm longer than they should. They see a 130 cm Tuna on Instagram and think that is what real spearos use. It is not.

Match your gun length to your actual visibility:

• 5 to 8 metre vis (Gulf side most of the year, reef work): 75 to 90 cm
• 8 to 15 metre vis (Andaman good days, mixed reef and open water): 90 to 110 cm
• 15 metre plus vis (Similan-adjacent, drop offs, bluewater): 110 to 130 cm

Longer guns are harder to swing in current, harder to load, more awkward to store, and send the shaft further past the fish when you miss. A gun you can actually aim is worth more than a gun that looks serious.

If you are not sure where your water sits, the speargun selector tool walks through it in 60 seconds.

What to avoid

Lazada and Shopee listings

Thai marketplaces routinely list spearfishing gear that is either grey-market (no warranty path), counterfeit (stamped with Rob Allen branding but made in a factory Rob Allen has never heard of), or straight-up suspended mid-transaction because the platform flagged the category. Even when the gear is real, when it breaks, you are on your own. The listing gets pulled before you can even message the seller.

Mall sporting goods store pneumatic guns

Decathlon and similar carry entry-level pneumatic guns in the Cressi and Sporasub price range. These work. They are not what I sell and not what I recommend. Pneumatics need servicing, lose pressure over time, and are harder to troubleshoot. A rubber-powered railgun has basically nothing that can fail that a rubber change does not fix.

Used guns from strangers

A used speargun from a vetted spearo in your local Facebook group is fine. A used gun from a Bangkok expat selling on Marketplace who “got it in Bali” is a gun with no serial, no warranty, and probably a tired rubber the seller will swear is “almost new”. Walk away.

Why brand warranty matters (and why most Thai gear has none)

Rob Allen provides a 2-year factory warranty on spearguns, which we upgrade to Limited Lifetime at the distributor level on registration within 30 days of purchase (same structure Spearfishing Australia publishes). That warranty only works if you bought through an official distributor. I am the only one in Thailand. That is not a marketing line. You can check it on the Rob Allen dealer locator.

What the Limited Lifetime Warranty actually covers (once registered): trigger mechanism, muzzle, stock integrity, build defects. What it does not cover: rubbers (wear item), shafts bent on reef, line you cut yourself. Fair on both sides.

What you get from me specifically: if something fails, you ship it to Koh Samui, I replace or repair, and it goes back to you on a 3-day timeline. I have done this dozens of times over the years. It just works.

The two guns I recommend for first buyers

Option one: Rob Allen Scorpia

The Scorpia is the entry-level Rob Allen railgun. Single-band rubber, 6.5mm shaft, simple trigger. Priced in the roughly 6,500 to 8,500 THB range depending on size. Sizes 75, 85, 95, and 100 cm.

Who it is for: tight budget, learning the basics, mostly calm reef shots on fish under 6 kg. Limited to mainland Thailand Gulf-side reef type conditions.

Option two: Rob Allen Snapper railgun

The step-up. 14mm rubber, 7mm shaft, same core mechanism, built to last. Priced 8,500 to 11,500 THB rigged. Sizes 80 through 120 cm (RGSNP08 through RGSNP12).

Who it is for: most first-time buyers. It is the gun you will still be using three years from now, because it handles 80 percent of Thai diving without complaint. The Snapper 90 (RGSNP09) is the single best-selling first gun I ship.

For full side-by-side between Snapper and the bigger Tuna line, read the Snapper vs Tuna breakdown.

Budget math, honest numbers

A genuinely workable first setup in Thailand:

• Speargun: Snapper 90, around 9,500 THB rigged
• Mask: low volume freediving mask, 2,500 to 4,500 THB
• Snorkel: simple J-tube, no purge valves, around 800 THB
• Fins: long blade freediving fins (plastic is fine to start), 4,500 to 7,500 THB
• Weight belt and rubber weights: around 2,000 THB
• Float and float line: around 3,500 THB if diving from shore
• Knife: small line-cutter on the belt, around 1,500 THB

Total: roughly 24,000 to 29,000 THB for a full, real, usable kit. You can shave 5,000 THB by going Scorpia and plastic fins. You can double it by buying every upgrade on day one. Neither extreme is smart. The middle is where you land.

Full shop here if you want to see what is on the shelf right now.

Common mistakes new Thai spearos make

Buying before learning to breath-hold. A gun does not make you a spearo. Go do a freediving course first. My partner runs Freediving Koh Samui, Apnea Total certified, max 3 students per class. That is where I send people. Spearfishing with poor breath-hold is how people get hurt.

Diving marine parks on accident. Similan, Surin, Ang Thong, Phi Phi core zones, Mu Ko Chang. All closed to spearfishing. The penalties are not theoretical. See the legality page for the map and rules.

Not rinsing gear. Latex rubbers in Thai salt, sun, and humidity die fast. Five minutes of care after every dive adds years to your rubbers. I will cover this in detail in a later post.

Buying a gun and never shooting it. Spearguns need dry-firing (carefully, on a safe backstop), trigger-time, loading practice. The best first gun in the wrong hands is worse than a used Scorpia in trained hands.

If you only remember three things

1. Match gun length to your real visibility, not your aspirational visibility.
2. Buy from an official warranty path. In Thailand, that is one distributor.
3. A Rob Allen Snapper 90 is the right first gun for most Thai spearos. Start there unless you have a specific reason not to.

Questions on your specific situation? WhatsApp me directly. +66 (0) 80 535 2528. I answer the phone.