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Mid-ranged is a common misconception people have when they played paintball. In my paintball days, you could classify just about anything into three categories:
Low-end tier - Brass Eagle plastic guns and the like, sub 100$
Mid-end tier - Spyders and clones, M98s, impulses, basic cockers and mags, etc. Usual range was from 100$ to say 500$.
High-end tier - Matrixes, Angels, timmies, custom gun... All the cool tournament ready gun above the 500$ mark.
The usual player started out with a mid-end Spyder or m98. For the price you paid for it, it fared quite decently. It still hold a quite favorable opinion of my old Spyder TL, even after I've gone through some quite high end guns.
This is particularly relevant nowadays, since there are quite nice guns emerging in the mid end price range, offering high end performance with few drawbacks, such as the Proto Matrix Rail. For 400$, that gun almost single handedly convince me to start playing again.
That in mind, airsoft get a bit more funky about the mid-tier range. In our case, the tiers look more like this:
Low-end - Canadian Tire shite
Mid-end - JG, Echo1, other acceptable TM clones
High-end - TM, CA, ICS, etc
The problem is, while JG guns offer a good quality and performance to price ratio in Asia and America, by the time they get to Canada they disproportionately increase in price versus other high end brand. For your average TM or CA gun, expect to pay about twice the listed Hong Kong price. JG comes out to about three times the price. Therefore, for just 100$ to 200$ more, you get to trade up from a spyder to an Angel.
Not only that, but the mid end stuff is relatively more complicated to obtain in Canada, since retailers won't usually stock them or stock them at an inflated price (375$ for a JG G36c, WTF?), so it doesn't make economical sense to go for these, especially considering you might have to upgrade a couple of internals to get them to par with high end guns. So not only do you get stiffed financially, you also have to open the mech-box.
So the best way to get into airsoft without paying to much is to get age verified and browse the classified. For anywhere between 500$ and 800$ you'll be able to assemble a playable setup. Not only that, it is also the only reputable place to find mid-tier guns in stock at all times, since our two retailers don't usually bother with them. Before you ask about buyairsoft.ca, don't, they've been raided and seized, it's a dead site now.
Browse the FAQs and get age verified. Fill out out your profile properly, since I checked, and no, you're not in my butt at the moment. It is relevant, because it helps us direct you to local resources.
Attend a game if you can before buying, so you'll be able to see and touch the guns before hand and decided if this is what you want.
Good luck!
EDIT: wall of text strikes you for 21 damage!
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