First off, happy Thanksgiving to all of my American readers. Hope you have a good one.

Stealth is fun sometimes.

The SIG SG 553 is a Swiss carbine, first appearing in 2009. It is a modernized version of the SIG SG 552 carbine, which is essentially a carbine version of the SIG SG 550 assault rifle.

The SG553 appears as a carbine in BF4, with the standard damage of 25 up close and 15.4 at a distance. Its dropoff is also standard, starting at 8 meters and ending at 50 meters. This means that you will be killing an enemy with full health in 4-7 shots depending on how far you are from the target.

It has the second-longest short reload time among the non-bullpup carbines, only superior to the ACE 52 CQB, at 2.15 seconds. However it does beat out both ACE carbines, the AKU-12, and the G36C with its 2.65 second long reload time. The SG553 also possesses the standard carbine magazine size at 30 rounds plus one in the chamber.

With a rate of fire of 830 rounds per minute, the SG553 can win a high amount of close-quarters gunfights, although it isn’t quite as good in CQC as the ACW-R or MTAR-21 with their 880 RPM and 900 RPM, respectively. You will find yourself chewing through ammo relatively quickly regardless, so be sure to keep an eye on your ammo count.

Its recoil is relatively high, with an upwards kick of 0.3, a left kick of 0.3, and a right kick of 0.5. To compensate for this recoil, I suggest firing in short bursts of 3-5 bullets if you’re anywhere more than 15 meters away from your target. Pulling your mouse down and to the left a little bit will help quite a bit too.

The SG553 is in the middle of the pack in terms of bullet velocity at 430 m/s, although as mentioned in my previous reviews velocity isn’t a huge deal. It also has the standard bullet drop of 15 m/s². Its maximum range is 645 meters.

It has the non-bullpup carbine standard spreads of 0.3 aiming down sights and staying still, and 0.8 ADSing and on the move. Its hipfire spreads are standard with all other non-bullpup carbines as well, with a spread of 2 standing still, 1.5 crouched and still, and 1 proned and still. When moving and hipfiring, this will increase to 2.5 standing, 2 crouched, and 1.5 proned.

I found the SG553 to be extremely good with a Reflex sight, Suppressor, and Stubby Grip. The Reflex sight provides better target acquisition than irons, the Suppressor keeps you off the minimap and makes for good backrage moments, and the Stubby Grip will make your spread increase by 15% less per shot when firing full auto. The Suppressor works very well with this gun. The combination of staying off the minimap and a fast time to kill will allow you to drop enemies before they have time to react, let alone know what hit them. Alternatively running a Compensator in combo with the Stubby grip can help keep the SG553’s heavy horizontal recoil in check if you aren’t as good at controlling recoil. This gun will do quite well without a silencer as well.