Mini's are great rifles, but the newer ones are definitely more accurate than the '80s and early '90s ones.
I shot a 188-series Ranch Rifle from circa 1989 to 2004 or so. Fit and finish of my Mini was very nice and it was very reliable, but accuracy was poor even from a cold barrel (I was getting 5 MOA from a rest and rear bag, with premium ammo and a variety of scopes). I think mine was worse than average, but there was definitely a lot of variability. By all accounts the 580-series-and-up mini's are much more accurate. I loved how light and handy mine was, both with the factory stock and with a Choate E2, and it was my go-to HD long gun for many years.
Back in the day, a lot of people found that accuracy improved greatly by shortening the barrel to 16.1" and recrowning (effectively making the barrel stiffer), threading the barrel and installing a heavy flash suppressor to put more weight at the muzzle (thereby reducing vibration amplitude), and installing aftermarket gas port bushings with smaller ports (the older minis were often vastly overgassed; mine would throw brass 20 or 30 feet, and that plays heck with barrel bending when you launch that heavy op rod/gas catcher off of a cantilevered gas block).
Back40, If you know where there is a NEW AR-15 for less than the 700 I paid for my mini; please tell us. I have never seen one that cheap.
I see an S&W M&P Sport for $630 right now; this is a no-frills gun with no ejection port cover and no forward assist, but it is well made and reliable. You can probably find an AR with forward assist and port cover for $700 or so if you look around.
The Mini is far easier to clean than an AR with the sole big disadvantage being you must clean it from the muzzle....so just be
careful
The mini is definitely easy to clean, and field stripping is a snap (pull the trigger guard and remove the trigger group, and there you are). The bolt takes some practice to get out and back in quickly, though, and like the AR there are some small parts you can lose (the bolt hold-open thingy behind the left-side plate comes to mind). You also have to be sure to grease the knob on the bolt and its slot in the op rod well, or else you'd get galling (at least on my stainless mini). My biggest beef with Mini maintenance was that Ruger refuses to sell you certain spare parts; the only way to get a spare bolt, for example, was to remove your old bolt and then ship the boltless rifle back to Ruger.
If I still had my Mini, I'd be cleaning it from the breech with a bore snake, I think, and using a good rod guide/muzzle protector if I ever needed to use a rod. After 15+ years of shooting and cleaning from the muzzle on mine, I could see a hint of muzzle wear (stainless barrel) that could have been from the aluminum cleaning rod.
Not that you have to clean it that often...I mentioned that I have two thousand rounds through mine....I haven't cleaned it yet, just kept it well lubed. Try that with your stupid gas system on an AR.
Mini's are very reliable, but AR's run fine under the same regimen (well lubed but not cleaned), as do AK's. Here's a basic AR after 14,000 rounds of Wolf steel-case and no cleaning, just lots of lubrication:
A Clean Wouldn't Hurt
Those things remind me of a car which has its exhaust pipe pointed at the air cleaner intake.
AR's exhaust to the atmosphere out of the gas vent holes in the side of the bolt carrier. Unless the rifle is overgassed, or suppressed, you don't get all that much more gas in the receiver than an AK puts there, in my experience. Suppressed is another story, of course...
Ars are wonderfully accurate rifles, I was working for Les Baer when we sent out a 204 Ruger AR that later shot a 4 1/2 " ten shot group at 600 yards. But the are also high maintenance prima- donnas
A rifle that is tuned for maximum accuracy is going to be more temperamental than a rack-grade AR, just like the highly accurized mini's back in the day with tight match chambers, lighter springs, and the gas turned way down. I'm not sure that's a fair comparison to the reliability of rack-grade guns, though.
My mini-14 never jammed, except for one bolt lockup on an overpressure reload that a friend accidentally gave me, and that wasn't the rifle's fault. My AR (Rock River 16" midlength) has never jammed either, even though I shoot mostly cheap steel-case Tula and Wolf. As long as they are lubed, they'll run (and that is true of most semiautos).