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Weird. From the early days of the Mini, on into the early 1980s at least, there was no such thing as a "bad" magazine. I've no idea why today's situation is so different. The mags back then cost no more than mags for other box-mag rifles. I even had one 40-round mag that worked just fine.
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Things haven't changed. I have several aftermarket 40 round magazines for my AC556. They work even when I'm shooting full-auto or burst. But here are the things I experience with the 40 round aftermarket (PMI) magazines that I don't experience with the factory Ruger 20 and 30 round magazines:
1. I use a loading tool to load 5 rounds at a time into the magazines. The feed lips on the aftermarket magazines will eventually distort some - they need to be adjusted from time to time. The Ruger mags stand up to a lot more abuse without a hitch.
2. The feed lips on one of my aftermarket 40 round mags has bright shiny wear spots where it has obviously made contact with the bolt. This never happens with the Ruger mags.
3. The Mini-14 tower that came with my Betamag was so out of spec that it took me almost 2 hours of filing/shaping and shooting to get it to run -
unbelievable!
4. aftermarket magazines that have been inserted a lot into the mag well tend to bend inward around the hole for the mag catch, making them harder to insert (or you need to adjust them) as they get worn - you don't generally see this on factory Ruger mags.
I've examined PMI magazines and others in comparison to the Factory Rugers. What I've observed is that the feed lips on the aftermarket magazines are generally higher and wider, as well as shaped differently than the Ruger mags. Why is this??? How hard can it be to simply copy the dimensions of the factory magazine? The Mini-14 is actually not that picky about magazines, because it will function with many of these mags that are visibly different from the factory mags.
Also, the steel in the Ruger mags is much tougher than in the aftermarket magazines - I believe it's actually a bit thicker. I may pull my micrometer out and measure the differences, just for curiosity sake.