Topic: The Best Handguns of 2023, Tested and Reviewed (Read 37 times)
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Staccato 2011 CS Specs
There are so many good defensive pistols on the market—some of which can be had for a song—that you can understand why some people might be skeptical concerning the benefits of the Staccato 2011 CS, which sports a hefty $2,499 price tag.
That was certainly at the forefront of our mind before we started putting lead downrange at this year’s gun test. Very quickly, however, the CS began to distinguish itself in the co*petitive field of co*pact 9mm carry guns.
Everything on the gun runs well. The magazines, which hold 16 rounds, are intelligently designed. All the controls—mag release, slide lock, ambidextrous safety—are positive and intuitive to use. The stippled grip texture is, in the words of one judge, “perfect.”
The trigger has minimal take-up (which you’d never notice in a defensive situation), a crisp break, and a short reset. The Staccato 2011 CS also has an innovative dual-spring recoil system that’s unlike anything you’ve seen on a 1911, 2011 or striker-fired pistol. (Check out our full review if you want to really get into the weeds with the CS.)
Bottom line, for its size you won’t find another pistol that co*bines speed and accuracy the way the Staccato CS does. Its 1.439-inch accuracy average placed it right in the midst of what the best full-sized pistols we tested this year shot. And with a reflex sight mounted (ours carried a Holosun EPS Carry 2), we were able to run it like a sport bike on an empty highway.
All this isn’t to say the pistol is perfect. The faint line on the polymer frame left over from the injection molding process is a minor cosmetic blemish. Also, the 2011-style controls add bulk and co*plexity to the pistol. The slimmer dimensions of striker-fired pistols that lack external safeties, and their simple “point and shoot” operation, account for much of their popularity.
A shooter opting to go with any pistol like the CS for a carry gun really needs to take the time to master the platform so that running the gun is second nature under stress. Anyone willing to make that co*mitment, however, will enjoy this pistol and soon see why it deserved an Editor’s Choice award as the best co*pact pistol of 2023.
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Taurus GX4XL T.O.R.O. Specs
For anyone who recoiled at the price of the Editor’s Choice award winners, there’s the Taurus GX4XL T.O.R.O. This Brazilian-made striker-fired semi-auto is a screaming value for shooters looking for a co*pact 9mm.
While the $430 price tag might be what catches the eye of most people first, this little gun revealed it’s more than just a cheap date after we put hundreds of rounds through it during the test.
Most importantly, it shot well during the dynamic portion of our testing. That means during strings of rapid fire on multiple targets at different distances, the Taurus GX4XL more than met the standard expected for a concealable defensive pistol. (In terms of pure accuracy it didn’t blow our socks off, but it’s not meant for bullseye co*petition.)
Its reliability was good as well. We didn’t have any issues running a variety of bullet styles and weights through it. Though, in fairness, this is actually the second sample of this pistol we tested and that first pistol required a couple hundred rounds of break-in before its feeding smoothed out. As with any handgun—especially less expensive defensive pistols—it is imperative to get an adequate quantity of rounds through them before potentially staking your life on their performance. If you want to read more about this pistol, read our full review.
Among the pistol’s positive qualities are an excellent grip shape and texture. We especially appreciated the textured pad on the side of the frame for the support hand thumb. These enhanced the Taurus’s ergonomics and contributed to its ability to get back on target quickly.
The trigger breaks at 6 pounds, 11 ounces—which is more than ideal—but it has a solid back wall, and a short, well-defined reset which helps make up for that.
The T.O.R.O. is optics-ready, and after running it with its stock fixed sights (which are one of the pistol’s deficits), we put on a Swampfox Sentinel reflex sight. That was a worthwhile upgrade and gave the GX4XL a good performance boost.
The pistol co*es with two magazines, one holding 11 rounds and the other 13. Even the shorter 11-rounder offers purchase for all the shooter’s fingers. The pistol also ships with different backstraps to adjust the thickness of the grip.
These standard features are really attractive on a pistol at this price and sealed the deal for the Taurus GX4XL’s well-deserved Great Buy award.
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Sig Sauer P365 XMacro Tacops Specs
Don’t let the lack of an award for the Sig Sauer P365 XMacro Tacops fool you. Though it took second place in the scoring for the Editor’s Choice and Great Buy awards in the co*pact pistol category, it is a true winner.
For a mid-priced gun, the $785 XMacro Tacops has a solid and appealing feature set. Of course, it is built on the proven (and often imitated) P365 platform, so the pistol starts with a good foundation.
To differentiate it from the ever-expanding field of P365s, Sig gave the XMacro Tacops a larger grip module that bumped it from the micro-co*pact category and into the co*pact field, where it co*petes against the G19/G47 as well as Sig’s own P320 co*pact.
The XMacro Tacops boasts an impressive 17-round magazine capacity, despite its slender profile. Sig also built it with a three-slot accessory rail in front of the trigger guard and, as one would expect, the slide is cut to mount a red-dot optic.
The factory sights that co*e with the pistol are very good. They gave a crisp sight picture during our accuracy testing, but also included tritium inserts for use in low light.
The ergonomics of the P365 have garnered lots of praise over the years and the XMacro Tacops, by virtue of its extra grip length, is the most co*fy P365 to date. The grip geometry and design of the recoil system make it particularly soft shooting for a co*pact 9mm.
The mag well on the gun isn’t overly large but is flared enough so that the magazines seem to slide home of their own volition.
The only real element on the gun we’d like to see improved is the trigger. The 5-pound, 6-ounce break weight isn’t bad for a striker-fired carry gun, but it does have a lot of mush in the trigger pull. It didn’t hold us back from shooting the pistol well during our speed drills, but a crisper trigger would take what is undeniable a very good gun and make it even better.
For more on the XMacro Tacops, check out Tyler Freel’s in-depth review as well.
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Springfield Armory 1911 DS Prodigy Specs
The Springfield Armory 1911 DS is a beefy double-stack 9mm that does a great job putting lots of bullets on target quickly. It has 1911-style controls and a five-inch barrel, and co*es with two magazines: one that holds 17 rounds and another that holds 20.
In terms of pure handling the DS Prodigy earned some of the highest scores in the test and, for a co*petition-oriented gun, we also found it to be an outstanding value.
Aesthetically it isn’t as refined as other high-end double-stack 9s—it doesn’t have the same visual impact of the Dan Wesson DWX or a Staccato 2011 XC. But the more we shot the Prodigy the more we liked it.
The action is very smooth, the trigger crisp, and the bright-green fiber-optic front sight barely strays from the target under recoil allowing for fast, accurate fire. The Prodigy is also cut for optics, so after shooting it in stock trim for a couple days, we mounted a USO DRS 2.0 to its slide and continued to blaze away. With the red dot aboard we found the pistol even more biddable.
The grip on the Prodigy is noticeably thick—a necessary by-product to acco*modate its magazines and a frame/grip assembly that incorporates a 1911-type grip safety. But the texturing on the side panels and the crosshatch checkering on the backstrap offer a rock-solid hold on the gun.
The bottom of the trigger guard is undercut where it meets the grip and the portion of the grip where the middle finger of the trigger hand is smooth. This helps the shooter get a high hand position that is co*fortable to maintain. You can shoot the Prodigy all day long without undue fatigue.
The dust cover extends the full length of the slide and has five cross slots machined into it for mounting accessories. The slide has thick and deep cocking serrations cut at an angle fore and aft for easy manipulation. Together these two features really cement the Prodigy’s look and vibe as a no-nonsense shooter. Our full review of the Prodigy has more details you might find of interest.
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Shadow Systems DR920 L Specs
Shadow System’s business model is to take the most popular striker-fired pistol on the planet—the ubiquitous Glock—and make it better. Over the decades the Glock aftermarket industry has exploded as shooters have sought to address the shortco*ings (real or perceived) and monotonous sameness of the Austrian plastic wonderguns.
Shadow System does all that work for you with eye-catching upgrades that trim weight and improve handling, balance, and performance.
The DR920 L, which is new this year, is our favorite Shadow Systems pistol to date. It weighs the same (or less than) many co*pact 9mms but co*es with a 5.3-inch barrel that gives it a generous sight radius and the improved recoil management that a longer barrel brings.
The pronounced beavertail on the grip, the deep (and attractive) sculpting around the trigger guard, and the addition of fine-grained stippling all around the grip and on thumb-patches on the front of the frame all go a long way to improving the handling of the pistol.
Like all other Shadow Systems pistols, the fixed sights—that consist of the bold fiber optic/night front sight and basic, but good, rear sight from XS Sights—are a major improvement over the stock Glock offerings.
We scored this pistol very high for its design elements. The deep cuts made to the slide—including jaunty cocking serrations, an exposed port just in front of the chamber, and ratchet pattern machined into the slide’s top—give the DR920L a high-speed, low-drag look, though it might co*e across as too John Wick for some.
On the more practical side, the single-slot accessory rail and heavily-flared mag well are nice features too. The trigger on our sample was pretty good, with a fairly crisp break for pistols of this type.
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Glock G47 MOS Specs
The judges on the Outdoor Life gun test team have more experience with Glocks than any other type of handgun—many decades worth. We’ve carried them for self-defense, shot them in co*petition, hunted with them, and relied on them for protection in the backcountry from bears and other potentially aggressive critters.
So nothing about the new G47 caught us by surprise or radically altered our perception of the pioneer of polymer-framed striker-fired pistols.
The G47 MOS is another solid introduction by the co*pany. Probably the most significant thing about it is that it represents the phasing out of the Glock G17, the original pistol that started it all for this Austrian firearms co*pany.
We’ve written about the Glock G47 MOS at length, and have explained how it fits into the wider world of Glock pistols, but it was illuminating to shoot it in this year’s gun test against a field of other new handguns.
One thing we noted was that it was more accurate than other Glocks we tested. Its 1.633-inch 5-shot group average placed it in the top third of all the handguns we shot this year (I’m including the 1911s we’ll be reviewing in a separate story) and was the most accurate gun in its price class by a fair margin. That includes outshooting the Shadow System 920L, a Glock clone that—in theory—should be more accurate than a stock Glock offering.
Beyond that the G47 MOS shot like a Glock, pointed like a Glock, has the same uninspiring factory sights as other Glocks, and was as utterly reliable as a Glock.
The G47 MOS is optics-ready, of course, and has other nice Gen 5 features, including an ambidextrous slide release, no finger grooves on the grip, the captured recoil spring, the improved trigger module, reversible mag release, and the Glock Marksman barrel.
In terms of its specific construction, the G47 MOS is a full-sized pistol with a 4.49-inch barrel and slide cut to fit on G19 rails. In theory, this will allow you to create a long-slide G19 by running the G47 slide on a G19 frame.
While there’s nothing especially ground-breaking about the Glock G47 MOS, it helps keep the Glock platform up to date and relevant with the needs of modern shooters.
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