I picked up an FNS 9mm almost two weeks ago. As some of you know, I had started shooting a carrying a G19 for a while because of classes I was teaching to Glock Agencies. A friend of mind suggested that I take a look at the FNS9 as it would be comparable to a G19 but with a manual safety, which makes it a little more AIWB friendly.
I got an all black, 4 inch version with night sights and manual safety. They make the gun without the safety for those that are so inclined.
First range trip was just to check the zero and see where the sights hit. I have to say that I was very impressed with the accuracy of the gun as well as the point of impact. The sights were not only dead on, the gun shot a 2" group at 20 yards with no sweat. It also had no issue digesting my carry ammo along with a few hundred more rounds of my full power reloads.
Recoil impulse is on par with a G19, maybe just a hair snappier. I would say that is due to what feels like a very heavy recoil spring. I would guess that it is quite a bit more recoil spring that it needs to be, but then I would expect that it has been calibrated to run with full power +p+ loads like WCC NATO 9mm. I am considering playing around with the recoil spring weight a little to see how that impacts recoil impulse. I did not want to do that until I had finished the 2000 round test.
The trigger has quite a different feel to it that other striker fired guns I have used. From inspection it appears that the pre travel in the trigger is moving the striker the whole time and then the trigger seem to come to a very noticeable break point. So more striker movement than a Glock for sure. The M&P and the XD are both basically fully cocked striker systems, so no comparison there at all. The interesting thing is that the reset on the trigger is fairly short for a stock striker fired gun even though it has all that pre travel in the trigger. Basically the sear cocks the striker and then rotates down to release the striker at the end of the trigger pull. When the gun fires and the slide cycles, the sear pops back up very much like an M&P, except that it moves back and forth with the trigger bar system. It is a very interesting trigger system and a different approach for sure. It gives a nice prep point if you will, but then has a rolling break, a very unique feel for sure.
The mag well on the gun is almost like a competition gun and one of the fastest reloading guns I have ever used. I was able to do some sub 1 second reloads with this gun and that is something that has been very elusive for me with other guns.
The mag button was also very easy for me to use and with my large hands I did not have to change my grip at all to drop a magazine. It is a push button type and fully ambidextrous, so one could chose to use the thumb or trigger finger without switching anything.
The slide stop is also ambidextrous, but it is clear that they designed it as a slide lock and not a slide release. While I was able to use it as a slide release for emergency reloads, it is harder than most guns that I have been using and I could see that some may really have and issue here. If you are a person that manually releases the slide by racking it, then no issues here at all.
The night sights that come with the gun are not bad at all. FN was smart enough to only put the white ring on the front sight and leave the rear sight with just plain inserts. This worked quite well for me as I was able to paint the white ring orange, like I do on almost all of my guns, and have a sight picture that I am fairly used to.
The rear sight is a U notch configuration and I do like that. As I said, for stock sights they are pretty darn good.
Now, they did put serrations on the rear sight and left the front sight plain, I would switch that around for sure. The other issue I have is the rear sight is a sloped design, think Novak's, so using the rear sight to clear malfunctions is not a good option. Given the heavy recoil spring, doing one handed malfunction drills is a challenge I can assure you.
More in the next post.