So, today my buddy and I took advantage of a holiday and headed to the local-ish range (a little over an hour for me, 40 minutes for him) to shoot some stuff we might be interested in. In my mind, I was going to confirm my NEED for a Staccato P, but they also had a number of other pistols I'm mildly interested in, so I figured shooting them all would help me confirm my need for the P. We shot the P, a P320 X-Five Legion, a CZ SP01, and a Walther PDP Compact, which had a Holosun 507 mounted.
The P was an enormous disappointment. Something about the grip shape, the way I hold a pistol, and the grip safety led me to "miss" activating it about 50% of the time. I couldn't even get a feel for accuracy, because unless I was totally concentrating on getting the meat of my thumb to hit the "speed bump" on the grip safety, I would have a pistol that wouldn't shoot. Very frustrating. My friend had similar issues, and we both are very experienced 1911 shooters - I guess it's just a geometry thing. Add to that when I could get it to shoot accuracy was "meh" at best (no better than my Springfield Range Officer), and the fact that the slide failed to lock back on empty more than 50% of the time, and I managed to save myself the $2K+ I was desperate to drop on the pistol.
The SP01 was a pleasant surprise. Felt very heavy in the hand, but very soft shooting and accurate. The trigger is nothing to write home about, but completely usable for a DA/SA. The grip, as expected, felt GREAT in my hand, and it was completely problem free in function.
The PDP was fairly impressive as well. Despite being the smallest/lightest of the group, I felt like it shot the flattest of the four. The trigger was better than the G19 striker I'm used to, but not scary light. If I wasn't invested in Glock's so heavily, and didn't know the various growing pains this pistol has shown to shooters on here, I'd be very interested in picking one up. If Walther figures out the mysteriously increasing trigger weight issue, I'd consider it a very viable G19 alternative to the eternal "what polymer striker should I buy."
The shock of the day for me was the Legion. I will freely admit that I am a Cohen-run Sig HATER. I despise what he did to the company, I hate the idea of giving them my money, and I'm concerned that the P320's design and QC are not up to snuff. Having said all that, the X-Five Legion shot circles around everything else we tried today. Both of us got the best accuracy out of this pistol, recoil was non-existent, and the fit/finish and feel of the pistol were all top notch. If that pistol were made by literally ANY other major manufacturer (except maybe Taurus), I'd have already ordered one.
This was an all-too-brief test drive of multiple pistols, but very eye opening for me. With the exception of the problem-plagued Staccato, all the pistols were very easy to pick up and shoot well with a lot less effort than shooting a Glock.
At the end of the day, I'm back to thinking my "fun range gun" will likely be a 9mm 1911 (single stack), but that Legion was VERY tempting...
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Originally Posted by Jim Watson
