Like a lot of people, increased work from home last year made me a bit lazier when it came to carrying a "real" pistol. I started off with a G48, but, trying to live my best dot life, I picked up a P365 XL and 43X MOS. Both are pretty awesome little pistols (I even just bought a $315 grip module because of some good old fashioned p-f enabling). They're better shooters than I ever thought a 9mm of this size could be, but the shooting performance difference between this size of pistol and a G19 is still quite substantial.
After shooting these little pistols almost exclusively, I recently started shooting USPSA again with a G19/H407 in Carry Optics. The performance difference is stark. I actually thought my gun was broken on my first shot/first stage this weekend because of how slow I perceived the slide moving in comparison the the P365XL or 43x.
But, oddly I notice almost no performance increase by shooting a pistol larger than a G19. For example, my average classifier performance is about 80-100% with the 19, and effectively the same when shooting bigger pistols. I'd be lucky to break 75% on a classifier with one of the smaller pistols, and the disaster factor is way higher.
Shooting with a dot obviously impacts this since sight radius doesn't matter.
Moving the other direction, down to a P365 or G43, I again notice a huge difference compared to the 43x or XL. So much so that I really have no interest in those pistols.
Practically speaking, I guess this means I should really be carrying the 19 since I have no real need for the smaller guns. (My work is pretty gun friendly ). I also find claims that a G48/43x with the Shield Arms mags makes a G19 obsolete to be very wrong. If you only value capacity and size, maybe, but there are very real tradeoffs in shooting performance.
Maybe I just suck at shooting skinny-gripped pistols, or maybe the Boresight Razorback grip module will be magic on the P365XL (it should be for the price). I do feel like the P365XL has more potential than the 43x, but the tiny grip is currently holding it back for me. My 43x has all the worst attributes in the Glock trigger lottery (stacking, excessive over-travel and a very defined wall), so that's probably not helping in the performance comparison.
Do others also notice the super steep performance curve with a near plateau at the point of diminishing returns when it comes to pistol size?