I actually know a bunch of new shooters and they all want guns that look like this. all very wealthy young people (20s, 30s) who work in tech startups or big tech firms. They like the Slightly futuristic look, reminiscent of heavily modded guns that they are used to seeing in video games. Lots of features and a noticeable high price point of a "luxury" good. None have any interest in traditional "wood and blued steel" style guns or milsurps
Yup, kinda low rent, when I called Customer Service I asked about the tacky gold, the guy said, “bud that’s what people are asking for!” I mean really! Just build a capable gun that doesn’t have to be recalled, or beta tested. I bet next is the Phil Strader Rainbow Spectre edition. You watch!
How about an AXG framed 320 in between a P365 and sub compact P320!
Compensators on pistols...
Let's think about this for a minute. What does a compensator do? It vents gas in hopefully the opposite direction the muzzle will try to go to help reduce muzzle flip and perceived recoil.
...but when does this happen? When is a compensator actually performing that task? Generally in the milliseconds after the moment the bullet has left the barrel.
As the hot gas hits the cooler air and rapidly expands and the equal and opposite that results from the tight fitting bullet suddenly breaking free of the barrel happens, there's certainly a little bit of disruption to the alignment of the gun. This is where a compensator is doing work.
Trouble is that the gas pressure drops rapidly as the slide opens. The compensator is only compensating for a brief few milliseconds during the cycle of operations when the gas pressure is high. It's doing exponentially less work with each passing millisecond because the gas pressure that powers the ports in it is rapidly dissipating.
The shooter's perception of recoil and muzzle flip comes at the extreme opposite end of the process, namely when the slide hits its limit and stops moving to the rear. The mass of the slide moving to the rear and the way it is (or isn't) decelerating is going to have more impact on the way the gun handles recoil than the gas action of compensators. One of the good features of the later generation Glocks is the variable spring rate built into their RSA that decelerates the slide more "gracefully", for lack of a better term. As a consequence they have less felt recoil/muzzle flip and tend to "track flatter" for most shooters.
Of course, one useful thing a compensator does when there's no more gas pressure to work with is just hang out there on the end of the barrel acting as a counter-weight, which will help limit muzzle flip at the moment when a shooter does experience recoil...but that's not really doing compensator things.
The mass of the slide is also a significant factor in how recoil and muzzle flip are perceived. More mass moving = more force. A shorter, lighter slide sprung sensibly might very well run "flatter" than a longer, heavier one.
There's probably far more juice to squeeze from spring setup and slide weight than there is from compensators.
...but compensators are cool and everybody who grew up reading American Handgunner deep down really wants race gun stuff whether it makes completely rational sense or not.
A sorted package from the factory where you don't have to play with spring weights will likely sell very well.
I'm not sold on them for duty/carry use, though, because I really don't want hot jets of gas directed up toward my face if I'm using the gun in a retention position. (Which is more of a thing for some people based on their physiology than others...it's a thing for me as my right eye ends up about a foot from the muzzle when I'm at a #2) And I'm not sure that it's really doing much for performance.
On the P320 specifically, the weight they put in the grip of the competition models is already so effective that the gun runs stupid flat even if you have a shitty grip on the gun. (So much for bore axis) I don't know that the factory compensated model is going to be objectively better in that regard.
That's just me and my heresy.
3/15/2016
HD, yeah kind of. When the P250 first came out they a pair of subcompacts in the catalog that were actually smaller than what wound up actually being the subcompact, for some reason, that size never came to pass. I think a subcompact is missing from the 320 line, though I am aware that the x compact was the old subcompact slide!