Originally Posted by
richiecotite
Picked up my AP5 and AP5-P yesterday. Got em home, disassembled (really really simple) lubed up all the metal parts and pieces and took it out this morning. Mags were the 2 30 round MKE mags that came with the guns. I put the included brace on the AP5, but not the P mode due to reported/potential issues with SB brace. When I ordered it, the idea was no brace and a simple sling to keep the footprint as small as possible.
I had 450 rounds of ammo with me; 5 boxes of 124 gr federal, 1 box of win 9mm nato, 1 box of 124 standard pressure HST, and 100 rounds of my 124 gr coated round nose reloads (5.0 gr of WSF, solid middle of the road plinking load)
The Bad:
-HST didn’t really work. It flat out would not feed in the P, and I’d only get through 2-3 rounds with the standard version. I tried the hollow points after 150 rounds of ball through each gun.
-The P’s handguard got really hot near the chamber. Like, after 75 rounds it was almost too hot to hold with my support hand. In its defense, I was straight blasting ammo as fast as I could, so it was seeing basically 60 round strings of fire in about 2-3 minutes.
The Good:
AP5 - No problems at all with the larger version and ball ammo. I fired a total of 221 rounds through the larger one and discounting the 21 rounds of HST, it had no failures or bobbles. I didn’t really test accuracy since I was really just testing reliability, but at 20 yards I could keep all 30 inside the large circle of a FAST target, shooting around .5 second splits. Recoil is soft and smooth without much muzzle movement. The diopter sights were fine, as was the brace and shooting with it, don’t know why the brace gets so much hate online.
AP5 P - Fired a total of 200 rounds and had 1 FTF the second magazine, around round 50, with federal ball ammo. After that, no issues shooting ball ammo. Like I mentioned above, it just would not feed 124 HST. I could keep all 30 @ 10 yards inside the black of a B8 shooting around .5 splits. Gun was a bit jumpier than the bigger version, and it didn’t have a brace either.
The triggers on both were better than I thought (I figured they were gonna be terrible) and totally fine and serviceable IMO. The MKE magazines worked fine too. I think my next move is to order more 30 round MKE mags and a few KCI 20’s to test out as I think 20’s are the perfect size for the P sans brace, in a bag.
Planning on shooting it again tomorrow with some factory 115 gr ammo and some more handloads. Overall, I’m very pleased with these guns. I was planning on shooting both and getting rid of the one I like the least; right now I’m leaning towards keeping both, assuming they keep working. If I could only have pick one, I’d probably go full size, just because it’s easier to shoot and fed HP’s slightly less terrible.