Pistols

Springfield Armory has a long history of building 1911 pistols, and the DS Prodigy has many 1911 characteristics, such as the 1911 grip angle, thumb safety, grip safety, and sliding trigger.

Excellent grip and trigger, which makes the pistol easier to shoot well. Accuracy was exceptional. Recoil is very controllable in rapid fire, and the slide pulse is nice. The Trijicon is a benchmark for red-dot optics. We like the auto on, automatic illumination adjustment, and manual-adjust dot brightness.

We had a reader ask for a review of this SDS, and we are glad he asked. The SDS is made by Tisas in Turkey and looked like an M1911A1 fresh off the assembly line circa 1943. In the hard case were two steel magazines, an extra set of checkered plastic grips, bushing wrench, and cleaning rod and brush.

The Rock Island Armory wore a well-executed matte-black Parkerized finish and smooth wood grips. It takes design cues from both the M1911 and M1911A1 and is perhaps the most bastardized of the GI 1911 tested.

The Taylor’s gun had a nice Parkerized matte-black finish and checkered wood grips that felt slightly fat in hand.

When was the original M1911 adopted by the U.S. Military? As you might guess, the year was 1911, and the first model, the M1911,...

The grip is the story with the F-Series pistol, and we found the grip is nicely textured and offers an ideal balance of abrasion and adhesion.

The pistol is supplied with a hard-plastic case. Two backstraps, a standard and extended magazine, mounting plate for a red dot, Allen wrench, a manual, and a credible plastic holster are included.

Despite there being a bad shortage of 9mm handguns a couple of years ago, in 2023 many well-known brands are reasonably available and are...

The form of this pistol closely mimics that of a 1911 and, as such, the early versions have nice crisp edges on the slide and frame.

S&W engineers put some thought into the bottom end of the CSX. Instead of polymer used for the Shield frame, the CSX frame is made of aluminum alloy with a matte-black finish.

As tested with an additional magazine we bought separately and a Wilson Combat Slide Lock, the total comes to $614.