Price is an important consideration here, so let’s talk money first. HK only builds a few hundred of these new every year, and they come in two configurations, one with two 12-round magazines (as tested here) or with two 10-round magazines. We recently saw a Gunbroker.com auction for a new Mark 23 with a starting bid of $2250 or a “buy it now price” of $2350 and another auction for a factory-new Mark 23 with a starting bid of $2190 and a buy-it-now price of $2329, so that gives you some idea of what new-in-the-box Mark 23s will run you. We also saw a used Mark 23 auction with no reserve presenting a starting bid of $2050 on GunBroker, and in the completed auctions, we saw a new-in-box handgun sold for $1900 and a used HK M23 in a Gunbroker auction for $1700. Obviously, used guns are available, and depending on condition, we wouldn’t be afraid of buying one.
What you’re buying, of course, is a truck that looks like a handgun. The Mark 23 is 9.65 inches in overall length, 5.9 inches tall, 1.53 inches thick at its widest point, has a 5.87-inch-long barrel, and weighs 39.4 ounces unloaded with an empty magazine and 51 ounces topped off with ammo. Add a suppressor, and you’ve got a loaded weight of 62 ounces and a nearly 18-inch-long package to work around corners.
Our HK Mark 23 arrived in a black-plastic clamshell case with four 12-round magazines, instruction manual, pad lock, and extra O-rings. We spent quite a bit of time reading the manual, which may be the best we’ve ever seen in terms of explaining the Heckler & Koch Mark 23 pistol’s operating system. It uses a modified linkless Browning-style short-recoil system to lock and unlock the breech. Out front, according to HK, the captured recoil/buffer spring assembly reduces felt recoil by up to 40%. We don’t know about the percentage decrease, but the HK did show less muzzle rise than the others. Some of that is due to weight, of course, but we noted it was very easy to recover from each shot faster and get back on target. The gun is really smooth to operate but tight nonetheless, and apparently HK does that by machining parts to tight tolerances and then hand-fitting them. Also unique to the HK is an O-ring in a milled groove at the front of the barrel. This O-ring tightens the barrel’s fit inside the frame once the action locks up.
In the hand, the Mark 23 feels big, and for some of our testers, the grip is simply too much to hold well. The FNX’s grip size and shape were better choices for about half our shooters. Our female shooters liked the operational feedback from the handgun, but it tired them pretty quickly at the same time.
After an extensive break in and cleaning session, we saw glimmers of what the Mark 23 can do. It shot the best overall group average of the test, a suppressed 1.25 inches at 25 yards with the Prvi Partizan 185-grain semi-jacketed hollowpoints. It likewise shot the others well suppressed, 2.1 inches for the Fiocchi 200-grain JHPs and 2.6 inches for the Winchester 230-grain ball. The extra weight of the suppressor really tamed recoil and made cycling back onto targets smooth and easy. The 0.375-inch-wide grooved trigger shoe was stageable, with a long take up and a hard stop just before breaking the single-action shot. The DA pull was a hefty 11 pounds, but we shot all of our accuracy groups single action. The HK can be safely carried cocked and locked, but it lacks the 1911’s beavertail safety.
Our Team Said: The HK Mark 23 is a fantastic handgun. If you can afford one, you will not regret buying it and neither will your children or your children’s children.
