Springfield Armory Model Xd45 40 Mod 2 Reviews
October 19, 2016
There is a abiding struggle between capacity and comfort when it comes to concealed carry.
We all desire something easy to carry, but many of us desire more than protection than what the most comfortable handgun can provide, at least when it comes to caliber and capacity. That's where the high-cap shorties come up in. You know, the double-stack pistols that take had the frame shortened to make them less likely to print through a shirt or jacket.
Every time I shoot 1 of the stubby compacts, I tin can't help merely call back of Joe Pesci in "Goodfellas." ("You lot remember I'grand funny? Exercise I charm you?")
I hateful, merely how are you lot supposed to agree on to these things? I think we've all established that I'm — in some aspects — not a 21st century guy. My cell phone is too primitive to know what an app is, and the frame of a single-stack pistol is the right, comfortable and proper design.
Except, those stubby compacts hold more bullets when the grip gets short. So it is with the latest Springfield Armory XD, the Modern.two Sub-Compact. First introduced in 9mm and .xl, hither we have the next obvious step.
Starting with the previous version of the XD Sub-Compact, Springfield fussed over pretty much everything. To kickoff, the Mod.two has a 3.3-inch barrel in .45 ACP, which holds ix rounds in the stubby magazine. A supplied full-size magazine carries 13.
The 9mm and .twoscore versions take 3-inch barrels, but the rest of the dimensions are unchanged with this new model. Springfield resculpted the slide to make it slimmer for ease of carry. Even while it was made slimmer, the shape of the cocking serrations were changed to give you more tactile grip at the back of the slide.
The Posi-wedge grooves are cut into the slide at the bottom of the cocking serrations recessed panel. Not just do you have the grippy serrations, they are in a shallow pocket that increases the corporeality of gripping area your manus experiences.
On top of the slide, Springfield Armory added a fiber-optic front sight and a low-profile, no-snag extended rear sight wearing a pair of white dots on it. The lesser rear edge of the rear sight curves downwards to follow the curve of the slide to offer your middle a cleaner transition to the sight blade and less of a gap to grab your center between slide and sight.
The frame has likewise been worked over. The outset thing to find is that information technology'due south slimmer. By etching abroad all the backlog polymer (not that there was much there to brainstorm with), Springfield made the grip thinner and easier to grasp. It also lifted the beavertail to get your manus higher on the frame and raised the frontstrap at the triggerguard to get that finger higher as well. Lifting the frontstrap is a feature that people oftentimes pay a custom gunsmith some coin to do to their 1911s. Springfield makes it a standard characteristic on the Modernistic.2 XD.
As i more aspect of the "making it slimmer" features listing of the XD Mod.two Sub-Compact, Springfield shaved the disassembly lever to make it less of an impediment in your holster.
The changes don't stop there (one wonders what is in the water in Geneseo). The company inverse the texture of the gripping area of the frame. Called "GripZone," at commencement I thought it was a footstep too far. How do you improve a grippy, nonslip frame? Springfield looked at the frame as a surface you grasped not evenly or with the same parts of your hand. Afterwards all, if your fingers on the front are doing one affair and the heel of your mitt another, should they have the same texture to perform dissimilar tasks?
Finally, after much testing and give-and-take, the GripZone was divided into 3 areas, Zones 1, 2 and 3. Zone one is a medium-aggressive nonslip texture to give yous an anti-slip surface without making it feel like you're holding onto a squirming block of coarse sandpaper.
You don't demand the maximum nonslip everywhere. Zone 2 is the max-traction area, and Springfield fabricated it as ambitious every bit it could without it rasping your hand. Where you need the maximum grip is where the Zone two texture is laid. Zone iii is everywhere else, where a nonslip surface would be nice but your hand — sometimes in the draws, sometimes in transitions — might need to be able to slide a fleck to adjust and accommodate.
The terminate result is a grip frame that grabs y'all where y'all need information technology to, doesn't feel like it's trying to shred your hand and lets go when you lot do. This is all proficient. I think going through Gunsite back in the onetime days with various pistols that had too-precipitous checkering and virtually shedding a tear each nighttime as I knocked the newly found sharp edges off the frame with a file.
Hither's a pistol you can exercise hard with and not take your hand be a mass of bandages and tape at the terminate of the day.
What Springfield didn't modify were the aspects of the XD that information technology had already perfected awhile back. The pistol still has the grip safety on the back of the frame, one that doesn't need an actress speed bump like many 1911s to make certain your hand properly engages it on the describe.
The Mod.two likewise has an accessory rail on the front end of the frame to park a light, laser or combo unit. The magazine take hold of is ambidextrous, and then there is no need to swap it to i side or the other. The magazines are unchanged, so if you lot have a supply of XD mags in the right quotient, they will piece of work in the Mod.2.
The slide is still forged, stainless, heat-treated and Melonite-treated for the utmost in durability. Information technology has the aforementioned The states (Ultra Safety Balls) trigger that XDs take had all along to make information technology easy to apply and however safe.
The cease result for those looking for a daily-carry gun is that information technology is compact, yet easy to shoot. The barrel is under iii½ inches, and the slide is brusk to match. The grip is short to make it more comfortable to deport and easier to conceal, with the regular (that is, subcompact) magazine bringing the height upwardly to 4¾ inches.
Mine came in the now-usual Springfield Armory hardcase, complete with holster and magazine carrier, and when I shifted the paperwork around, I found a regular magazine also as one with an extra sleeve on it at the bottom, chosen the X-tension.
The X-tension magazine is 3-quarters of an inch longer, and the sleeve at the bottom matches the contour and texture of the GripZone. The actress tube length adds chapters, and the X-tension adds grip area. Hallelujah, brothers and sisters.
The regular short mag is so short that in recoil, my last finger slips off the frame, Zones notwithstanding. (This was truthful at least in the .45 ACP version. The recoil of the 9mm is soft enough that my finger would probably stay, but nosotros all know what caliber I'd opt for and which i I tested.) The longer magazine adds enough length that my last finger stays with the team and keeps the gun from rising as much in recoil.
The chapters wars were settled a long time agone, and we at present have a pretty good thought of how many rounds any size pistol will hold in any caliber, which makes the XD Mod.2 then surprising. In its compact size with the regular magazine, it holds 13 rounds of 9mm, nine of .40 and nine of .45 ACP. The regular magazine (extended, if yous view the Sub-Compact size as the regular size) holds 16 rounds of 9mm, 12 of .twoscore and thirteen of .45 ACP.
Wait, what did I say? It holds more than rounds of .45 than information technology does of .40? How can this exist? Simple: Double-stack magazines can be made either with flat sidewalls or dimpled, ridged sidewalls. The internal width needed is adamant by the bore of the case.
The exterior is adamant by the frame size and the starting width of the tube you use equally the magazine. Information technology just and then happens that the proportions work out in favor of the .45 this time instead of the usual .40.
With its weight of 26 ounces empty, you'd look the XD Modern.2 to be pretty stout in recoil with .45 ACP ammo. The recoil is noticeable just not in the style you lot'd wait. The width of the frame, the GripZone, distributes felt recoil evenly and widely in your hand, so the smack isn't that bad.
What you notice is muzzle rising. The front sight rises up apace and quite a means, but information technology snaps back down just as fast. Fifty-fifty the hottest loads were not that sharp in recoil, just coming up a bit more than the average ones did.
I was a bit surprised, pleasantly so, by the velocities I plant in the chrono testing. Y'all'd expect a barrel that curt (3.3 inches hither) to exist spitting out bullets at tedious speeds, especially in the expressionless of wintertime. The ammo companies have been doing their part, and Springfield sure doesn't make ho-hum barrels, considering the stubby tube on the Modernistic.2 Sub-Compact gave faster-than-expected velocities for the loads tested.
One aspect of a compact, or subcompact, pistol that a lot of shooters don't pay plenty attention to is accuracy. It'due south not that the pistol can't exist authentic; information technology can. Locked into a machine residue, whatever of them is more accurate than 99 pct of the shooters shooting them. If y'all look to get as much applied accuracy out of a subcompact as you do from your total-size pistol — XD or other — then, boy, do I take a bridge to sell yous.
You run into, it only isn't possible. The sight radius is the primary culprit here, with the sights ii inches closer together on the subcompact — Modern.ii or other — than they would be on a full-size XD. This may not seem like much, but the difference in sight radius is meaning. The .45 subcompact has a radius that is well-nigh three-quarters equally long as it is on the full-size XD.
The 9mm and .twoscore have an even greater difference — but under three-quarters of that of the full-size gun. That is a big difference, and while you can overcome it with practice, it will still be an obstruction.
That said, the groups I shot with the XD Modernistic.2 Sub-Meaty were very skillful indeed. My personal benchmark with a carry gun is whether I tin shoot groups that appear on the target to be smaller in diameter than the apparent width of the front sight. With the Mod.two, this was no problem. I had a adventure to try some new ammo from Polycase, and information technology shot very well for being out-of-the-box ammo. The bullets counterbalance 114 grains and are soft to shoot.
With the Mod.2 as a carry gun, Springfield Armory has done the seemingly impossible. It has made its already-meaty, easy-to-behave XD fifty-fifty more meaty, slimmer and easier to shoot, and it hasn't given up annihilation for information technology. The remaining question is what magazine to bear in it.
The glib answer would exist to carry it holstered with the brusque magazine and have the actress X-tension-equipped magazine as the spare. What I've found through years of deport is that the slide and barrel are the hardest part to live with, not necessarily to conceal but to exist comfortable with.
A too-long slide or barrel levers off of my hip, and the top end of the pistol slide or hammer digs into my kidney. I can utilise a holster that tucks the grips in tight to my trunk, but I can't change the results of years of weightlifting and martial arts.
For me, the Mod.two Sub-Meaty conduct combo would be uncomplicated. I'd go another regular-length magazine, maybe not fifty-fifty carp with an X-tension (I'd practise and run across if it made any departure in reload times) and pack the Modernistic.2 with both.
I'd bear the pistol with the X-tension magazine in information technology and accept the spare on the other side. That would give me 13+one in the pistol and another 13 in the spare. That'due south 27 rounds of .45 ACP, which is more than a loaded 1911 and two spares would have.
One of these days, my checkbook is going to burst into flames, and Springfield will be the reason why. The XD Mod.ii Sub-Compact? Information technology will be a large seller until the guys at Springfield just can't assistance themselves and discover means to raise it even more.
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Source: https://www.gunsandammo.com/editorial/springfield-armory-xd-mod-2-sub-compact-review/248351
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