Tweet
P22 Range Report
Stock image:
I recently bought a used S&W/Walther P22-CA and took it out for a quick test at the range when I picked it up.
The gun feels great in the hand - just like a miniature 9mm. The design is a bit quirky - I don't know what the engineers were thinking, but it feels like a committee designed gun. I haven't had the wife and kids shoot it yet, but I'm hoping they'll like it for its size (that's one reason I got it), once I get it working reliably. The loaded weight is about 18 oz.
The safety is the first oddity. It raises a bar to stop the hammer from hitting the firing pin, and blocks the pin as well. With the safety on, pulling the trigger drops the hammer normally, in either SA or DA mode, and it acts like it's got an empty chamber. This could be good for dry-firing practice, as there's no wear on the FP or chamber, but since the gun has a tendency to fail to feed rounds from the mag, it's not obvious when the safety has walked on (which it also has a tendency to do). Several times, it was only when I cycled out a fresh round, expecting an empty chamber, that I realized the safety had walked on.
There's also a magazine safety - with the mag removed, the trigger won't pull, and the hammer won't drop. As a result, there's no way to decock the gun with the mag out - it has to be re-inserted to drop the hammer. According to reports, removing the mag safety improves the trigger pull, but I haven't tried it yet.
The mag release is ambidextrous and is part of the trigger guard, which takes some getting used to for me, but it works pretty well. Held free, the magazine springs out of the well and drops free on release, but with my hands, a regular grip keeps the mag from dropping loose or free, as my hand rests against the bottom of the mag. Releasing the mag requires shifting the grip a good bit for me, but it should be good for smaller hands.
The trigger is SA/DA. You can cock the hammer for the first shot, or leave it down, and you can second-strike a dud round with another pull of the trigger. The trigger in DA mode isn't too bad - a bit heavy (4.8 lbs per Walther) with a little takeup, but decent. The SA trigger is terrible. It starts out OK, but as you go through the pull, it stacks something awful, with the last bit of trigger pull requiring a lot of pressure. DA accuracy suffers quite a bit as a result. Walther rates it at 12.3 lbs, and it feels it.
The 3 dot sights are good - clear and easy to line up. The gun comes with extra front sights for elevation adjustments and windage-adjustable rear sights. This gun was already pretty well sighted in.
It also comes with a replaceable backstrap for a different grip contour, which I haven't tried yet. Replacing it requires using a punch on a roll pin.
The slide is made of zinc. Yep, that's the fabled material of Jennings and Ravens. I'm not completely happy with that, but it's one reason the gun is inexpensive. Mine already has some damage from the trigger bar ears, which is common on these guns. There have been some reports of cracked slides.
Reliability and accuracy results were not so great. I shot about 60 CCI MiniMags, 20 PMC Zappers, and 40 Federal Game-Shock.
On many of the mags, the first round would stovepipe on extraction. With the MiniMags and Federals, there were about 2 failures to feed per mag - not jams, just the slide closing on an empty chamber. Cycling the slide by hand loaded up another round. The Zappers were better, with no problems, but I had grabbed a partly empty box, so didn't get to put a lot through.
I had one failure to fire, which fired OK on the second strike. It failed to lock back on an empty mag several times. I tried 2 of the 3 mags I had with the same results. When I got it home, I felt a good bit of drag and roughness as it went through the last inche of slide travel, and this may have been responsible for many of the problems, like failing to lock back and failing to feed the next round.
Ejected brass flew all over the place - against the wall, against the ceiling, in my pocket, down my shirt. The firing pin made a solid, repeatable strike, with a deep rectangular impression that was mostly reliable on the ammo I used.
My best groups were 3 inches at 10 yards, which is not so hot, but I'll give it some more chances with different ammo before pronouncing judgement there. The FTFs and jams were distracting, which isn't good for small groups.
UPDATE: On the second outing, I had much better results - we put 50 Remington HV, 50 MiniMags, and 50 PMC Zappers through it with no problems except for a few duds. One MiniMag failed to feed the next round, but I could tell by the recoil that it was an underpowered round, so that one doesn't count. I'm feeling much better about this!
Most of the problems I had have fixes identified. A good resource for more info on the P22 is the Walther forum at RimfireCentral - http://www.rimfirecentral.com/forums...splay.php?f=48. There's also a P22 Bible, by one of RFC's experts, that goes through a detailed takedown (the Walther manual covers it in one short paragraph) and documents a number of the fixes for the common problems - http://www.freespeech.com/1917-1911M_P22_bible.pdf. This is highly recommended if you have a P22.
I really want to like this gun. I'm hoping after I do the fluff'n'buff it'll be more reliable and I can get a better feel for it. Walther should be ashamed of themselves, though. This is the kind of thing you have to do with a Keltec pistol, not a Walther.
Neos Mini Range Report
Stock image:
While I was picking up the P22, I rented a Beretta Neos U22 6" in stainless, which was even worse than the P22! Rental guns are always risky, but the Neos seems to have a design problem with the firing pin delivering a solid hit on the round's rim.
The Neos is a very sleek and spacy design, and is a good bit larger and heavier than the P22. It's got a built-in Weaver rail/sight on the top (which was loose on my rental), and the mag release is a pushbutton pretty far forward on the right hand side that you have to hit with your trigger finger. The mags drop free.
There's no mag lock, and the safety stops the trigger from pulling and the striker from dropping. When the safety's on, the safety lever dug into the top of my hand slightly. While slightly annoying, it was clear when I picked it up if the safety was on or off.
I shot about 30 MiniMags and 60 Federal Game-Shock (this was the range ammo that came with the gun). The Federals did well if 7 out of 10 rounds fired. The MiniMags did a bit better, but not much. I'd often have half the mag go unfired. Feeding it through again would have the same results - half the rounds would fire. The ones that wouldn't fire were fine in the P22. One of the problems with the Neos design is that resetting the striker requires pulling the slide all the way back and ejecting the round. You can't pull it back a short distance to reset the striker, like you can with many other striker-fired designs.
When I inspected the misfired rounds, it was obvious the firing pin wasn't striking fully on the rim. I'd have some rounds with 3 strikes on them, ranging from tiny little pinches at the edge to a solid round strike that finally touched it off. Since it's a rental, I couldn't check it out too closely, but it appeared the FP was wandering around in its channel.
I'm not going to form a Neos opinion based on this one gun, but this one will take some more research before buying one.
Stock image:
I recently bought a used S&W/Walther P22-CA and took it out for a quick test at the range when I picked it up.
The gun feels great in the hand - just like a miniature 9mm. The design is a bit quirky - I don't know what the engineers were thinking, but it feels like a committee designed gun. I haven't had the wife and kids shoot it yet, but I'm hoping they'll like it for its size (that's one reason I got it), once I get it working reliably. The loaded weight is about 18 oz.
The safety is the first oddity. It raises a bar to stop the hammer from hitting the firing pin, and blocks the pin as well. With the safety on, pulling the trigger drops the hammer normally, in either SA or DA mode, and it acts like it's got an empty chamber. This could be good for dry-firing practice, as there's no wear on the FP or chamber, but since the gun has a tendency to fail to feed rounds from the mag, it's not obvious when the safety has walked on (which it also has a tendency to do). Several times, it was only when I cycled out a fresh round, expecting an empty chamber, that I realized the safety had walked on.
There's also a magazine safety - with the mag removed, the trigger won't pull, and the hammer won't drop. As a result, there's no way to decock the gun with the mag out - it has to be re-inserted to drop the hammer. According to reports, removing the mag safety improves the trigger pull, but I haven't tried it yet.
The mag release is ambidextrous and is part of the trigger guard, which takes some getting used to for me, but it works pretty well. Held free, the magazine springs out of the well and drops free on release, but with my hands, a regular grip keeps the mag from dropping loose or free, as my hand rests against the bottom of the mag. Releasing the mag requires shifting the grip a good bit for me, but it should be good for smaller hands.
The trigger is SA/DA. You can cock the hammer for the first shot, or leave it down, and you can second-strike a dud round with another pull of the trigger. The trigger in DA mode isn't too bad - a bit heavy (4.8 lbs per Walther) with a little takeup, but decent. The SA trigger is terrible. It starts out OK, but as you go through the pull, it stacks something awful, with the last bit of trigger pull requiring a lot of pressure. DA accuracy suffers quite a bit as a result. Walther rates it at 12.3 lbs, and it feels it.
The 3 dot sights are good - clear and easy to line up. The gun comes with extra front sights for elevation adjustments and windage-adjustable rear sights. This gun was already pretty well sighted in.
It also comes with a replaceable backstrap for a different grip contour, which I haven't tried yet. Replacing it requires using a punch on a roll pin.
The slide is made of zinc. Yep, that's the fabled material of Jennings and Ravens. I'm not completely happy with that, but it's one reason the gun is inexpensive. Mine already has some damage from the trigger bar ears, which is common on these guns. There have been some reports of cracked slides.
Reliability and accuracy results were not so great. I shot about 60 CCI MiniMags, 20 PMC Zappers, and 40 Federal Game-Shock.
On many of the mags, the first round would stovepipe on extraction. With the MiniMags and Federals, there were about 2 failures to feed per mag - not jams, just the slide closing on an empty chamber. Cycling the slide by hand loaded up another round. The Zappers were better, with no problems, but I had grabbed a partly empty box, so didn't get to put a lot through.
I had one failure to fire, which fired OK on the second strike. It failed to lock back on an empty mag several times. I tried 2 of the 3 mags I had with the same results. When I got it home, I felt a good bit of drag and roughness as it went through the last inche of slide travel, and this may have been responsible for many of the problems, like failing to lock back and failing to feed the next round.
Ejected brass flew all over the place - against the wall, against the ceiling, in my pocket, down my shirt. The firing pin made a solid, repeatable strike, with a deep rectangular impression that was mostly reliable on the ammo I used.
My best groups were 3 inches at 10 yards, which is not so hot, but I'll give it some more chances with different ammo before pronouncing judgement there. The FTFs and jams were distracting, which isn't good for small groups.
UPDATE: On the second outing, I had much better results - we put 50 Remington HV, 50 MiniMags, and 50 PMC Zappers through it with no problems except for a few duds. One MiniMag failed to feed the next round, but I could tell by the recoil that it was an underpowered round, so that one doesn't count. I'm feeling much better about this!
Most of the problems I had have fixes identified. A good resource for more info on the P22 is the Walther forum at RimfireCentral - http://www.rimfirecentral.com/forums...splay.php?f=48. There's also a P22 Bible, by one of RFC's experts, that goes through a detailed takedown (the Walther manual covers it in one short paragraph) and documents a number of the fixes for the common problems - http://www.freespeech.com/1917-1911M_P22_bible.pdf. This is highly recommended if you have a P22.
I really want to like this gun. I'm hoping after I do the fluff'n'buff it'll be more reliable and I can get a better feel for it. Walther should be ashamed of themselves, though. This is the kind of thing you have to do with a Keltec pistol, not a Walther.
Neos Mini Range Report
Stock image:
While I was picking up the P22, I rented a Beretta Neos U22 6" in stainless, which was even worse than the P22! Rental guns are always risky, but the Neos seems to have a design problem with the firing pin delivering a solid hit on the round's rim.
The Neos is a very sleek and spacy design, and is a good bit larger and heavier than the P22. It's got a built-in Weaver rail/sight on the top (which was loose on my rental), and the mag release is a pushbutton pretty far forward on the right hand side that you have to hit with your trigger finger. The mags drop free.
There's no mag lock, and the safety stops the trigger from pulling and the striker from dropping. When the safety's on, the safety lever dug into the top of my hand slightly. While slightly annoying, it was clear when I picked it up if the safety was on or off.
I shot about 30 MiniMags and 60 Federal Game-Shock (this was the range ammo that came with the gun). The Federals did well if 7 out of 10 rounds fired. The MiniMags did a bit better, but not much. I'd often have half the mag go unfired. Feeding it through again would have the same results - half the rounds would fire. The ones that wouldn't fire were fine in the P22. One of the problems with the Neos design is that resetting the striker requires pulling the slide all the way back and ejecting the round. You can't pull it back a short distance to reset the striker, like you can with many other striker-fired designs.
When I inspected the misfired rounds, it was obvious the firing pin wasn't striking fully on the rim. I'd have some rounds with 3 strikes on them, ranging from tiny little pinches at the edge to a solid round strike that finally touched it off. Since it's a rental, I couldn't check it out too closely, but it appeared the FP was wandering around in its channel.
I'm not going to form a Neos opinion based on this one gun, but this one will take some more research before buying one.
. One thing that I marvel at about the Neos is how perfectly balanced it is. (Mine is setup with the 6" barrel and a Bushnell red dot on top.)
. I've also found that the ammo my Neos loves is the CCI Blazer.
Comment