Xd Mod 2 45 Subcompact Trigger Upgrade Review
Oct 19, 2016
In that location is a constant struggle between capacity and comfort when information technology comes to concealed carry.
We all want something like shooting fish in a barrel to carry, just many of us want more protection than what the virtually comfortable handgun can provide, at least when it comes to caliber and capacity. That's where the high-cap shorties come in. You know, the double-stack pistols that have had the frame shortened to brand them less likely to print through a shirt or jacket.
Every time I shoot one of the stubby compacts, I tin can't assistance only think of Joe Pesci in "Goodfellas." ("You think I'm funny? Do I amuse you?")
I mean, just how are you supposed to concur on to these things? I think we've all established that I'thousand — in some aspects — not a 21st century guy. My jail cell phone is too primitive to know what an app is, and the frame of a single-stack pistol is the correct, comfortable and proper blueprint.
Except, those chubby compacts hold more bullets when the grip gets curt. So it is with the latest Springfield Arsenal XD, the Mod.2 Sub-Compact. First introduced in 9mm and .forty, here we have the next obvious step.
Starting with the previous version of the XD Sub-Compact, Springfield fussed over pretty much everything. To start, the Modern.ii has a 3.3-inch butt in .45 ACP, which holds 9 rounds in the stubby magazine. A supplied total-size magazine carries 13.
The 9mm and .forty versions have iii-inch barrels, simply 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 information technology 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 only do you have the grippy serrations, they are in a shallow pocket that increases the amount of gripping area your hand experiences.
On top of the slide, Springfield Armory added a fiber-optic front sight and a low-contour, no-snag extended rear sight wearing a pair of white dots on it. The bottom rear edge of the rear sight curves down to follow the curve of the slide to offering your centre a cleaner transition to the sight bract and less of a gap to take hold of your eye between slide and sight.
The frame has likewise been worked over. The first matter to notice is that information technology's slimmer. By etching away all the backlog polymer (not that there was much in that location to begin with), Springfield made the grip thinner and easier to grasp. It also lifted the beavertail to go your hand 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 often pay a custom gunsmith some coin to practice to their 1911s. Springfield makes information technology a standard feature on the Mod.2 XD.
As 1 more than aspect of the "making information technology slimmer" features list of the XD Mod.2 Sub-Compact, Springfield shaved the disassembly lever to make it less of an impediment in your holster.
The changes don't stop in that location (ane wonders what is in the h2o in Geneseo). The visitor changed the texture of the gripping area of the frame. Called "GripZone," at commencement I idea information technology was a footstep too far. How do yous meliorate a grippy, nonslip frame? Springfield looked at the frame as a surface you grasped not evenly or with the same parts of your mitt. After all, if your fingers on the forepart are doing one thing and the heel of your hand another, should they have the same texture to perform different tasks?
Finally, afterward much testing and discussion, the GripZone was divided into three areas, Zones ane, 2 and 3. Zone ane is a medium-aggressive nonslip texture to give you an anti-slip surface without making information technology feel like you lot're holding onto a squirming block of coarse sandpaper.
You don't demand the maximum nonslip everywhere. Zone ii is the max-traction surface area, and Springfield fabricated it every bit aggressive as it could without information technology rasping your manus. Where you need the maximum grip is where the Zone ii texture is laid. Zone 3 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 bit to suit and adjust.
The end issue is a grip frame that grabs you where you demand it to, doesn't feel like it's trying to shred your hand and lets become when you do. This is all proficient. I remember going through Gunsite back in the former days with various pistols that had too-precipitous checkering and near shedding a tear each night as I knocked the newly found sharp edges off the frame with a file.
Hither'south a pistol you lot can practise hard with and non take your hand be a mass of bandages and tape at the end of the day.
What Springfield didn't modify were the aspects of the XD that it had already perfected awhile dorsum. The pistol all the same has the grip safety on the back of the frame, i that doesn't need an extra speed bump like many 1911s to make sure your hand properly engages information technology on the describe.
The Modern.ii also has an accessory rail on the front of the frame to park a low-cal, laser or combo unit. The magazine grab is ambidextrous, so there is no need to swap information technology to ane side or the other. The magazines are unchanged, so if you have a supply of XD mags in the correct caliber, they will work in the Mod.ii.
The slide is still forged, stainless, heat-treated and Melonite-treated for the utmost in durability. It has the aforementioned USA (Ultra Safety Balls) trigger that XDs take had all along to brand it easy to utilize and still safe.
The end 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 curt to match. The grip is curt to make information technology more than comfy to carry and easier to muffle, with the regular (that is, subcompact) mag bringing the height upwardly to 4¾ inches.
Mine came in the at present-usual Springfield Armory hardcase, consummate with holster and magazine carrier, and when I shifted the paperwork around, I constitute a regular magazine too as one with an actress sleeve on it at the bottom, called the X-tension.
The X-tension magazine is 3-quarters of an inch longer, and the sleeve at the lesser matches the contour and texture of the GripZone. The extra tube length adds capacity, and the X-tension adds grip expanse. Hallelujah, brothers and sisters.
The regular short mag is and then brusque that in recoil, my last finger slips off the frame, Zones even so. (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 quotient I'd opt for and which i I tested.) The longer magazine adds plenty length that my final finger stays with the team and keeps the gun from ascent as much in recoil.
The capacity wars were settled a long time ago, and nosotros now have a pretty good idea of how many rounds any size pistol will hold in whatever caliber, which makes the XD Mod.2 then surprising. In its compact size with the regular magazine, it holds thirteen 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 xvi rounds of 9mm, 12 of .twoscore and 13 of .45 ACP.
Wait, what did I say? Information technology holds more than rounds of .45 than it does of .40? How tin this be? Simple: Double-stack magazines can be made either with flat sidewalls or dimpled, ridged sidewalls. The internal width needed is determined past the diameter of the case.
The outside is determined by the frame size and the starting width of the tube yous use as the magazine. It merely and then happens that the proportions work out in favor of the .45 this time instead of the usual .xl.
With its weight of 26 ounces empty, you'd await the XD Mod.ii to be pretty stout in recoil with .45 ACP ammo. The recoil is noticeable but not in the way you'd expect. The width of the frame, the GripZone, distributes felt recoil evenly and widely in your mitt, so the smack isn't that bad.
What you detect is cage rise. The front sight rises upwards chop-chop and quite a ways, only it snaps back downwards just as fast. Even the hottest loads were non that sharp in recoil, just coming upwards a scrap more than the average ones did.
I was a bit surprised, pleasantly so, past the velocities I establish in the chrono testing. Y'all'd expect a butt that curt (3.iii inches hither) to exist spitting out bullets at irksome speeds, especially in the dead of winter. The ammo companies have been doing their office, and Springfield sure doesn't brand slow barrels, because the stubby tube on the Mod.ii Sub-Meaty gave faster-than-expected velocities for the loads tested.
One attribute of a compact, or subcompact, pistol that a lot of shooters don't pay plenty attention to is accurateness. Information technology'south not that the pistol can't be accurate; it tin. Locked into a machine balance, any of them is more than accurate than 99 percentage of the shooters shooting them. If you expect to get equally much practical accurateness out of a subcompact every bit you exercise from your full-size pistol — XD or other — then, boy, do I have a bridge to sell you.
You encounter, it only isn't possible. The sight radius is the main culprit here, with the sights 2 inches closer together on the subcompact — Mod.2 or other — than they would be on a full-size XD. This may not seem like much, but the difference in sight radius is significant. The .45 subcompact has a radius that is about three-quarters as long as information technology is on the full-size XD.
The 9mm and .xl have an fifty-fifty greater divergence — but under three-quarters of that of the full-size gun. That is a large deviation, and while you can overcome it with practice, it will yet be an obstacle.
That said, the groups I shot with the XD Mod.ii Sub-Compact 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 Modern.2, this was no problem. I had a chance to try some new ammo from Polycase, and information technology shot very well for beingness out-of-the-box ammo. The bullets weigh 114 grains and are soft to shoot.
With the Mod.two as a carry gun, Springfield Armory has washed the seemingly incommunicable. Information technology has made its already-compact, easy-to-comport XD even more compact, slimmer and easier to shoot, and it hasn't given upwards anything for information technology. The remaining question is what magazine to carry in it.
The glib answer would be to carry it holstered with the brusk mag and accept the extra 10-tension-equipped mag equally the spare. What I've plant through years of deport is that the slide and barrel are the hardest function to alive with, non necessarily to muffle only to be 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 tin can utilize a holster that tucks the grips in tight to my body, just I can't change the results of years of weightlifting and martial arts.
For me, the Mod.ii Sub-Meaty carry philharmonic would be unproblematic. I'd go another regular-length magazine, perhaps not even bother with an X-tension (I'd practice and see if it fabricated whatsoever difference in reload times) and pack the Modern.ii with both.
I'd carry the pistol with the X-tension magazine in information technology and have the spare on the other side. That would give me 13+one in the pistol and another 13 in the spare. That'southward 27 rounds of .45 ACP, which is more a loaded 1911 and ii 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? It will be a big seller until the guys at Springfield just can't help themselves and notice ways to enhance 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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