Sig P320: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Being a glock guy, I thought I'd give the Sig P320 a try to see what all the hype, or perhaps I should say drama, has been about. Now I do have some good news to report, the gun didn't just start firing itself when I gave it a weird look, but I also only rented it for a day, so I can't report on all the drama of the P320. I wanted to set that aside and really do this review just off of my initial range performance running the actual pistol.

Guys drama aside, I actually don't really like this gun. It is probably because I'm so used to shooting glock, but the P320 just felt clunky to me. Let's start with the good things about it first though and then finish with what I don't like.

The big draw of the p320 is its modularity. The serialized part of the gun is its internal fire control unit, so you can swap grips and slides. The P320 line for this reason has a huge after market, with all kinds of products coming to market, like the Flux raider that the internet seems to love. Sig themselves offers dozens of variations on the P320. I'm shooting the full size basic model for this review. So the modularity and after market for this pistol are great ideas. Like Sig or not, You have to give Sig credit for that. I don't think Chasis pistols are a fad, Sig really revolutionized pistol designs for the future with this.

The P320 actually has a really nice stock trigger. The trigger pull is very light with a crisp reset. In a sense, the stock trigger on the P320 is much nicer than glock. The controls themselves are also simple and very easy to engage. The slide release is ambidexturous out of box, and the magazine release can be swapped to the other side, so the P320 is an attractive option if you're a left handed shooter.

I also liked the stock sights. The stock sights are pretty nice for a stock pistol. They were crisp, easy to pick up, nicer than what you get on glock.

Front and rear slide serrations are nice. The full length pic rail on the front of the frame is also nice. The trigger guard is elongated which is smart for gloved shooting. That is a major pro for military contexts.

The pistol seemed pretty reliable, I shot it for the day at the range and didn't run into any malfunctions.

The design ergonomics of the pistol is what I don't care much for. Moreso, I think that contributes to my difficulties with shooting the pistol, which takes us into the things I don't like about it.

The frame is really tall, I suppose to house that chasis based fire control unit, but this compromise means that the barrel sits high up above the frame, and thus, high up above where your hand actually grips the pistol. In other words, this pistol has a higher bore axis than glock. Remember, a firearm is a lever, the folcrum is between your thumb and pointer finger. The explosion is rotating around that point. A higher bore axis means that the explosion has more leverage against your grip, meaning it will feel like it has heavier recoil.

And I noticed that right off the bat, the gun felt zippier than a Glock with just standard 115 grain FMJs. Despite being a full size model, I was shooting it next to a smaller Glock 19 build that I am working on, and the Not-A-Glock was definitely easier to control.

Speaking of, the takedown lever gets in the way of an active grip style. With an active grip style you're torquing your hands to put pressure near the slide at the top of the frame. This already doesn't work well on a P320 because of the high bore axis. However, you're also relying on your left hand thumb to apply torque across the top of the slide. The lever gets in the way of getting a good purchase on the firearm. I kept feeling my grip slip. It reminded me of springfield XD in this regard.

Similarly, the pistol doesn't have a lot of stipple on it up top. Again, you pretty much have to shoot this pistol with a traditional weaver style grip, and if you do you'll probably like this pistol a lot more than I did.

And this is where I really didn't like the pistol. At 7 to 10 yards, my groupings were pretty loose all day. They were about fist sized. With a subcompact glock or larger at that range, my expectation is for groupings to be about 2-3 inches generally speaking. With the full size sig, I was grouping about 5 inches.

Taken further out to 20 yards, I was starting to spread out into the C-Zone.

Now I realize this was probably me, and more specifically me not having a lot of trigger time behind the P320, but that's the point, I couldn't just pick up this pistol and shoot it well, even being a full size model. I've reviewed a lot of duty pistols on this channel from a variety of brands and I don't have this issue with most.

So overall, I just didn't like this pistol, and not for the reasons most of the gun community has been hating on sig lately. Fundamentally, I just wasn't a big fan, but that's just my two cents. Preferenes are subjective so go out and shoot one yourself and decide for yourself.