Reproduced from the September 2008 issue of GUNS Magazine.
Winner’s Choice The S&W Performance Center Dishes Up A Special
M&P 9mm Just For Competitive Shooters
When Joe Bergeron and his team brought forth the Military & Police pistol, it looked as if the third time was the charm. Since its introduction, the all-new M&P has made significant inroads into law enforcement, with several major departments adopting it.
It has been a hit among the private sector gun enthusiasts as well, with some gun dealers telling me it’s their single hottest-selling handgun. Their first polymer-frame gun, the Sigma of the early ’90s, never really caught on with police or serious shooters, though after some redesign it became a profitable high volume seller as a low-priced entry-level handgun. Their second, the Walther-cloned SW99, has not lived up to expectation.
One corner of the gun-owning private citizen sector where the M&P has really taken off is “combat match shooting.” I’m seeing a lot of these pistols at IDPA matches in the hands of shooters from Novice all the way up through Master class. By International Defensive Pistol Association rules, the M&P is ideal for Stock Service Pistol category, can also be used in Enhanced Service Pistol and, in .45 ACP, can be entered in Custom Defense Pistol.
It has done well there. I’ve seen Chris Christian win CDP at a local match with an M&P 45. I’ve watched Julie Goloski win the 2006 National IDPA Champion female title with an M&P 9mm. I watched Scott Warren kick butt with an M&P 40 at another major IDPA shoot last year. (Ain’t seen anyone shoot a match with the .357 Sig version yet, but you never know …)
Suffice to say the M&P proved it could win. A bunch of shooters went in that direction and the Performance Center at Smith & Wesson, being dedicated to the first word in its title, listened to the customers and started work on a special competition version of this Promising Polymer Pistol.
The result is the new Pro Series. It took me over a year to get my hands on the darn thing, but it turns out to have been worth the wait.
The first 5" barrel 9mm M&P from the Performance Center was on display at Smith & Wesson’s booth at the 2007 SHOT Show in Orlando. I ordered one immediately. It took a while. The PC is a busy place, and not until after the 2008 SHOT Show in Las Vegas did a test sample of this neat new pistol, marked “Pro Series,” find its way to my eager hands.
The longer snout is the first thing you spot. You then notice it still has the light/laser mounting rails, integral with the dust cover portion of the frame, on the M&P from the beginning. An M&P this length is about the same in overall dimension as the classic 5" barrel 1911, maybe even a wee bit shorter. That makes it the right size for home defense, police duty carry, and even concealed carry. The night-fighting attachments fit right in with today’s thinking on home defense and police work.
There are no slide grasping grooves up front. They’re strictly at the rear, where traditionalists like me think they belong. Intended for matches where optical sights won’t be used, the Pro Series has no real need for them, and shooters are not encouraged by the gun’s design to put their hands unnecessarily close to the “business end” when operating a loaded pistol. It’s a subjective question, but this reviewer subjectively says, “So far, so good.”
Grip Sizes
As is usual with M&Ps, this one has replaceable backstraps in sizes small, medium, and large. I found back in 2005, after the M&P autos first came out, that the large felt perfect in my hand, but I didn’t shoot my best with it, and that the small gave my average-size hand the best reach to the trigger, and was what I performed best with. What feels good in the gun shop is not necessarily the same as what works best for any given individual. Your results may differ from mine, and this is why Bergeron and company wisely gave us the choices, with a very quick and easy interchangeability system. All three inserts come with every M&P.
Length comes to 8.25" overall, according to factory specs, and weight is listed at 26 ounces unloaded. A unique feature of this particular M&P variant is its front sight. Dovetailed into the slide, it sports a bright green fiber optic insert. This allows the shooter to use the conventional silhouetted, post in notch sight picture for maximum precision if time and light permit — or to just smack that big neon-green glob onto the center of the mark and get the shot on its way. The rear sight is fixed, steel, and streamlined in the Novak style. Its notch is big enough to allow a quick, accurate sight picture.
But the operative word in “Performance Center” is Performance, and a gun like the Pro Series M&P 9mm can’t be evaluated on how it looks. You have to take it to the range. I did. You’re welcome to come along.
The only M&P competition holster I had on hand was a TKW (Tactical Kydex Weaponry). It was for a standard size M&P (4.25" barrel, 7.5" overall length). Fortunately, the pistol fit securely, and the triggerguard area on the rig was just deep enough it still covered the trigger, making it IDPA legal. I took it out to the Pro Arms range in Live Oak, Florida, and ran the gun over the IDPA Classifier course with 9mm 115-grain Winchester White Box USA brand full metal jacket ammo.
A square-notch Novak-style low profile rear sight (above, left) is provided on the Pro Series M&P along with interchangeable backstraps to adjust trigger reach. The trigger on the test gun (above, right) had been adjusted by the factory for a pull of less than 5 pounds, while duty versions are usually in the 6+ pound range.
The rear sight (above, left), set in dovetail, is adjustable for
windage. The mag release can be moved to the left side and the
slide release can be ordered on the left side as well. Although unnecessary on a competition pistol, adding a light rail (
above, right) allows this pistol to double as a home defense
pistol, too. Note the lack of forward slide serrations.
Score Card
This course of fire encompasses 90 shots, 13 draws, four reloads, three shots weak hand only and 12 shots strong hand only, at distances from 5 to 15 yards. All are done on the clock. Every point on the target score less than perfect adds 1/2 second to your total elapsed time. After it’s adjusted, you need to crack 98.82 seconds total to make Master. The lower the number, the higher the score.
Stage 3 of the Classifier is 18 shots at 20 yards and a dozen at 15. I finished up with a 40.49-second time including the added penalties for 9 points down out of 150 possible. Nothing special. Stage 2 went better, with an aggregate score of 25.18 seconds including another 9 points down. That element of the Classifier is fired for the most part at 10 yards, with two stages where you’re shooting on the move at between 5 and 10 paces.
Stage 1 was where I noticed the most difference, another 30 shots all fired at 7 yards. “Draw and fire two to the body and one to the head” went as low as 1.72 seconds including reaction time, faster than I normally shoot this particular string of fire. The final string — draw and shoot each target twice, dominant hand only, was way over my head, with a 2.62 second run that probably raised my eyebrows up past my shooting glasses. Final time was 21.70 for all 7 strings encompassing 30 shots, including one target “zero down” and the other two only one point down apiece.
The long barrel M&P with size small grips “pointed” so well for me there was no last-instant adjustment required before the shot, and that big green fiber optic dot was just there. The Pro-Series M&P’s sweet trigger helped, too, and we’ll talk about that in more depth momentarily.
Reloads were fast and clean. The wedge shape of the double stack, 17-round 9mm magazine plus the capacious mouth of the mag well (no need for a funnel attachment here!) made the operation positive, smooth, and snag free. The well-placed slide release lever worked flawlessly, an improvement over the first run of M&Ps in late 2005. For southpaws, there’s an ambi slide release lever, and the mag release button can be moved to the other side of the pistol. This competition model does not come with the magazine disconnector safety optional on the duty models, though I suppose it could be special ordered through the Performance Center.
My final score on the Classifier was 87.37. My normal final score on this is in the mid-90-second range, with my own Stock Service Pistols I’m more familiar with. Fact is, it was a personal best. This test gun now definitely had the gunwriter’s attention.
When the M&P came out, Bergeron told me it was spec’d to deliver 3" groups at 25 yards. This gun delivered that easily, and proved very consistent with three disparate bullet weights. All loads tested were standard pressure 9mm Parabellum and I didn’t see much need for +P or +P+ in a match gun.
Black Hills 124-grain JHP is famous for accuracy. A few years ago at Camp Perry, I noticed it was standard issue for a military team kickin’ butt in the Distinguished Match and the President’s Hundred event out of their accurized Beretta M9s. It lived up to its reputation here, with a best 5-shot group off the MTM rest of 2.5" center to center. All measurements were to the nearest .05", and all groups were also measured again for the tightest three shots in hopes of factoring out enough unnoticed human error to get an idea of the pistol’s inherent, mechanical accuracy. With this Black Hills load, the Pro Series M&P’s “best three” measurement was 1.15".
Federal 9BP 115-grain JHP has proven to be the most accurate load in more of my gun tests over the years than any other 9mm round. This time it came in a close second behind the Black Hills, with a 2.65" 5-shot group. In the best three measurement, however, it took top honors by coming in under an inch: .95", to be exact.
Winchester OSM 147-grain JHP subsonic was originally developed for precision accuracy. In this particular pistol, serial number MCP9585, it put five bullet holes 2.85" apart, and the best three in 1.55".
Mas shoots the 20-yard barricade stage of an IDPA Classifier
(his hands are not actually touching the barricade). The casing in
midair shows how fast the Pro Series 9mm gets back on target.
Petite Gail Pepin, IDPA’s FL/GA Regional Woman’s champ, shoots
the Pro Series from the barricade. She found the M&P quick on target.
Consistent
When you think of it, that’s pretty darn consistent: a difference of 0.35" in group size between the three loads, irrespective of the fact that 115-, 124-, and 147-grain bullets were going downrange. Due to the difference in ballistics, points of impact differed slightly. The 115-grain centered its group a tad below point of aim, and the 147, a bit high, though both were more or less center for windage. The 124-grain was spot on for elevation, but curiously, centered its group just a little to the right of the aiming dot.
There were no called flyers. Every shot broke clean. I think a lot of this can be attributed to the trigger pull, which is the best I’ve felt on an out-of-the-factory M&P.
Pro Series Trigger
There was some slight backlash in the trigger (that is, sudden, free movement to the rear after the sear releases, allowing the trigger to slap against the frame at the back of the guard), but it did not noticeably move the sights as the striker went forward. Pull weight on a duty grade M&P auto is factory spec’d for about 6.5 pounds. I can’t find mention of the Pro Series M&P’s pull weight on the S&W Web site, but on my specimen, the digital Lyman trigger gauge measured the release at an average of 4 pounds, 10 ounces. In live fire, especially running at speed, it feels even lighter than that.
The release is much crisper than the rather mushy trigger break of the duty M&Ps I shot when these guns first came out, and the same is true of the reset. Both release and reset are crisp enough to satisfy this long-time competitive pistol shooter. Dry fire it from the box when you examine it in your favorite gun shop — it won’t hurt the pistol in any way — and you’ll see what I mean.
Value
On the Web site, when I looked for the suggested retail price, the screen told me to ask my dealer. Uh, oh … that usually means something close to “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.”
I did ask my dealer. Since I’d shot it on the Pro Arms range, the Pro Arms shop (www.proarmsinc.com) seemed the logical go-to place. I was pleasantly surprised when they came back with a quote of $758 list.
If you want to stay with a standard-weight duty trigger (and I for one would, if the gun was to do double duty as a defensive firearm), and don’t need the bright green fiber optic module up front, you can get essentially the same pistol with standard trigger and white-dot front sight for $695. S&W lists it as a factory production 5" M&P, the M&P9L.
It’s a good gun, and a good value. Anything letting a wheezy old gunwriter shoot a personal best is something you quicker, sharper shooters will probably appreciate even more than I do. All I know is, I’m buying the test sample and ordering another TKW holster for it … and I’m gonna keep an eye out to see if they offer this variation later in .40 S&W, .357 SIG, or .45 ACP.
9mm Parabellum Factory
Ammo Performance
Load
Velocity*
Group Size
(brand, bullet weight, type)
(fps)
(inches)
Black Hills 124 JHP
1,150
2.50
Federal 9BP 115 JHP
1,160
2.65
Winchester OSM 147 JHP
990
2.85
Note: *Nominal velocities are from manufacturer specs.
Groups were the product of 5 shots at 25 yards.
Handgun: Pro Series M&P9
Maker: Smith & Wesson 2100 Roosevelt Avenue
Springfield, MA 01104
(800) 331-0852 www.smith-wesson.com
Black Hills 124-grain JHP gave Mas
his best 5-shot group of 2.5" (above) at 25 yards off the MTM rest. Winchester 147-grain subsonic was no slouch at 25
yards (below) with the out-of-box Pro Series M&P9 tuned by S&W’s
Performance Center.
Federal 9BP gave 2nd best 5-shot
group (below) at 25 yards, and best
3-shot cluster.
