Well here it is. I finally am at the point I feel I can offer a review on one of the most hyped guns currently out there and weigh it against the other common players. I had been going back and forth on if I was even going to buy one but I did end up with one, 1000 and change rounds later here we are. This review is going to be a little different than normal, in additional to my usual points I will also be drawing direct comparisons to three other guns I normally carry as well as one in the same size class I consider to be another alternative. This may or may not effect the flavor of the review but I thought it necessary considering the EDC X9 is touted as the "ultimate" carry gun and I put that to the test for my uses and the results of what I found.
Anyhow now that is said here we go, as usual this review will be very picture heavy and will cover all points of the pistol in question including; The performance metrics of accuracy, speed, ease of shooting, control, misc issues and mechanical reliability. The cosmetic design and execution in fit and feel, finish quality, wear patterns, sound, and materials choice. Finally I will be sharing my thoughts on functionality in terms of ease of carry, range of uses, weight/convenience factor, maintenance requirements and finally it's effectiveness in its intended roll. We will also be comparing functional shooting performance and roll effectiveness vs a Gen 5 G19, CZ Shadow TAC II, CZ P-07, and a Wilson Carry Comp.
Here for your reading enjoyment, is one of the most hyped guns in recent times. The EDC X9.
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PERFORMANCE: Accuracy
Right so we are already going to divert from the usual review structure, the following is a quote from the Wilson subfourm on my initial outing with the X9 and what happened.
Anyhow now that is said here we go, as usual this review will be very picture heavy and will cover all points of the pistol in question including; The performance metrics of accuracy, speed, ease of shooting, control, misc issues and mechanical reliability. The cosmetic design and execution in fit and feel, finish quality, wear patterns, sound, and materials choice. Finally I will be sharing my thoughts on functionality in terms of ease of carry, range of uses, weight/convenience factor, maintenance requirements and finally it's effectiveness in its intended roll. We will also be comparing functional shooting performance and roll effectiveness vs a Gen 5 G19, CZ Shadow TAC II, CZ P-07, and a Wilson Carry Comp.
Here for your reading enjoyment, is one of the most hyped guns in recent times. The EDC X9.
PERFORMANCE: Accuracy
Right so we are already going to divert from the usual review structure, the following is a quote from the Wilson subfourm on my initial outing with the X9 and what happened.
OKAY. Let's get into this then. Brief range review time for the WC sub-forum in particular, full review will be up in range reports in about 2-3 hours followed by the CZ Shadow (you will see why) sometime tommrow after I'm off work.
First off I am going to be totally honest here, I went into this gun with an EXTREMELY high expectation for performance with it being a 9mm 1911ish gun and a Wilson weapon at that. I fully expected the EDC X9 to be able to keep pace with my Custom CZ shadow in terms of ease of shooting and speed/accuracy........much to my dismay that expectation level proved unrealistic and was verified by two USPSA shooters that work at the range that I shoot with often. I used them to make sure I was not insane or having an off day and we all shot the same unfortunately so individual error is not what was happening.
Anyhow my first two mags were simply me running the gun at max speed to get a feel for balance and recoil impulse/stability, already at this point I was getting a sinking feeling since the gun seemed very "bouncy" in the hand with an odd impulse that was very "frontloaded". Finding that odd I then tried some reasonable speed shots, nothing crazy but about a round every .75 seconds or so aka just a nice casual pace that should have produced a 1-2 inch group at 10 yards for a gun of the level I thought the X9 to be.
The train-wreck is below.
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Yeah........it was so terrible on the lower letter shots that I for some reason thought to myself "Well maybe this gun is better suited to go fast like my main carry, lets do a draw" and proceeded to attempt a draw with 8 shots. Jesus Christ the gun is unsettled if I try to fire it at my normal speed, the front end whips around like mad and the front sight totally disappears and the gun failed outright my group tightness requirement. After that shocker I thought "okay okay okay, hold on. I just came off the other range with the .50AE so I'm just flinching and not doing this right. I MUST be me not the gun" so to prove that I was just sucking today I pulled out my Shadow TAC II since I am extremely consistent and used to it so that when I inevitably (or so I thought) shot badly with it I would be able to say "Yep, just me sucking. Not the gun".
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Well......lets just say the Shadow and myself were both acting normally with the gun giving me it's usual causal and easy feeling 1-2 inch groups at a .50 split pace without any effort. Same story with the draw, I went my usual speed and the gun kept nearly everything within the acceptable range as is usual for it.
I this point I was getting very concerned since it was quickly becoming clear to me the X9 was not going to be physically able to keep up with the CZ, and I fully expected it to be able to going into this...........so I pulled out the NEXT phase of mental self-delusion in the form of "Well maybe I just am not running a 1911 trigger properly today, better break out my carry gun so that when I'm all over the place with that I can say it's me" so I did just that........
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Uh......crap? In this attempt with the X9 I went SUPER slowly and tried to make every shot perfect, I'm talking 3-4 seconds or more per shot. I STILL thought it was just me up until I started firing my carry gun, I freaking drilled the target with less than one second splits with very little effort vs the level of concentration I used with the X9. Easy sub inch group with no flyers as is normal for that gun as well.........I am in full dismay stage at this point so I also pulled out the one thing left I could think of, "Well it's a 9mm so it MUST come off target less shot to shot but it's just oscillating due to the light frame is all" so in the above shooting I shot the gun at 10 yards again but I payed very careful attention to how far the sight deflected upward and off my target.
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At 10 yards the gun would deflect to about the level my hand is at in the first picture above from the perspective of me looking at the sights, I was using a full strength grip of even tension for both guns BTW and the point I made note of was the highest point of deflection before the gun/me brought the sights back on target. When I say gun/me I am referring to the way a good gun is "neutral" when firing and when the slide cycles it tries to bring the gun level again to make recovery shots quicker.......the X9 doesn't do this and I had to pull the gun back almost entirely unaided with the aforementioned feeling of "bounciness" also making the recoil impulse and sight deflection very random and hard to counteract/recover from. My comped .45 on the other hand didn't even deflect upward half as much and was FAR more calm and predictable not to mention the gun practically self reset when the slide went back to battery and the overall cycle speed had a much more solid and quick feel to it. The WCCC made things easy and helped guide me and the other shooters into shooting quickly and easily, the X9 on the other hand fought us and could best be described as twitchy and unsettled........I really really hate to say it but it reminded me of lighter polymer guns in that respect.
I was so disturbed by this I had two other shooters, one of whom beats me in USPSA enough we have a rivalry going, to shoot the guns and they all shot very similarly to me and without me prompting it described the feel of each gun almost identically to what I experienced. We all were in agreement the gun doesn't help you go fast and it has a speed limit that if you exceed control is lost vs the other two guns that you can run like a maniac and they don't become unsettled. We also all noted how bouncy the front end is and how the gun doesn't respond well to being run as fast as we normally like to run our USPSA guns (Two of us use Shadow 2s, other uses a Shadow Tac II (me) and in addition use I also shoot open) since the recoil event is not predictable or calm.
After we all shot it though and got to talking around the 1911 area of the counter we stopped and considered something we hadn't up to that point.........we were trying to compare a very light and easy to carry gun that was from the ground up envisioned ONLY as a carry gun against full on competition guns and a "carry gun" that is so outlandish most would never actually use it. I further realized that my usual carry gun is basically an old style IPSC Open class race gun in it's current configuration so it was stupid of me to try and compare something like that to the X9 at all since the latter is was never intended to reach that level of performance anyway. Plus it's so much lighter and most think it's easier to carry and that considered it makes total sense, the X9 is the typical carry gun. It trades raw performance to be much more livable.
Now all that said the gun worked 100% for 400 and change rounds with no fuss at all so it is on track to pass the required 1000 for me to trust it. There were no real problems whatsoever and realistically speaking when compaired to stuff like the VP9SK, P30SK, G19, G26, CZ75 Compact, CZ P-07, S&W 2.0, XD 9mm, SIG 320 compact, SIG 229 and basically any "normal" gun from the same size range the X9 crushes ALL of them by a good margin and is without question FAR more comfortable both in hand and in the holster and prints less than any of them. The error I made was I tried to compare it to guns that were not a fair comparison in the first place since I was simply so excited about the gun I truly thought it would defy physics and shoot alongside the race guns.
