Is this the world’s greatest concealed carry handgun?
No handgun released this year received so much attention, and spurred so much online chatter, as the new concealed carry 9mm from SIG Sauer, the P365. As the name implies, SIG intends their “micro-compact” to be your one and only carry gun, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. If anything, that’s a name we can get behind.
This poly-framed, striker-fired pistol runs a mere 5.8-inches long, weighs less than 18 ounces, and holds 10+1 rounds of 9mm Luger +P ammunition. That’s right: 11 rounds at the ready in a weight class that’s been contained to six or seven. For a SIG, the gun runs a reasonable $599 MSRP with a real-world price around $500. Here’s how these specs, on paper, stack up against other popular carry 9s.
Yet when considering smaller equals better and more ammo equals best, the P365 takes the gold in five of the seven spec categories above. Only the G26 packs as many rounds, but at a noticeable size increase. The M&P has a slightly more attractive price point, and is very comparable to the SIG in the waistline, yet it brings three less rounds to the gunfight. If those three rounds, and a decrease of a half-ounce and overall half-inch is worth $120 MSRP, the P365 is clearly your gun.
So how did they do it? SIG started with a blank page and designed from the magazine up. (Three patents are filed for the magazine alone.) Rather than a traditional double- or single-stack, they came up with something like a stack-and-a-half. The magazine runs double-stack for seven rounds then “necks down” to a narrower single stack for the top three bullets. This provides more streamlining (less plastic) at the top of the grip and behind the trigger, but with that double-stack capacity boost hidden down in its guts.
A 1,250 Round Review
Over the course of three months and 1,250 rounds, I’ve had no real issues with the P365. I wear a size large glove, and this pistol fits my hand perfectly with the extended magazine seated. There’s no pinkie dangle. It does not come with interchangeable backstraps, but even if it did I wouldn’t change a thing. The precision fit and finish is what we’ve come to expect from SIG – from the all-metal trigger to the night sights, nothing about this gun feels cheap.
The controls are simple, and low-profile. The grip angle works well for me and the texturing is aggressive, but not over the top. Even at the end of 500 round shooting sessions, there was no rubbing or blistering from the textured grip. There are no sharp edges on the slide and it has rack serrations fore and aft. The ergonomics feels very much like a smaller P320 – no surprise there – and the length-of-pull between the same guns is the same. Like the P320 the chassis/fire control unit on the P365 is also serialized and removable.
After a cleaning and light oil of the slide, I went about some shooting. In time it’s consumed six kinds of ammo without issue: Blazer 147-grain full metal jackets (FMJ); Federal HST 150-grain jacketed hollow points (JHP); Federal Syntech 150-grain synthetic jacket training rounds; MAXXTech 115-grain FMJs; SIG 115-grain FMJs; and SIG V-Crown 115 gr. JHP. From three to 15-yards, everything has been minute-of-bad-guy on a silhouette target.
The gun is snappy, as you can expect from any lightweight 9mm with a 3-inch barrel, but it is not hard to control. As you can see in the video above, we shot it side-by-side with a G26, and felt recoil wasn’t noticeably different between the two guns. Such head-to-head shooting did highlight one key difference: the one-piece metal trigger on the P365 is excellent. After 1,250 rounds, mine pulled 6 pounds 2 ounces on a Lyman trigger gauge. The first pull is long with no creep or stacking – like a revolver – and the reset is short and crisp with an audible click.
There is no safety, though a manual safety version is expected in the near future, and no tabbed or hinged do-dad on the trigger. The trigger is clean metal and it works very well.
The P365 comes stock with SIG’s XRAY3 Day/Night Sights, which has a large green front dot and smaller rear white dots. It’s a fast-to-find setup that runs $160 sold separately, so having them included is a nice touch. They work as advertised in direct sun and the dark.
During my three months of shooting and carry, I had zero failures-to-eject, but after a cleaning, around the 600-round mark for the gun (and 300 round mark for the day) the slide didn’t catch back on the last shot. This happened twice in a row, but I attribute it to user error. After we broke down the gun again and reassembled, the problem went away never to materialize again.
The gun breaks down easily, without having to press the trigger, but I struggled the first time reassembling the pistol. The release lever needs to be perfectly vertical for the slide to snap back in place. This screwed me up long enough that I needed to watch a YouTube video to figure it out – but now I know. It’s worth mentioning as it jammed up my buddy, too, when he first tried to reassemble the pistol without instruction. Another minor user-induced issue, but one worth knowing about if this pistol is in your immediate future.
