Greetings,

Thinking of getting a carry 9mm.  I have a few compact 9mm's (G19 x 2, PPQ, etc.), but don't have anything that's really slim and very hideable....subcompact.  I don't want less than a 9mm for a cartridge.  Recommendations please.

I'm thinking of the following....

Walther PPS
Kahr CW9, K9, P9
S&W Shield
Kimber Solo
Other?

Kahr K9 as well. I love the feel of it and the New York trigger is like Buttah!

I like my Shield a lot.


The newer model without the safety is the way to go.





I've shot the Kahr and they are very nice as well, you just don't have the aftermarket support.





The XDs gave me railroad tracks like the old Walther PPK.




 

G26

SIG Sauer P290. Kinda heavy... but it has night sights and it came with a factory laser. I traded for it, otherwise I would not have paid for a laser.

Para LDA/PDA. micro 1911, 9mm. nite sights. kinda heavy but shoots absolutely great.

G26 obviously.

Kahr CM9.

I've had the PM9, CW9, Shield and PPS. I sold or traded all but the PPS. It just seems to work better for me.

I'm a Glock guy but it is tough to beat the Shield.  I have one of the new ones without the manual safety and love it.  If Glock ever has the wisdom to make a G42 in a 9mm or larger my answer might change, but single stack 9mm is really nice and right now that is the Shield.

Shield out of those choices.  I like the XD-S as well other than the slide bite.

So far, the Shield is winning.

By the way, I already have a G26.  I'm looking for a slim 9mm singlestack, not a chunky doublewide.

I'm leaning towards the Shield, but I want to shoot an XDS 4.0 first.

I have a 9mm Shield and have shot a CM40 and XDs in .45 that were owned by friends. Granted, the Kahr and XDs weren't in 9mm, but it at least gave me a feel for the guns. I just went through this last summer when I was looking for a single stack 9mm to replace my G26 for more concealability.

The CW40 shot VERY WELL and recoil was surprisingly mild for such a small gun in .40. The trigger was good, especially since the gun was brand new when I shot it. Long, but smooth and reasonably light. Treat it like a DA revolver trigger and it was good. With the light recoil in .40, I can only imagine that recoil out of a 9mm would be even lighter. Would be a good option, especially if you want to pocket carry. The 6 rd mag in 9mm turned me off since I would have been using it for an off duty gun as well as backup when on duty. I wanted a minimum mag capacity of at least 7 rds, but that's just my preference and the Kahrs seem to work out very well.

The XDs was very comfortable in my hand and the trigger was very good. I don't know if the gun was pre- or post-recall, though, and I have read that the triggers in the post-recall guns were worse. Recoil was very heavy, but it was .45 and not 9mm. Gun was accurate and, according to the owner, very reliable (I only shot a couple mags, he said he had about 1000 rds through it). Nice size, but IMO too big for pocket carry. If you want to carry IWB, though, it was a very good size.

I also shot a Shield in 9mm owned by a friend before I bought mine. Good size, good trigger and accurate. Again, too big for pocket carry, but absolutely perfect for IWB, which is how I'm carrying it, so it worked for me. When I looked for a single stack compact to replace my G26 for backup and off duty, I was looking for either a 9mm Shield or a 9mm XDs. Either would have been good with me. I found the Shield first and am glad I did. I love it, it works well and I have had absolutely no trouble with it. I'm not crazy about the thumb safety, but it is so stiff that I can't ever see it accidentally going on, so not a big deal.

Best advice anyone can give you is to try and either find a range that rents some or all of your choices so you can try them or see if any friends have any of them to try. Third option is to go to a gun shop and see if they will let you at least dry fire. Anything to at the very least get them in your hands to see how they feel. Good luck.

Bub75

H&K P2000sk

This

Sig P938

Shield

 

Not in your list, but to answer 'my favorite subcompact 9mm', it's hands-down the Kahr. I have two cm9's and one of my sons carries a cm-9 as well. Smaller, more powerful, AND softer-shooting than my old P64 in 9x18 and walther PPK-S. Same capacity (with slightly better power) compared to my old detonics .45 subcompact carry gun, at about half the size & weight.

I have a spreadsheet on my work pc where I compared several subcompact 9's before settling on the cm9. I'll try to remember to pull it up when I'm back at work & post some of different guns' specs in relation to each other.

LC9 is another to look at. I like the design a lot.

 

Small handguns like that really to be tested to see if they fit your hand. Not the hand of someone else or a paid professonal tester.

Your short list is some solid choices.
My recommendation, find a rental range and try them out to find which one fits you.
Get that one.
Then, take a basic handgun class with it to put it through the paces to see how it really runs.
Re-evaluate then to see if it does work for you. You may have to go through a couple to find one that fits you and runs when pushed. I'd much rather see how it performs while pushed on a range vs. how it performs one night when push comes to shove if you're going to go home or not.

If you like shooting 1911's, then the Sig P938 would be well worth your time to check out. It's a very solid small carry pistol.

+1

+2  :D

This.

I have and really like the Shield 9mm.

If you want a double-stack I would say G26

For a single-stack I like the Kahr CM9 and CW9.  You can pocket or ankle carry the CM9 as well.

This is way ahead of the competition.

I got the shield, since I'm a glock guy too. I would have got the pps, but I got a better deal on the shield and I'm happy with it.

Found it; we'll see if I can post it cleanly...

{ok - had to convert to a jpeg, but here it is:}


This was part of my decision-making process when looking for a micro-replacement for the G26's I'd used for years. (That's why the G26 was in a different color - they'd been my 'small' 9mm's for years and so it was my baseline for comparison.) The G42 comparisons were added after the fact, whenever it was released some time back.

This was in excel, and the numbers in red were my completely subjective breakpoints for various dimensions on the 9mm models. Less than 5.5" in length, less than 1" in width, 4" or less in height, and under 1LB in weight - those were the settings. (My formula apparently wasn't functional throughout the whole thing though; the Kimber Solo's height should have been highlighted in red, but wasn't.) The CM9 and PM9 were the only ones that had all dimensions (and weight) at or below those admittedly-subjective parameters. Looks like it was set up intentionally skewed to favor the Kahr, but it wasn't. I'd never owned a Kahr before looking at these numbers grouped together like this, but based on the numbers I bought a CM9. I liked it so well that a couple months later, I bought another CM9, and when Christmas rolled around last year, I bought one of my sons a CM9 to replace his makarov ccw pistol.

I'd really been leaning toward the Kimber solo initially, but being more than a quarter-inch thicker (and MUCH more expensive at the time) made it much less attractive to me personally as a pocket-pistol option.

Some of you guys are saying the Shield has a good trigger, but mine is so gritty that I hate shooting it. Does the trigger smooth out after awhile or does it stay that rough?

There are several YouTube videos on how to polish the trigger parts so that you get a smooth trigger pull. It's not hard to do, first time around I would estimate 45 minutes to 1 hour. My shield trigger has very little take up and a 6.5lb pull. But it's not bad and I'll be doing the trigger group polishing to see if I can get a better trigger pull weight.

I love my G26

My PM9 is awesome

I like mine. I carry it when I an to lazy to cary my g26

LC9s looks promising

I just picked up a shield since I wanted a single stack.  I will be replacing it with a Glock 9mm single stack when/if it happens.

Shield is a great option!