Traded an AR I had laying around for a Non-Ported 9L CORE. Came with 5 mags, a bladetech holster, Talon grips, Apex Ram, and supposedly the APEX Competition kit.
The trigger feels really good outside of the curved trigger. Nice and smooth.
Finish is decent, a few wear spots from where the guy holstered it.
Bad news is no original parts and he lost all but the #2 plate, including the original Cover.
Hopefully Smith will replace those. I have a Burris Fast Fire 3 on the way, as that is what a buddy is using, and was told I needed the #5 plate.
Kind of wanted a ported model, but none showing up on the trader places here so I jumped on this one. To be honest, I didn't notice much difference, if any, on my buddies Ported CORE and my Pro 5".

My M&P family

(The pin for the sear block housing is missing from the 5" Pro because the new CORE came with some thumb rest thing that had a longer pin)

This happened to me when I bought a used CORE in January that came with no box. I called S&W and they said I could buy the plate kit (5 plates and 4 sets of screws, I think) for something outrageous like $50 or $75. So I put an ad on a local gun board and a guy had the plate and screws I needed to mount a vortex viper and gave it to me for $5. That's the route I would go if I were you.

Finally got around to shooting the core. The competition kit is quite nice. Though the hinged trigger still sucks so I traded it out with an Apex trigger. Haven't been able to shoot it since.
To be honest the competition kit is nice but not mind blowing vs my 5" pro. A little smoother and lighter, but my 4.25" pro is very heavy compared to this core with the apex kit.

A buddy bought a used 40 pro with an apex kit installed but he never figured out which kit. It has the aluminum trigger but is has almost zero pre travel or over travel so I'm guessing it's an fss kit. I may look into getting one for my core.

Also, the optic plates finally came in, so have my fast fire 3 mounted now.