My Wife bought me a RO Compact for my Birthday. Great little gun. Finally got to the range yesterday to try it out.
At this time I own 10 1911's with three of them being CCO's. Concealed carry officers ( Commander slide on a officers frame.). I have a Nighthawk T3 and a Talo Colt that I did some customizing on so it's pretty much like the new Wiley CCO Colt just put on the market.
So for a $800 price tag, this RO Compact was up against some big compentetion. Out of the three the RO has the lowest price tag.
So lets get into it.
Good points; The gun has a nice fiber optic front sight ( Front sight is blended into the slide contour also) and a two dot Novak rear. Edges on slide are nicely dehorned.  next a 4" bull barrel that is ramped and the frame is cut to accept the ramp. Frame is made out of aluminum. Nice polish on the ramp.
lightweight trigger, extended strong side thumb safety, beavertail grip safety with the hump, thin very attractive gripe put on with torx screws. one piece double spring guide rod. Flat ILS mainspring housing. Trigger pull is good, fairly clean, and in the 5 lb range.
It comes with two mags, holster, mag pouch, extra fiber optics for the front sight, and tools for takedown , tighten the grip screws , etc.

Bad points; Takedown for cleaning requires a little plastic sleeve which clicks on to the guide rod, but changing this double spring set up with say a Wilson Flat spring set up would probably increase recoil. You have to remember with the aluminum frame the heavy front of the coned barrel and the double spring is taking a lot of the recoil.
The rear Novak sight I would prefer to be solid black without the white dots and a 0.140 width notch. The thumb safety has a wide paddle and I would prefer it to be narrow, the thin grips are more to make the gun thinner for concealment, I rather have the standard thickness. The ILS mainspring housing I could live without. But I just wront use the key and it's flat, which is good. Rear of Extractor sits alittle high off the back of the slide, should be flush.

Also Springfield has a limited promotion if you buy any of their handguns you can get three extra mags, another double mag pouch and they ship it in a small plastic case. FREE!


So yesterday off to the range with the gun. 5 mags, and 150 rounds. one box was Winchester white box 230 gr. the other two boxes was my handload of a 230 fmj behind 6.0 grs. of Unique and a large pistol primer.
The gun gobbled all the ammo without any break in or problems. It shoots very well, and was very accurate. It could probably keep neck and neck with my Colt CCO, but the Nighthawk has a bit more accuracy due to it's better fitting and light trigger pull.

So what do I think? I think it's a heck of a lot of gun for the price. I think Springfield has come up with a very nice package here. At this point I am still using a series 80 Combat commander for my carry gun as the gun is easy to disassemble for cleaning and the slotted grip screws are easy to find a screw driver to tighten them.

As for the RO Compact. I thought about some customizing for it, but I think I am going to keep it as is.

Good review! Could use some pics though.

Pics or it didn't happen!  

In for pics

Mine is box stock and looks exactly like the other two that were sitting next to it in the showcase.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulv-EU_Y6Sw

Hickok45 did a great review of this gun. Still don't know how he got the recoil spring out of his gun without the little plastic sleeve takedown tool.

The little sleeve was designed for pussies.  Read page 43 of the manual, it tells you how to disassemble without the sleeve.  Same way he did it.

Pics to the rescue.  Just picked mine up last week, and got 200 rds thru it so far, all reloads,all 100%.

I like the gun, 721.00 plus tax.  At that price, I expected some issues, and found them.
Thumb safety has a sharp edge that will be deburred.
Extractor works as it should, but they left .050 hanging out the back.
My trigger is pretty heavy, 6#+ and has a long pull.
The park finish really drags in my sparks IWB and a leather OWB, as you would expect. Almost like a second level of retention.
My sights are way off, 6" left and 6" high at 21 yds.  I moved the rear and will wait till I get the trigger reworked to do much more with them.
Really a great deal if no big issues pop up.  I think this gun will shoot much better with a good trigger.



Brought a baer for comparison.






The more centered group was fired offhand at 15-21 yds, the group that is high/left was shot from a rest at 21.  The trigger is really rank.


I put 3 rds in here from 21 with the baer, just to make sure I could shoot straight.

Mine has been awesome. feeds all the differant hollow points my LGS had.