The H&K VP9 is scheduled to be released in mid July, but I was able to get my hands on a pre-release model. Myself and 2 of my friends headed out to the range to put the gun through its’ paces. Here’s what we found:
Reliability
For me, guns have to be reliable to be interesting and this one meets that requirement. It was 100% reliable with everything from cheap steel cased Russian ammo to quality defensive ammunition to include Hornady XTPs, Federal HSTs, and Speer Gold Dots.
Ergonomics
At first glance the grip of the VP9 strongly resembles that of the Walther PPQ which isn’t a bad thing. The PPQ is widely regarded as one of the most ergonomic pistols on the market and the HK is every bit as comfortable in the hand. However, the VP9 offers more modularity than the PPQ by utilizing a system of interchangeable backstraps and grip panels to allow the user to fit the gun to their hands.
Trigger
The trigger has a smooth uptake and breaks cleanly right at 5 pounds with a reset that is audible and tactile. It’s hard to describe a trigger by writing about it but it’s certainly one of the best striker fired triggers on the market.
Miscellaneous
The gun has a host of other notable attributes to include a durable “Hostile Environment” nitrided finish, a cold hammer forged barrel, all steel 3 dot sights, a full length 1913 rail for adding lights and lasers, fully ambidextrous controls, and it uses the already widely available P30 15 round magazines.
The only real knock on the pistol that I’d like to see changed in future generations of the pistol is the bore axis. It seems unnecessarily high for a striker fired gun to me. That said, the gun is still a soft shooter and comes back on target quickly so the high bore axis doesn’t seem to impede the performance of the gun when it’s actually put into action.
All in all, I think this will be an extremely popular gun for H&K. Great build quality, reliability, ergos, and finish combined with H&K’s reputation and a MSRP of only $719 will be hard to resist for a lot of prospective gun buyers out there.
Video Review
Here’s the video review of the pistol with some shooting footage and a discussion of the features of the pistol that I discussed above:
