LAV shared his opinion of this new pistol.
I had a chance today with several of my students to put some ammo down range thru the HK VP9 - we all came away very impressed with the pistol after shooting it; in all honesty I was more favorably impressed than I even expected to be - in fact one of the students is immediately putting his P30 up for sale to fund a purchase of a VP9
Okay let me give you a run down and answer some the questions asked before;
A) the pistol is very accurate - to get the same level of accuracy out of a Glock an aftermarket barrel would be mandatory
B) the trigger is very good for a striker fired handgun and seemed to lighten up slightly after putting some rounds thru the pistol; on slow fire you could feel just a bit of creep before it broke - this was not noticeable in rapid fire
C) the groove inside the trigger guard did not bother me as it does on a stock P30 or full size HK45 - if that's an issue for you then my guess is there is a good chance it won't bother you either
D) a couple shooters had failures to lock the slide to the rear on an empty mag - in all cases traced back to grip placement. You will need to be aware of how you grip the VP9 as it seems the slightest interference with the slide stop and the slide will not lock back
E) as I suspected the slidestop is somewhat difficult to release using the support hand thumb due to the fact it is very low profile - several shooters commented on this; I would prefer more of a shelf to make manipulation easier
F) the VP9 comes with the medium backstrap and side inserts installed. It is usable but if you have small hands like me the gun really shines with the small inserts and small backstrap installed - BIG difference
G) the rear charging assists work as advertised
H) the real surprise was the lack of muzzle flip and the ability to shoot the pistol very fast. Due to the bore line being higher I fully expected noticeably more muzzle flip than a Glock 17 being used for comparison but they were nearly identical with a very slight edge to the Glock - my gut is this is due to the fact the slide on the HK travels to the rear farther before the barrel drops out of battery vs. the Glock. This makes a real difference in felt recoil and muzzle flip and one of the major reasons why HK pistols function so well suppressed
As I said I was impressed with the VP9 and would highly recommend anyone in the market for a new polymer framed pistol take a hard look at one. When you factor in everything this pistol brings to the table out of the box at a price that is very reasonable my guess is you are looking at a new top dog in the striker fired pistol world
HK VP9 - check it out for yourself
- Larry Vickers
From: Alias Training
