I bought my M&P 22 in February and have been at the range several times a week since then. Counting today's visit, I'm at 7,151 rounds fired.
I've used several brands of ammo with varying success. I'm curious if others with the same gun have had the same results. I'm particularly curious if anyone has an M&P 22 that actually likes Winchester ammo.
Here are the brands and types that I've shot:
Aguila SuperExtra 40 grain plated round nose: These fed and fired perfectly. No issues at all. Accuracy seems on par with Federal bulk ammo, but this was a little pricier than bulk, probably due to the Eley primers.
Update: I've fired a few more boxes of this stuff, and shot some side by side with the Federal. I'd say I was wrong about it being on par with Federal. It seems to have tighter groups than Federal or Remington at 15 yards. The last time I shot it was at 7 yards when there was much less variation between the different brands. At 15 and 25 yards, it was clear that this is more accurate than I gave it credit for.. Sorry Aguila!
Blazer 40 grain lead round nose: These fed and fired perfectly. No issues at all. They were the first rounds fired out of my new gun, and I only had 150 of them. I can't say whether any accuracy issues were the fault of the ammo, or the new shooter.
They seemed accurate enough.
CCI Stinger 32 grain plated hollow point: These fed and fired perfectly. No issues at all. They are pretty hot at 1650 fps, and the muzzle flash is the biggest I've seen when shooting a .22 pistol. The accuracy seemed better than bulk, but worse than Mini Mags.
CCI Pistol Match 40 grain lead round nose: Truth be told, I only shot 5 of these. I was saving them for a bulls eye competition, but I wanted to make sure they cycled the pistol. At only 1070 fps, these are the slowest rounds I've shot and the quietest. The five shot group was decent, but not extraordinary, but it's a pretty small sample size to make a call.
CCI Mini Mags 36 grain plated hollow and 40 grain plated round nose: I grouped these together because I couldn't see much difference between the two when shooting. I've had two fail to feed using this ammo out of 1,380 rounds fired between the two types, so it's been nearly flawless. Accuracy is the best of anything I've shot. Possibly a slight edge to the 36 grain on accuracy. It's consistent, and worth the extra money if you are going for accuracy. Everyone says to break in your M&P with these, and as soon as I could get them, that's what I did.
Federal bulk 550 red box 36 grain plated hollow point: I've shot more Federal than any other brand through this gun. 3,000 rounds of the bulk Walmart pack shot so far. The first three boxes I ran through with literally no problems at all. The next batch (different lot number) that I've been shooting generally has an issue about 2-3% of the time. I take 100 rounds at a time to the range, and I'll have a couple fail to feed usually each trip. The majority of the errors are failing to feed the next round, but I did have a couple stove pipes too. I think 2-3% is perfectly acceptable for plinking ammo, so I don't mind. The accuracy is decent, but I find Remington to be better. I've also had one fail to fire.
Federal Auto Match 40 grain lead round nose: A little more expensive than it's bulk brother. I find that it also has roughly a 2-3% issue rate. The only issue I've had is failure to feed the next round. It fires and ejects fine. The accuracy is just slightly better than the bulk stuff, but frankly I didn't think it was better enough to be worth the extra price. Especially since it didn't feed any better.
Federal Game Shok 40 grain plated round nose: This was the same price as CCI Mini Mags when I bought it. For that price, I'll take the Mini Mags every time from now on. Again, the accuracy was a little better than bulk, but not dramatically so. Out of the 100 pack that I shot, I had 3 fail to feed. As far as the tiers of Federal ammo go, I think I'll stick with the cheap stuff. If I want better ammo, then I'll get CCI.
Remington Golden 36 grain plated hollow point: After hearing how awful the golden bullets were, these were a very pleasant surprise when I tried them. In 1,265 rounds fired, I've had one stove pipe. That's it. Everything else fed and fired perfectly. And the accuracy is better than the Federal bulk, but less than Mini Mags. Yes, they leave gold dust everywhere.. but I clean my gun after every range trip anyway, so that doesn't bother me. It's a cheap, fairly accurate, and reliable round. This is definitely my go to bulk ammo that I will pick up whenever I see it.
Remington Thunderbolt 40 grain lead round nose: I just fired these for the first time today. I only fired 50 rounds, but they all fed and fired perfectly. No issues. The accuracy was on par with the Federal bulk. I was encouraged enough by the 50 round performance that I went back to Dicks and bought another box today since I can't find any golden bullets anywhere and they have lots of these.
Edit 7/12/14: I've gone through 500 rounds of Thunderbolt, and I have to say, these things lead your barrel up something fierce. I clean my gun after each range trip most of the time, even though I go several times a week, I just enjoy cleaning my guns. Even so, the leading was so severe after just 90 rounds of this stuff one trip that the bullets started to tumble and leave keyholes in the target instead of punching nice round holes. I took a wire brush to the bore when I got home, and CHUNKS of lead came out that was stuck in the rifling and making my poor M&P 22 a smooth bore!
I will still shoot them up, but probably only 50 at a time and then run a bore snake through before shooting another 50. I just couldn't believe how badly it leaded up in such a short time. If I find someone who wants to trade Thunderbolts for Golden Bullets, I'll be all over that trade.
Winchester White Box 36 grain plated hollow point: These are the devil. I hate them. When I first bought my gun, I already had 999 round of this stuff ready to go. I never made it through the 999 rounds.. it was too frustrating. The accuracy was actually not bad, and I think it was better than the Federal bulk. But these had a 10-15% issue rate. Numerous fail to feed, fail to eject, and fail to fire. I've had to dig several casings of these out of the chamber with a pocket knife. I even had one that blew black smoke/powder in my face when it went off. I almost always had one fail to feed in each mag, and one time I even had to manually rack the slide for each round in the entire mag because none of them fed. I sent some back to Winchester to get my money back, and I sold the rest to a pawn shop for less than I paid to avoid another month hassle with sending it back. I just wanted them gone. I have a few left in a partial box that I occasionally tried to shoot after the gun was well broken in. They are still horrible well after break in. I even tried it in my Marlin 795 and had issues.. not as many, but enough that I wouldn't trust it for squirrel hunting. I wouldn't put this garbage in my gun again even if I was paid to do it.
Winchester M22 Black Box 40 grain plated round nose: I bought 2,000 of these because I had read how much better they were than the white box. I thought I'd give Winchester another chance. I took the first 100 rounds to the range and I had five fail to feed and one fail to fire after two good rim strikes. I traded the rest away to someone for some 9mm. It may have been better than white box, but not enough to keep shooting it when I had other brands that shot without nearly as many issues.
Winchester Super X 40 grain plated round nose: These came in a 100 count plastic box just like the Mini Mags. I figured it was the higher end Winchester stuff and I'd give them one last chance. First round fired, and it stuck in the chamber. I had to pry the casing out with a knife. Screw this. I gave away the other 99 rounds to the guy next to me at the range. He was shooting an M&P 15-22 and it fed fine through his. I shot 50 rounds before the Winchester and 50 rounds after it of different brands with no problem. My gun just hates Winchester for some reason.
So that's the low down on the brands as I've seen it. Remington Golden is the clear winner for me on price vs accuracy vs performance.. hopefully I continue to have no issues with it and didn't just jinx myself.
Once I use up the Federal that I have now, I'll likely only buy Remington bulk in the future unless I can't find any. The Federal is still fine for plinking, but the Remington has worked better for me and it's the basically the same price, so why not? If I want a little more accuracy, I go with CCI and spend a little extra.