Alright alright- long story coming up here so if you have no interest you can close this window now !

I spent yesterday at my first Gunshow down here in Florida... my father and I (He is down visiting from NJ and hopefully will have his house sold soon, and we're building a nice house together down here in FL) decided to take a drive to Orlando, check out the gunshow, make a day out of it. He is actually or was actually looking for a Maverick 88 "Special Purpose", the 18.5" plain bead sight shotgun by Mossberg, for use as a plain jane beater 12ga. on the John Deere Gator .. we thought we might find one and haggle a little.... found 3 different 20" 8-Shots but all were priced high high, ridiculous really , and we were sort of resigned to just looking around for fun...

...Until we met a nice family-run gunshop who were working their booth, and what do I see? The S&W M&P22 Compact!! Not 5 minutes before, I saw a M&P22, and I was explaining to my father, how there was a new version of this coming out, and it was supposed to be very nice, made in America @ S&W and not a German thing, 15% smaller but very nice, etc. etc. I couldn't believe it... I thought they weren't even out yet! The lady explained that they do a brisk business with S&W, are big sellers of all their products including a lot of M&Ps, and had a chance to sign up to receive a new S&W product w/o knowing what it was, and said, sure we'll take a few... so the distributor gave them first cracks because they were the first to say YES to buying them into stock. They got it just this past week and decided to bring it to the show, and obviously I lucked out!

We actually said we would think about it, and kept looking - but by this point my old man was interested. He was asking vendors, do you have this new M&P yet??? A bunch told us it wasn't on the market yet, of course he's all like "YES IT IS!! SOMEONE ELSE HAS IT!"... a few booths basically said screw you they do not, it's not out, a few just sort of shrugged and 2 different people said if we told them where, they would go buy it, mark it up and sell it themselves. That sort of sealed the deal, we had to secure the new hotness.


The folks were very nice and made us a nice deal, we decided it was both great to get a great .22LR and awesome to have the newest neatest, and I am of course extremely happy to add it to my S&W stable, as I am still in the first month of ownership of the S&W M&P Shield 9mm and I've long loved my M&P22C's older brother, my S&W M&P 15-22 ! So it was perfectly added to the collection. And it makes a great addition to the SHTF/Survival & Preparedness portfolio.


After breaking it down and cleaning it up last night (admittedly was surprised at the fixed barrel) we took it out today to bust caps. It worked great... Now it wasn't flawless but I believe it worked great and was a typical .22LR semiauto pistol , brand new, and needing some breaking in and ammo testing.

First 11 rounds were Federal AutoMatch - flawless. Next 11 were CCI Standard Velocity - again flawless. These were all out of a mixed, vitamin-bottle full of .22LRs. Next we then opened a box of 550rds Federal Value Pack 36gr HPs... and we did fine, but had occasional failure-to-feed, failure-to-ejects, and a few clicks where the round did not fire. All rounds successfully fired after replacing them in the magazine. I'm thinking we put ~200-250 rds total, probably somewhere like ~150-200 worth of the Federal and then 50-100 others. I finished with CCI MiniMags which sounded great, shot perfectly, and functioned flawlessly.

It of course would be nice to have a 100% flawless pistol but I don't believe that's really being fair, to a brand-new semiauto .22LR pistol in steaming Florida heat, with sweaty hands and dirty ammo, it's going to suffer a problem here and there. Overall ,it was tons of fun and really just testing the gun out, a few more sessions like this before it's really even "Broken in!"

All -in -all, awesomeness. The new S&W M&P 22 Compact is awesome and a shooter! Highly recommended!

Good report and like the Walther M&P22 some ammunition works better than others. My LGS is getting 2 of the Compacts tomorrow and I have first crack at one. Your report is encouraging.

Thanks much, I had trouble uploading pictures as I believe my camera must take pics that are much bigger than the allowed size, but during the day I'll figure it out. I just woke up after a few hours of sleep, hoping to catch some news on the riots in MO lol.

One thing I'll say is this puppy is light! I have wanted a Walther PPK/S in .22lr for years, before they even made it, and thought they'd make a great critter gun and perfect for tucking in the waistband. This M&P 22 Compact might be bigger dimensions-wise, but much lighter... its totally tuckable and easy to carry and hold.

I have installed a new Nebo PROTECT Elite HP190 weapons light from Walmart on my M&P22C ... Awesome! These lights are only $39.99 from Walmart and are amazing for the price. Perfect little addendum to the gun for property patrol, dog duty, and even garbage cans at night etc. Because this is such a light gun anyway, the whole package is still a tuckable, carryable package and light light.

Highly recommended to anyone looking for a nice, inexpensive addon!

I bought one Thursday night shot it today. All I can say is "awesome".
I put 500 rounds of various ammo through it, not a single misfire or jam. I didn't clean it, just shot it as it came out of the box. I used CCI Mini mags, CCI std vel, Fed auto match, Wolf match, and American Eagle. Shot at distances of 15 and 7 yards, good accuracy. The 3 dot sights are a big plus. All in all I'm glad I got it, and look forward to shooting it some more.

2 questions:

When can we get thread adapters?

What does "aluminum alloy" slide mean... is it zinc like the airsoft makers?

I was told the walther thread adapter would work. This little 22 has a real decent trigger. The reset is better from the factory than my CORE was.

The Walther thread adapter will not work on the compact. The Walther is metric and the compact is SAE. I'm have no doubt some thing will be available soon. The compact is screaming to be suppressed.

I can't tell you if it's zinc or what, the manual and online literature says Aluminum Alloy and it's certainly not very heavy, but it's very nice.

ScrapmasterFlex, care to share what you paid for your beauty?

Awesome story. Keep the range and reliability reports coming!

Mine is due in tomorrow for $350 OTD.

It sure is nice to see that Smith and Wesson finally is manufacturing the M&P compact .22 LR pistol in the U.S. Its nice they include 2 magazines and so far I have heard good reviews on this pistol. Also 222 rounds of free ammo is a welcome relief as we all know how hard it is to buy .22LR ammo these days.

The machined aluminum slide is a plus over a zinc pot metal slide.

This will be my next pistol.

Thanks Smith and Wesson!!!

So the two different M&P 22's are built completely differently?

Ahh I wasn't supposed to say but I paid $360 with a credit card at a gun show. They said they don't charge more or less for cash or credit, but we were trying for 350, and they were considering it, but when they asked how we'd be paying and I said credit card, 360 was the best they'd do, so it's pretty much dead on , 350 + 3% is 360.

I would say the fact that the two different M&P22s are built by completely different gun companies is significant... As has been mentioned earlier, S&W and Walther (and therefore Umarex) no longer have a partnership ... Walther (Umarex) made the M&P22 ... however this new M&P 22 Compact is made completely in house by S&W .. so I would HAVE To believe they have at least some differences production wise.

Already read reviews on it showing significant differences, not merely just the reduction in size.

Just got mine and love it. Filled out rebate form for free ammo, hopefully it will get here soon My SR22 has some serious competition.

I also filled out my form right away - I honestly do not usually buy Winchester (nor most of the time, except since 12/'12 , Remington rimfire) but hey, this is like a free $35-50 bucks minimum really!

Shoot it in health and happiness, I know I am planning/hoping to shoot mine in same!

I filed my rebate online, so I hope there will be no screw ups
I was in cabelas recently, and they had one of those winchester 222 round bulk packs for like $17, so I bought one. Shot the whole pack through my MP22 compact, and had no issues. So at least I know that ammo that they will send in will work