After chasing availability of the .40 Shield for almost 6 months, I finally found one which was recently made according to the shell envelope. I bought it at full MSRP plus tax and rushed home to fondle my new find!
I was immediately disappointed by the top-heavy lack of balance when loaded (even worse when unloaded); the rough, gritty, overly heavy trigger pull; the extreme difficulty loading the magazines (I actually sliced off a piece of my thumb on the mag lip when a stubborn round slipped as I was pushing it into the magazine); the cheap, rough, almost "sandy" feel of the polymer grip; the sloppy, wobbly fit of the magazines in the well; and the absolutely user-unfriendly, unintuitive, asinine, fragile yellow sear disconnector which requires a "tool" be inserted through the breech and fiddled around with to actuate the sear disconnector for takedown. (A real field-friendly maneuver, huh?)
What have the designers been "on" at Smith & Wesson???
As a very experienced shooter of S&W's (and other major brands) for decades; a championship combat pistol and revolver shooter; a former LEO and armorer; a S&W dealer for 25 years; and, a gun-lover for fifty years, I think I can judge a poorly designed pistol when I see & hold one. This is a classic example of a gun that is NOT ready for prime time defensive carry, in my opinion. It embodies too many compromises and shortcomings to be taken seriously.
What's to like about the Shield? Certainly NOT the retail price.
If you look hard enough at a Shield and set aside the initial disappointment over the above-listed factors, you may be able to make a case for the Shield's compact size, although there are several similarly-sized pistols already available with superior designs, lower cost and proven better reliability including Glock compacts, Sigs, Springfields, KelTecs and others.
You may like the fact that the Shield is the slimmest, shortest-barreled (but overly-long gripped) S&W 9mm or .40 produced to date but, that's a benefit only if you're a die-hard S&W fan. It doesn't translate well beyond the "I luv S&W" crowd. Overall, I think the Shield is a so-so pistol, highly hyped and overrated by so-called "pistol gurus" who love all guns given to them to test by any manufacturer who may sponsor them or advertise with them in the future. Discount their hype and the Shield is just another mediocre offering in a growing, crowded field of competitors. (Maybe a pink-colored Shield will help sell them when the artificially contrived shortages end and they pile up in inventory.)
The reliability, accuracy and dependability of the .40 Shield is also questionable because of the significant number of well-documented negative customer experiences. These include the well publicized "magazine drop" problem which persists to this day in even the most recent production .40 Shield pistols. Although S&W has a few "fixes" including steel vs. polymer mag catches and dimpled magazines, nothing to date has completely eliminated the problem with any certainty. It still occurs, seemingly at random and unpredictably as the pistol is "shot in". My personal opinion is that a combination of factors related to the design, materials and tolerances is responsible for the mag-drop and no easy fix is forthcoming short of a redesign, recall and complete frame replacement.
To anyone with sufficient knowledge of physics and firearms design, it becomes obvious that the polymer material and resulting frame structure varies slightly from production run to production run. This variance introduces changing tolerances and a varying degree of frame flexing. This is all due to polymer batch mix variance, molding tolerance variance, shooter anatomy, hold differences and magazine and catch production tolerance variances, etc. All this means is it's going to be a real bitch to fix, short of a significant frame redesign - not a good track record so far for this shorty-forty.
Well, because of these and other factors, I saved my ammo, rethought my emotion-charged buying decision and then, sold this mistake so I could move on. Maybe someday I'll be able to justify buying another Smith & Wesson product but I'm glad I didn't sell my Glocks and KelTecs before I got my hands on the Shield. I offer this to others who may be chasing one like I did - THINK before you buy!
For what it's worth, after sharing this experience here, I expect to be disparaged, criticized, derided and ridiculed by the S&W fanboys, so have at it....
I was immediately disappointed by the top-heavy lack of balance when loaded (even worse when unloaded); the rough, gritty, overly heavy trigger pull; the extreme difficulty loading the magazines (I actually sliced off a piece of my thumb on the mag lip when a stubborn round slipped as I was pushing it into the magazine); the cheap, rough, almost "sandy" feel of the polymer grip; the sloppy, wobbly fit of the magazines in the well; and the absolutely user-unfriendly, unintuitive, asinine, fragile yellow sear disconnector which requires a "tool" be inserted through the breech and fiddled around with to actuate the sear disconnector for takedown. (A real field-friendly maneuver, huh?)
What have the designers been "on" at Smith & Wesson???
As a very experienced shooter of S&W's (and other major brands) for decades; a championship combat pistol and revolver shooter; a former LEO and armorer; a S&W dealer for 25 years; and, a gun-lover for fifty years, I think I can judge a poorly designed pistol when I see & hold one. This is a classic example of a gun that is NOT ready for prime time defensive carry, in my opinion. It embodies too many compromises and shortcomings to be taken seriously.
What's to like about the Shield? Certainly NOT the retail price.
If you look hard enough at a Shield and set aside the initial disappointment over the above-listed factors, you may be able to make a case for the Shield's compact size, although there are several similarly-sized pistols already available with superior designs, lower cost and proven better reliability including Glock compacts, Sigs, Springfields, KelTecs and others.
You may like the fact that the Shield is the slimmest, shortest-barreled (but overly-long gripped) S&W 9mm or .40 produced to date but, that's a benefit only if you're a die-hard S&W fan. It doesn't translate well beyond the "I luv S&W" crowd. Overall, I think the Shield is a so-so pistol, highly hyped and overrated by so-called "pistol gurus" who love all guns given to them to test by any manufacturer who may sponsor them or advertise with them in the future. Discount their hype and the Shield is just another mediocre offering in a growing, crowded field of competitors. (Maybe a pink-colored Shield will help sell them when the artificially contrived shortages end and they pile up in inventory.)
The reliability, accuracy and dependability of the .40 Shield is also questionable because of the significant number of well-documented negative customer experiences. These include the well publicized "magazine drop" problem which persists to this day in even the most recent production .40 Shield pistols. Although S&W has a few "fixes" including steel vs. polymer mag catches and dimpled magazines, nothing to date has completely eliminated the problem with any certainty. It still occurs, seemingly at random and unpredictably as the pistol is "shot in". My personal opinion is that a combination of factors related to the design, materials and tolerances is responsible for the mag-drop and no easy fix is forthcoming short of a redesign, recall and complete frame replacement.
To anyone with sufficient knowledge of physics and firearms design, it becomes obvious that the polymer material and resulting frame structure varies slightly from production run to production run. This variance introduces changing tolerances and a varying degree of frame flexing. This is all due to polymer batch mix variance, molding tolerance variance, shooter anatomy, hold differences and magazine and catch production tolerance variances, etc. All this means is it's going to be a real bitch to fix, short of a significant frame redesign - not a good track record so far for this shorty-forty.
Well, because of these and other factors, I saved my ammo, rethought my emotion-charged buying decision and then, sold this mistake so I could move on. Maybe someday I'll be able to justify buying another Smith & Wesson product but I'm glad I didn't sell my Glocks and KelTecs before I got my hands on the Shield. I offer this to others who may be chasing one like I did - THINK before you buy!
For what it's worth, after sharing this experience here, I expect to be disparaged, criticized, derided and ridiculed by the S&W fanboys, so have at it....
