Walther PPS 40 or 9mm

Anyone have any experience with a Walther PPS 40 S&W. I would like to know how they handle. I have a Springfield 40 and it would be better to only have one caliber to stock but if it is tough to shoot I'd be better off with the 9mm. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

I had the .40 version and I traded it in for a different gun. For me, even with the different backstraps that came with the gun, I did not enjoy shooting it. Quite frankly it ended up hurting my hand. When I took it to the range I would go shoot one to two mags and move on.


My wife has the same thing in 9mm and it does shoot with a more pleasant feel but both guns were still a pain in the butt to reload the magazines.

That being said, for an open carry or concealed carry gun, either version is very nice. Light weight, short, and thin, although on the expensive side.

My wife nor I have ever had a failure on the guns in any form and they were able to be field stripped with ease. I guess in a nut shell I would have no issue in recommending them to someone that would shoot it occasionally but use it primarily for carry but not for the gun you're always going to shoot at the range. Hope this helps.

You just gotta go with what feels good to you, for me the smaller guns are better in 9mm than .40. I love my .40 but with less hand on the gun 9mm is better for me with my sub compact, I got big hands.

I have a .40 and I love it. It's my daily CCW. I have something bigger for OC. You will not find a gun thinner or more comfortable for IWB carry.

I have a .40 and carry it with a 6rd. mag. This gives you the pinky extension and fits my hand well. I use the flat back strap. As far as the way I grip my guns, it fits just as well into my hand as my massive FNP-45 does.

I don't find it too snappy or too hard to control at all.

Great Pistol, Fatal Flaw

The PPS .40 has one fatal flaw that I experienced three times (and sent it back to S&W 3 times). The slide lock spring is poorly engineered. If you field strip the weapon and look inside the left side of the frame, you will see that the spring tensioning the slide lock is puny and has no way to keep it on the small lip that makes the slide lock function. At 1000 rounds, this spring popped off of the lip -- locking the slide to the rear and the only way to fix it was to field strip the pistol and pop the spring back on the lip with a dental pick. This happened several times and each time S&W sent it back to me, they claimed they had "fixed" the problem. I now have a brand new PPS courtesy of S&W customer support that I don't feel confident in carrying because I don't want my personal defense weapon turning into a paperweight. I don't know about the 9mm, but for the money, invest in something that does not have the chance of letting you down in a fight.

When I chose a firearm it was after I'd had occasional reliability issues with Walther, Beretta, and a couple of others over the decades. As that's really not something you want to have happen in a pinch, before I purchased my current carry piece I did some research on weapons reliability and memorized a short list of firearms with world-class reliability. I also asked around during two gun shows and their recommendations narrowed down that list.

When it came time to purchase, the list was pretty short and I got a great firearm.

I carry a PPS in 9mm. I can't say which caliber is "best". There's always one trade off or another. The 9 has one more round in the mag and is much easier to handle, making the second shot quicker to get off. The .40 on the other hand is certainly more powerful. I carry Hornady Critical Defense rounds in mine.

I have about 1000 rounds through my pistol, and have had no problem with the slide lock spring. I was aware it was the Achilles heel of the PPS, but read somewhere the slide lock was re-designed to prevent the spring from popping out. (don't have a cite for this.) I wonder if the .40 was more prone to this because of the teeth-rattling recoil? JMHO.

I'm not really a fan of striker-fired weapons, but since the .40 is a better "stopper", if I got a PPS I'd get the .40 S&W version.

I love the "slim" design, but I would really like an exposed hammer, the choice of cocking or firing the piece DA first shot, and the comfort of knowing there's a round up the spout but no possibility of an AD/ND without pulling the trigger fully to the rear.

However, I suppose that the PPS design is really the best way to get a .40 caliber round in a weapon that is as concealable as the PPK, which is a blowback design totally unsuited to the .40 SW unless cursed with a massive HiPoint - style slide. This of course would negate the concealability of the PPS.

Having said that, I nonetheless must admit that if you are after a "deep concealment" firearm in better than .380, the PPS seems to be the way to go....

I thought about grabbing one of these a while back, but I decided that I will never purchase a pistol with a magazine disconnect...not to mention that whole backstrap being a safety key thing...it seems to me that you could inadvertantly drop the gun on a hard surface, have the backstrap pop off, and you are then seriously out of luck!

Wetworx said:

...not to mention that whole backstrap being a safety key thing...it seems to me that you could inadvertantly drop the gun on a hard surface, have the backstrap pop off, and you are then seriously out of luck!

Click to expand...

You can always add a hogue or limbsaver grip to the pps to keep that from happening. The whole backstrap safety on the pps does seem like an overly engineered safety measure.