Obe:
I am a huge Ruger fan... I own more than 10 of them and I have sold a ton of them... That said, I personally believe there are better .40 caliber handguns out there including the aforementioned handguns... There are a couple attributes of the SR series that I am not fond of... First is the trigger... I don't know what it is about the design or the manufacturing, but IMHO the triggers on the SR series are not as good as triggers found on the XD/XDm/MP/Glock pistols... Secondly is amount of effort needed to operate the slide... While this is not a big deal for a reasonably strong male, women and lighter framed men seem to have some difficulty with slide operation on the SR series... That said, one thing they absolutely have in their favor is a smaller grip size, especially over the XD and Glock Gen 3 which do not allow for adjustment of the backstrap... If it were my money, I would do exactly what I advised the OP... Find a place that you can rent each model of gun you are interested in and shoot it... They always feel different when you are shooting them versus fondling them at the gun store... Buy the gun that feels the best to you when shooting... You will shoot it better and more often...