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S&W M&P .22 Magnum - Yes, please!

11K views 31 replies 12 participants last post by  darkwriter77  
#1 ·
Looks like they based it on the same frame as their recent 5.7 M&P pistol. I love my Walther WMP, it's had ZERO hiccups, but it also does only hold 15 rounds of .22 Mag, which doesn't seem like much considering how huge the gun is, and Wifey's PMR30 is fun to shoot but it is VERY finicky with how the mags are loaded and what ammo it likes. This new M&P is not only thinner, but it holds literally twice the ammo - 30 ROUNDS PER MAG. Uses a kinda novel system called the Tempo Barrel Delayed Lockup, which they used a variation of with their 5.7 model (except that one added a rotating barrel to its lockup system). Curious to see how it holds up to high round counts and/or how picky it is with ammo (or how the mags are loaded), but I imagine S&W did a fair amount of R&D before putting this one out, as they've had a pretty good track record with their M&P models for awhile now and I figure they don't wanna goof that up with a half-baked lemon. MSRP is a tad over six hundred bucks, which is obviously more than a PMR30 but still isn't outlandish by any stretch. VERY tempted to nab one of these if/when I see it locally...

 
#2 ·
I’m happy to see the 22 magnum continue to expand in offerings. I think it’s a more versatile cartridge than other similar offerings such as the 5.7, certainly cheaper. I actually have just invested time and money into the Bear Creak AR 22 mag upper and it is phenomenal. So much fun. Has become my toss around gun.
 
#4 ·
People like to compare 5.7x28mm to .22 WMR, but they are not in the same ballpark. .22 WMR is a great varmint and small game caliber, but it is most effective out of a longer barrel. 5.7x28mm produces more power from a 5" barrel than most .22 WMR from a 16" barrel. If you're comparing apples to apples, 5.7 beats .22 WMR in nearly every category. Price is not one of those categories. Gotta pay to play with 5.7.

I don't have much need for a .22 Mag pistol, but I might buy this one on the used market someday. I'd be more interested if it were chambered in .17 HMR. Would be a nice companion to my wife's Henry Varmint Express rifle. I do like my Henry .22 Mag levergun, though. It's taken down quite a few critters over the years.
 
#7 ·
Yeah, I definitely love my little .22 LR Henry Golden Boy - shiny looks, butter-smooth feeding and lever (with basically any ammo of that caliber), classic Red Ryder BB gun style sights, and a dreamy trigger. I also have the Big Boy Steel in .357/.38, and while the trigger is delightful and it shoots WAY more accurately than I'm capable, the lever action on that one is WAY more clunky and awkward than its .22 LR lil' brudder - to the point of being almost unwieldy at times, as it likes to hang up a lot if it doesn't really like the overall length of whatever cartridge you're trying to feed. Thinking of trading that thing in towards something else - either a .22 Mag Henry or whatever else - and if I see one of these M&P's, well, it just might go towards funding that purchase.
 
#14 ·
I think the real question is now that S&W has cloned the PMR30, will it take over the market and leave the PMR30 for dead? I have a PMR and a CMR and love that I can use the same mags and ammo in each.. We can disagree on the effectiveness of the caliber, but more peeps are killed by 22LR each year than any other caliber, so it placement not displacement that counts. Besides, IMHO, If I can squeeze off 30 rounds and only 20% of them hit, its going to make someone at the other end think about it. I am not using mine as my personal carry, but I do like having it handy.
 
#15 ·
I think the real question is now that S&W has cloned the PMR30, will it take over the market and leave the PMR30 for dead?
The PMR will continue to be popular for two reasons. Keltec has ironed most of the warts out of the PMR and the price is substantially lower. Now that it has two viable contenders in the 22mag pistol market the price may drop a little lower?
As to the Smith being a clone....no. It uses a gas system rather than blowback that allows it to fire 30 to 55 grain ammo. Yes it is a plastic frame 30 round 22 mag that is what they have in common. Of course they saw the market that the PMR has and decided they want some of that $. It is not a clone, handle one and you will see they are in different leagues. They took the concept and improved it. Kinda like comparing a charter Arms 38 undercover to a Colt Detective Special. They both do the same thing and have their place but one is clearly superior.
Don't get mad at Smith they are filling a void in a market that Kel Tec created. It's called business. I don't understand why Kel tec uses a business model that begs for others to copy and improve on their ideas and take a large portion of a nitche that they often create.
 
#21 ·
Actually saw one of these at the LGS yesterday and got to handle it a bit. VERY lightweight and VERY thin. Grip texture is a slightly less aggressive version of that sandpaper-like grip they have on their other M&P pistols - still would wanna wrap it with some rubberized Talon Grips or something if I was going to carry it, but it's plenty good for casual shooting as-is. MUCH nicer ergonomics than the PMR30, although the magazine feels about the same (also polymer), and while the trigger is very, VERY nice - minimal takeup, super crisp break - it still feels a bit heavier than the PMR30. Field-strip process is MUCH easier than the PMR30, too. Think I might wait and see what some of the common problems are that come up with other folks before I buy one, myself. Hopefully the reliability is on par with the Walther WMP
 
#22 ·
Had mine out to the range for the first time today. Too hot for much fun but ran 240 rounds through her with one failure to feed about 100 rounds in with CCI Maxi Mag 40 grain target. The third round from the bottom wouldn't feed. Racked the slide three times, just wouldn't pick up. Removed the mag, and removed one round, put the mag back in and she fired the last two rounds. That was the only hiccup, every other round fed, fired, extracted, ejected and slide locked back on MT mag.
Rounds used, CCI Maximag 40 grain, Armscor 40 grain JHP, Hornady 22Mag 30 grain V-MAX, CCI A22 mag 35 grain Gamepoint and Hornady Critical Defence 45 grain. The Maximag, V-max and A22 were most accurate with the CD trailing a bit. The Armscor was last due to vertical stringing. There was a noticable difference in the report of some rounds with the Armscor. Not enough rounds fired yet to come to a definitive conclusion but it looks very good to me at this point. It had no problem running 30,35, 40 and 45 grain ammo. The one issue, the failure to feed, appears to be a magazine teething issue to me or maybe I loaded wrong......:unsure:
As for accuracy, I wasn't too proud but I believe it was me more than the pistol. Those green FO sights are good for fast but I wasn't doing well with them for precise work. Trigger is OK but I hate a dingus. The grip is a bit odd, not horrible but it will take a bit of time to get used to it. At 10 yards offhand everything is covered by the palm of my hand except for Armscor. Nothing to write home about but I will do better after getting the feel for it.....I hope.
 
#23 ·
Well ... couldn't help myself. Traded in the Walther WMP today for one of these M&P .22 Mag pistols. The WMP was totally reliable, but ridiculously huge and nearly impossible to find a holster to fit it at all (I've never been much of a fan of a pistol you can't carry, both as a matter of principle and practicality), and while the 15-round capacity of the WMP wasn't bad ... well, now there's at least two models of pistols floating around that sport 30-round mag capacity right outta the box. It was plenty accurate, had a great trigger, and again, it was very, very reliable ... but frankly, it was boring and utterly impractical.

I very, verrrrrry seriously considered getting another PMR30 to replace the one that Wifey more or less stole from me (AKA her saying "I like this gun" followed soon after by her saying "I'm claiming this one" and me rolling my eyes :D ), but I've always seen the PMR30 as a project gun, even when new. I know there's folks out there lucky enough to get one that somehow just plain works, but more often than not, at the very least they tend to be ammo-picky and VERY particular about how the magazines are loaded (the "nest" style loaders seem to help tremendously, not to mention they're SUPER easy to use). But then there's all this other concern about the buffer thing wearing out in short order and having to keep a few on hand to replace them often, replacing the magazine catch so the mag sits up higher and feeds better, replacing the polymer feed ramp with a metal one because they wear out or even MELT, and so on ... and even then, no guarantees that the thing will work and stay working for any length of time. Given, like like cheap guns and I like fixing up stuff and making it work, but I prefer that I fix things and have them STAY fixed rather than constantly having to repair them. Definitely fun to shoot when it DOES work, because that trigger is just AWESOME, but just ... too much of an ongoing hassle.

The M&P, however, doesn't use any plastic buffer thingies that need periodic replacement. And supposedly, the Tempo barrel system allows it to function reliably with a wider range of bullet weights and loads, which is nice because I have a pile of .22 WMR ammo I'm stacked up over the years in allllllllll kinds of flavors. The M&P's got a very slim overall form like the PMR30, and the magazines even look/feel the same (the M&P mags are slightly wider, though, and won't fit in my "nest" style loader :( ), but overall has a more solid feel to it, and the grip angle is MUCH more comfortable to me - the PMR30 has a funky almost-vertical angle like my Chinese Tokarev clone, which isn't terrible but doesn't feel quite as "at home" in my hands as the M&P's angle. Smith & Wesson seems to have toned down their stupid-aggressive grip texture a bit with their newer models, so rather than being like 60-grit sandpaper, it's more like 220 grit - still probably not something I'd feel good having rub against my side or belly when carried IWB, and would probably chew up shirt material, but at least it's not something that rips your skin when you grip/shoot the thing like their initial M&P M2.0 models had. As a workaround, I might sacrifice a section of old bike inner tube later and stretch it over the grip if Talon Grips doesn't get around to making rubberized stick-on grips for the .22 Mag and 5.7 M&P's (they have the exact same grip shape/size, near as I can tell).

Anyway. As usual, just need to find the time to get my butt to the range to test this thing out and see if it's worth the hype ... and the price, being that it was a tad more expensive when new than the WMP (like around $600). Most reports I've seen from folks say it's pretty reliable, although there are a few here and there that say it can be picky at times (a lot of them are running a red dot, which always seems to throw a monkey wrench into the works on semi-auto rimfire pistols), and even the manual admits that reliability can suffer if you run the gun hot by firing a lot of rounds through it. (It's a gas-operated system, like the Walther CCP, which also gets hot when fired a lot, so it's kinda inherent to the design.) Probably a good thing, though, because .22 WMR ain't as cheap as .22 LR, so having to pause and let it cool down a few minutes should help keep me from burning up all my ammo so quickly. :)
 
#24 ·
Well ... that took me a month just to be massively disappointed. :(

The M&P .22 Magnum is a POS. Three kinds of ammo, 150 rounds, three different magazines. Nothing but malfunctions of every kind with all: failures to feed, failures to eject (stovepipe), and double-feeds (Type 3). Ammo tried was Armscor JHP, CCI Maxi-Mag FMJ, and Speer Gold Dot JHP, all 40gr rounds, which is supposedly what this thing prefers. The CCI was the only one that allowed me to fire about half of a magazine's worth without malfunctions, and that was with a LOT of jams at the beginning and end of the mag. Complete and utter crapola. Sure, when it fired, it was pretty accurate and had absolutely zero recoil with a fairly nice trigger, but ... UGH. I was spending more time trying to clear malfunctions than even trying to aim for accuracy.

Y'know, you'd think for a gun that costs 2x more than a PMR30, it would work twice as well. NOPE! This thing is literally HALF as reliable as Wifey's PMR30, with twice the malfunctions per magazine. On one hand, I do somewhat regret getting rid of the Walther WMP for the simple fact that the WMP just plain worked and never once had a hiccup, but on the other hand, it was freaking huge for only being a .22 WMR pistol and I couldn't hardly find a holster to fit it. The M&P .22 Mag was, I thought, going to be the best of both in that it had the slimness and light weight of the PMR30, and also with its capacity, but much better-built and with a better grip angle than the PMR30, a-la the WMP. Turns out it was the worst of both: more unreliable than the PMR30 and more expensive than the WMP, with nothing gained. Utterly disgusted.

Could I try more ammo through it in another range trip? Sure. Will I waste more time and money (.22 Mag ammo ain't cheap) trying to find an ammo brand/type that it likes, if such a thing exists? Or bother contacting S&W to fix this lemon under warranty, even though I'm starting to read a LOT of folks are having functional problems with these pistols? Nope. This thing needs to go buh-bye ASAP. Think I just need to accept the fact that 15 rounds is about the max limit of capacity for a reliable .22 WMR pistol, and if I want a reliably functional firearm in this caliber, I'm pretty well stuck with revolvers, lever-actions, and bolt-actions. :(
 
#25 ·
Your wife must have an old model of the pmr-30 I have the latest one and it literally will shoot whatever ammo you put in it about 9 different weights and 6 different brands And counting so far only a couple failure to feed during break in and I think it was because I was loading 30+1 in the chamber and it wasnt wanting to pick up the next round with 1 in the chamber and 30 in the mag after about 200 rounds it has fired flawlessly every time I pull the trigger
 
#26 ·
Depends on what you consider "old". From what I recall, I bought it new about 2 years ago. Been a minute since I shot the thing, but it does seem to like the Armscor stuff, and of course CCI, but it's kinda hit-or-miss with just about everything else. It'll like one kind of ammo on one occasion, and then the next time with the same gun and same ammo, it'll choke on it. I dunno.

Either way, the M&P 22 Mag was a dud, too, and was even less reliable than the PMR-30. The ONLY things in .22 Mag that I've found to actually be reliable are, of course, Ruger Single Sixes (never got my hands on a Single Nine, but I figure it'd be the same experience), the Walther WMP (which is HUGE for a rimfire gun that only holds 15 rounds, but it does run perfectly) and the NAA mini-revolvers ... the latter of which function well, but their short-barreled (under 4") versions tend to make the bullets tumble and keyhole through paper at 3 to 7 yards, so they're kind of meh. (I do love my little 6" Hog Leg, though. ZERO issues.) Just about everything else in that caliber, regardless of whether it's a semi-auto or a revolver, has given me issues at one point or another. Diamondback Sidekick (brand new, locked up solid in the first 9 rounds), Ruger LCR (didn't like to extract rounds very well), the aforementioned NAA minis (again, just with the ones under 4" barrel length), PMR-30, whatever ... always SOMETHING. I dunno if it's a curse of the caliber or if manufacturers just put less effort into quality control for their rimfire guns for some reason.

That said, I did just pick up another "project gun" in the form of a rusty stainless Taurus 941 (8-round .22 Mag). Being stainless, it's pretty easily cleaned up, and it only cost me $50 outta pocket. (Traded in my 2.5" NAA Ranger II because, again, it was keyholing, cylinder chambers were kinda sticky, and it already had a couple of light strikes within the first couple hundred rounds from being new.) Sooooo, as long as it doesn't have any light strike, extraction, or timing issues, I should be good to go with that one, at least. I do still have my eye on another PMR-30 at the LGS that's been staring back at me from within the case for the past couple months - a two-tone silver/black model - so I may still jump on that at some point, even if it does wind up giving me fits in trying to get it to run reliably.
 
#30 ·
I can at least add one more to the list of .22 Mag handguns that reliably go bang: my Taurus 941. Holds 8 rounds (which is always nice for a small revolver), goes pew-pew-pew, puts the holes in the paper where I want them to go, and poops out the empty casings pretty easily with a mild tap of the ejection rod ... although ejection could maybe be a LITTLE easier if I polished the chambers, but I'm not gonna mess with that just yet. I'm sure other .22 Mag revolvers like the Taurus 942 (I think it replaced the 941) or the ones offered by Smith & Wesson (no idea what model numbers they are) are equally reliable, but they're obviously a whole different beast than a semi-auto rimfire gun, so it ain't sayin' much.

There's been a couple of used M&P .22 Mags at the LGS that keep showing up on the shelves, disappearing for a couple of weeks, and then re-appearing as used guns for sale again, so I kinda get the impression I'm not the only one who's had issues with 'em.
 
#31 ·
Sooooo ... since I traded off the 941 a few weeks back, I've been looking for a second .22 Mag something-a-rather to round out the collection. Considered pretty much everything available - everything from pump-action and lever-action rifles to the CMR30 and PMR30, another WMP, and a multitude of revolvers - and I wound up again with ... another M&P .22 Mag. Brand new, came with FOUR magazines and a fancy lil' tan molle-looped bag that can hold 2 pistols (which I'll probably never use). Why did I go for this when the last one I had was a disappointment? Well, to be honest, I think I was too quick to give up on the previous one simply because I was so irked that the thing didn't run anywhere near as well as the Walther WMP. Sure, I could have opted to get another WMP instead - and they do make a two-tone silver/black one that I allllllmost ordered - but that thing was still just too darned big n' chonky for being just a .22 Mag, and it uses (like the PMR30) little polymer "bumpers" (recoil buffers) in the action that degrade/flatten out over time, which becomes a failure point and something for which eventually I won't be able to get replacements. And since the NAA Hog Leg I have that has always been a solid little pew-pew for me from day one is a revolver, it seemed redundant to get ANOTHER revolver. And a rifle, well ... .22 Mag in a long gun is basically just louder, more expensive .22 LR, at least for me, because I'm not shootin' gophers or prairie dogs or anything with it (just poking holes in paper, primarily), so it'd be kinda hard to justify one of those. Being that the M&P's Tempo barrel system doesn't use any "consumable" items like polymer recoil buffers or anything, in theory it should hold up better in the long run, and I did make the mistake of buying the first one riiiiiiiight after they were first released, which almost inevitably includes all those early-version bugs, of which there seemed to be a LOT of them during the initial run (lots of magazine-related issues, primarily).

Sooooo, we'll see if this one runs any better than the first one. If it doesn't, well, S&W will be getting a call and darned well better make it run right then, because they oughtta have those beta version bugs ironed out by this point. Only time I dealt with S&W's warranty repair stuff in the past was for a Victory .22 LR pistol: on the one hand, they were friendly and quick to get it sent back to me, but on the other hand, I was STILL having issues with that gun after I got it back (I wound up getting rid of it, as such), sooooo ... I dunno. Guess we'll hafta see how it behaves. Got all four mags loaded up with 25 rounds each (too hard to squish in the last 5 on each by hand, and I don't have a loader yet that'll work with these mags), with four different kinds of ammo: CCI Mini-Mag JHP's, Hornady Critical Defense, Speer Gold Dots, and Fiocchi JHP's (all 40 to 45 grain loads). Still have a giant pile of .22 Mag ammo built up over the years, but hopefully I don't have to burn through a LOT of it just to find out what ammo it likes, unless I'm lucky enough that this one decides it's not a picky eater and it'll gobble anything I feed it (like the WMP did).
 
#32 ·
Posted details in another thread, but in short ... this one RUNS! (y) (y)

Fed, fired, and ejected four different kinds of ammo through four different mags without one single malfunction at all. Absolutely a TOTAL opposite from the first M&P .22 Mag that I owned. Either I just got a lemon with that first one or they were still working the early-production bugs out, but whatever the case, this thing's a keeper. Super easy-to-work slide, crisp trigger break, cushy recoil, and VERY accurate (except with Speer Gold Dots - they grouped a couple inches lower and wider for some reason, and were MUCH louder with more flash). If I ever get to a point where hand strength becomes a problem and I need something with a slide that's easier to manipulate and a caliber with minimal recoil ... this one's going to be on my list of options. (I'll still probably opt for guns in a centerfire caliber first, though, simply because rimfire primers are just less reliable by nature.) Just need to get a magazine loader for it now, because I can only manage to squish in 25 rounds at a time by hand - those last 5 are too tight for me to do with my bare fingers, and I feel like I'm going to either dent or bend the cartridges. But I mean, heck, 25 rounds per mag is still a helluva lot of pew-pew time. I only ran a grand total of 100 rounds through it today - four mags with 25 rounds each of four different kinds of ammo I stuffed in there in advance at home - because loading those mags bare-handed is so time-consuming. Once I get a mag loader, I'll be able to put more through it next time without spending all of my range time stuffing rounds in there.

Anyway. All in all, S&W redeemed themselves with this one. I'm a happy camper. :)