USA – -(Ammoland.com)- It’s no secret that I’ve been a fan of Grand Power. Incredible machining quality, intelligent design, great triggers, and true ambidextrous controls are among the leading reason for my affinity towards them. The main feature that got me excited was the unique rotating-barrel action of the pistols. While this is not available in the .22lr and .380ACP models, in 9mm and larger it serves to reduce recoil and make for a truly unique recoil impulse. Slow-motion evidence of this can be seen in the short video below.
We’ve previously covered a number of Grand Power models including the plinking king K22S, striker-fired Q100, compact P11, PCC Stribog, and of course the competitive X-Calibur. The P1D offers a “Centurion”-type build profile with a slightly shorter barrel and slide on the same 15-round grip used for the larger models. Fans of appendix carry or those with shorter bodies will appreciate the pant-saving qualities of a slightly shorter slide. To get a closer look at the P1D as well as all the specs see the tabletop video below.
It is worth noting that over the years of collecting Grand Power pistols a few things have changed. The safety selectors have moved to a lower-profile serrated design. This hasn’t enhanced or detracted much from my own shooting experiences and I still tend to catch the leading edge of the left-side safety when holstering in a Crossbreed holster. Since it’s an agreed-upon fact that no gunfight has ever been won by holstering quicker than the other guy I’m not worried about it. The other change has been that some parts like slide stop/slide release have become MIM instead of stamped steel. Typically gun folk don’t care for metal injection-molded parts (MIM). Looking for a less lore-based evaluation I took to the internet where several scientific comparisons of stamped and MIM’d parts can be found. There doesn’t seem to be much of a consensus aside from that MIM permits for more precise shapes and stamping can be cheaper. MIM’d parts can be more brittle, but that depends entirely on the quality control of the process used. So far I haven’t had any MIM’d parts fail on me so I’m not complaining.
Other than a shorter barrel and slide and some manufacturing differences we wanted to see if this generation of Grand Power pistol would live up to its heritage of having low recoil, a crisp trigger, and the ability to cycle on just about any load we can feed it. To test this we hit the range and conducted the usual battery. Full-magazine plus one in the chamber (a basic test, yet some fail), “What’s for Dinner?”, a free-standing 5-shot group form 7 yards, and then gave our thoughts and experiences. The now-famous, “What’s for Dinner?” test involves running ten different loads of varying bullet designs, case materials, and projectile weights to see what the gun can chamber from slide lock, cycle, and then lock the slide open after last shot fired. Since each load generates it’s own recoil impulse and each pistol has it’s own feeding system design not all pistols can reliably cycle with all loads. The results of these tests for the Grand Power P1D as well as opinions from both the author and Teya can be seen in the Shooting Impressions video below.
About Graham Baates
“Graham Baates” is a pen name used by a 15-year active Army veteran who spent most of his time in the tactical side of the Intelligence community including tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. Post-Army Graham spent some time in the 3-Gun circuit before becoming a full-time NRA Certified defensive handgun instructor and now works as an industry writer while curating a YouTube channel and blog on the side. Visit Graham on Youtube .