Quick Coitus With the Gen5

As the big news about the Gen5 Glock begins to fade into the background scatter, we thought we’d take some time to reflect on it. If you want to see a full breakdown, hit us up on RECOILweb or give CONCEALMENT Issue 8 a hard look. Glock made some incremental improvements with the Gen5, such as replacing flat-wire springs with their coiled cousins as well as switching up the look and feel. But same girl in a different dress it ain’t. As you’ll see, it’s considerably closer to its baby brothers.

With this fifth generation, Glock set out to do several things:

> Improve handling and ergonomics
> Increase reliability
> Up the accuracy

Handling and Ergonomics
The most obvious actual improvement is the truly ambidextrous slide stop. It’s also the part that means your new Gen5 may not perfectly fit into your current holster. Fear not, the Gen5 has proven to be a popular pistol, much to the chagrin of their competitors.

We knew that once the finger grooves were eliminated, people would need to find something else to complain about. And we weren’t disappointed. Though the grooves are gone, the front cutout that can aid in grasping the magazine with a particularly dirty gun is the new point of contention. By far this is the largest complaint about the Gen5 that we’ve heard, followed by outrage that Glock didn’t see fit to include forward serrations on the slide.

Reliability
To that end, we bring up reliability. Though we’re told the mean rounds between stoppages (MRBS) is significantly higher with the Gen5 than any previous model, this isn’t something that we can reasonably test for ourselves. Real testing costs a considerable amount of time and money, not to mention it’s rather boring and tedious.

Plurality of the anecdote does not data make, but when other generations of Glocks were released, some problems reared their ugly heads from the outset; early Glocks were prone to cracking when using rounds with a high-pressure curve and Gen4 Glocks were famously great at stuffing brass directly into your face and choking on Walmart ammo. We’ve seen no such complaints regarding the actual functioning of the Gen5.

Up the Accuracy
The Glock 43 is less a tiny Gen5 than the Gen5 is an enlarged Glock 43. We’re reminded of ’50s science-fiction movies where a laser or potion makes someone or something larger, but with less misogyny and cigarettes. All of the internal changes that were made with Glocks 42 and 43 are present in the Gen5 guns — safety plunger redesign, a pin subtraction, and importantly, the trigger.

While bench tests pitting the new purportedly more accurate Gen5 barrels against the legacy design didn’t lead us to any staggering conclusions, we did find new shooters took more quickly to the Gen5. We strongly suspect it’s more about the trigger than anything else. We would argue that the Gen5 OEM trigger is the best Glock has ever produced. While it’s not ZOMG-amazing, if Glock released this one 30 years ago we’d have heard far fewer half-joking remarks comparing it to a staple gun.