Springfield Armory XD(M) 5.25 Competition Series

Shooting the 5.25

The fully adjustable rear sight is nicely recessed into the slide. Note the protruding cocking indicator at the rear, and ambidextrous magazine release.
The fully adjustable rear sight is nicely recessed
into the slide. Note the protruding cocking indicator at the rear, and ambidextrous
magazine release.

The trigger pull weighed for On Target’s test gun—a 5.25 9mm—averaged 6 lbs., 5.8 oz. on a Lyman digital scale. Trigger pull seems long, as does re-set, but it is smoo-ooth, and those who use it in competition speak well of it. Those who want to use it at the highest levels of speed-shooting matches can get a custom trigger job from Springfield Armory’s Custom Shop, which will have a lighter pull and a crisper reset. I, for one, however would recommend that a custom trigger pull that light be used only for competition, and not for personal defense/home defense/police or security duty.

Winchester 147-grain FMJ easily won top accuracy honors at 25 yards.
Winchester 147-grain FMJ easily won top accuracy honors at
25 yards.

Recoil? It’s a polymer frame 9mm, and “kick” is negligible. The hottest load we ran in it was Buffalo Bore’s 124-grain Gold Dot hollow point, rated for 1,300 foot seconds velocity and probably doing more than that out of the long 5.25” barrel. With standard pressure loads, you could pretty much watch the sights going back and forth as the slide cycled without appreciable lift. With the hotter stuff, the muzzle could be seen by the shooter to rise more, but was still back on target by the time the shooter’s finger had reset the trigger.

Our sample XD(M) 5.25 was tested with the three most popular 9mm Luger bullet weights. It didn’t care for MagTech 115-grain FMJ, which has given us some very accurate groups in other guns, posting a 4.85” group for all five shots, with four of those in 3.30” and the best three in a much more reassuring 1.55”. For a “street load,” we used Buffalo Bore’s very hot 124-grain JHP, with that Gold Dot bullet rated for 1,300 foot seconds. One errant shot enlarged the group to 4.50”, with the other four in 1.60” and the best three in 1.25”.
The 5.25 iteration of the XD(M) was designed first and foremost as a competition gun, and 147-grain subsonic seems to be the choice of champions. Winchester’s Unleaded FMJ in that format was the ticket: it punched a 1.55” 5-shot group, with four of those shots in 1.15” and the best three in 0.65”. All of the above groups were fired at 25 yards, and assuming twice the group size at twice the distance, all shots would be in the 4-inch, 10-X center ring of a Bianchi Cup target at 50 yards.

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