Smith & Wesson’s NEW M&P EZ… Two Thumbs UP!

For twenty years now I've looked for an arthritis sufferer-friendly pistol for my mom.  Without the strength to rack a slide, she can't operate semi-autos.  Add in the inability to pull a double-action revolver trigger, or even cock a revolver without significant difficulty, her options have remained pretty limited.  She's not alone when it comes to the less-abled who want a handgun for self-defense.

When the folks at CI Shooting Sports asked me about the new Smith & Wesson M&P EZ, I knew only what I'd seen at The Truth About Guns.  Jeremy had test driven it and liked it a lot.  I spent a lot of time with Jeremy at last year's NRA Convention and while he's young, he knows his stuff and writes what he finds – good or bad.  

The CI folks put the S&W EZ in my paws.  It felt light, with a smallish grip.  I didn't care for the external safety, but that's just one of my personal quirky features.  I'm told it's also available in a non-external safety version. 

S&W also equipped it with a big grip safety that looked intimidating, but I didn't even notice it in a firing grip.  Talk about unobtrusive.

The grip felt quite comfortable, albeit a tiny bit on the small side for my average size manpaws.  

To make manipulating the slide easier, the gun has a very mild-mannered recoil spring, and S&W thoughtfully cut the slide to provide LOTS of purchase for fingertips to make running that slide as easy as pie.  And that's not even counting the bevelled cuts at the rear of the slide.

After getting a feel for how easy the gun manipulated, I checked it once more to re-verify unloaded and then dry-fired it. 

"Wow!  Nice trigger," I thought to myself.

Even before I handed back the piece, I thought to myself, "This is a gun for my mom."

I wanted to put it through its paces to see if it shot as well as it felt.  So they hooked me up with their loaner gun.  

CI Shooting Sports in Normal, IL is a new, modern indoor shooting range with a large firearms and accessory showroom.  They also have a large public safety uniform and equipment selection, along with a huge section dedicated to 5.11 stuff.  In short, I find lots of things I can spend money on everytime I visit.  Unfortunately, my lovely bride keeps me on a short leash.

As part of their indoor shooting range, CISS stocks scores of rental guns – rifles, pistols, and support-braced pistols that look a lot like short-barrelled rifles.  Yeah, those are pretty cool. You can try before you buy – or simply just dabble in some really cool new guns with friends.

Among those rentals, the S&W M&P EZ awaits anyone who wants to shoot it. 

Here's how Smith and Wesson describes this new pistol:

Built for personal protection and every-day carry, the M&P380 Shield EZ is chambered in 380 Auto and is designed to be easy to use, featuring an easy-to-rack slide , easy-to-load magazine, and easy-to-clean design. Built for personal and home protection, the innovative M&P380 Shield EZ pistol is the latest addition to the M&P M2.0 family and provides an easy-to-use protection option for both first-time shooters and experienced handgunners alike.

Their description does not make any over-the-top boasts. In my experience shooting it for the better part of an hour plus, the new pistol lives up to every word of S&W's promo.

Here's what I found when I shot it.

Right out of the gate, I liked the light weight.  Smith says it weighs about 18 ounces, which would make it fairly unobtrusive for everyday carry.  It seemed well-balanced and the big (giant?), three-dot, all-white sights proved easy to see, even in the modest light on the indoor range using my 50-year-old eyeballs.

Loading the 8-round magazines came very easy, thanks to the knobs on the sides of the magazine.  Those knobs add a nice grip purchase for one's fingers to make it easy for the gun's users to easily drop in loaded rounds without fighting the magazine.  It's akin to loading a Ruger .22 target pistol or a Walther P22 magazine.  In other words, the magazines are very novice-shooter friendly.  And very friendly for arthritic fingers or those with disabilities.  Yeah, they could have made this gun hold a lot more ammo, but the designers went for easy of use, not maximum lead-throwing in one load.

I loaded it up and proceeded to shoot the Dot Torture drill at 5 yards.  My interest in handgunning involves defensive gun uses and five yards easily encompasses the overwhelming majority of civilian DGUs.  Shooting that drill would give me an opportunity to test the gun for reliability, ease of use, and general handling – even when firing from strong- and support-hand only grips, multiple targets and bringing it to bear and firing from low ready.  At the same time, I can gauge my ability to manipulate this gun compared to how well I shoot the same drill with my everyday carry piece.

For my first time shooting the pistol, out of 50 rounds, I dropped five rounds from perfect (targets are 2" circles).  Of late, that's about normal or a one more less-than-perfect shot than usual.  Yeah, I need a lot more practice.  But I won't blame the M&P EZ for those misses.  Those were all me.  The perceived recoil was quite mild with factory full-metal jacket ammunition.  Later I snuck in a couple of magazines of Hornady Critical Defense hollow-points and they shot flawlessly and without an appreciable difference in muzzle blast or recoil.

I left my fish scale at home, but I'd estimate the trigger broke at about 4 pounds.  The S&W trigger seemed to shoot just a bit heavier (and arguably smoother) than the Glock 3.5-pound target trigger I traditionally shoot.  In short:  very impressive for a factory trigger.  The New York City PD would never allow it, but unlike NYC, we don't have idiot politicians here telling us we need 32-pound triggers in our handguns to prevent negligent discharges.

My specimen shot consistently to the left about an inch or so at five yards.  I attributed that to the gun.  (And when I shot a second review on a Sig, that gun hit dead-on for me).  For a final owner, the rear sights on the M&P EZ are windage adjustable.  Even without tweaking the rear sight, the little gun shot well within minute-of-bad guy. 

For those worried about the little gun's ability to make hits further out, I had no problems making center-of-mass hits on a life-sized bad guy at 15 yards.  After another reload, and taking my time in aiming and trigger control, the gun continued to impress.  While bearing down for maximum accuracy, I drilled eight good headshots out of eight rounds fired also at 15 yards.  I consider myself about average in shooting ability, so that means you can probably make those same headshots with this gun as well.  Some serious shooters could probably drill an eyeball at that range with it, but that's not me. 

In a nutshell, in competent hands, this little M&P EZ piece can keep up with its full-sized brethren.  For a grandma gun, that says a lot.

The gun fires with no magazine, and a user can load and fire a single round without a magazine in the gun without too much difficulty.  The magazine itself requires a decent strike against the baseplate to seat on a closed slide.  Or, for those less abled, pushing the baseplate down on a hard surface one can seat the fully loaded 8-round magazine with an audible click.  (FYI, the gun ships with a pair of 8-round mags).  Alternatively, downloading by one made magazine seating easier.

Yes, the .380 only hits with a little over half the energy as the 9mm.  At the same time, Hornady's modern XTP hollowpoints (and Fiocchi Extrema XTPs where you can find them) deliver some of the best performance in the .380 caliber of defensive ammo.  The XTPs perform quite well against soft tissue and pretty consistently deliver 12" of penetration in ballistic media, suggesting adequate penetration against two-legged predators.  At the same time, they seldom grossly overpenetrate like some .380 Auto self-defense loads – and full metal jacket rounds.  

And a good hit with a .380 beats a miss with a .45, and it darn sure beats most any non-ballistic or empty-handed options for a seasoned citizen against a younger, abler, faster and far more aggressive attacker.

The gun field strips into four pieces relatively easily – and intuitively for the firearms-savvy.  It goes back together just as easily (I didn't need to consult any YouTube videos or the manual).  Honestly though, for most users, they'll buy this gun, load it and put in a nightstand somewhere in case the worst happens and there it shall remain.  While that's suboptimal on several fronts, that's reality for a lot of folks.  Even so, if grandma picks it up and does her part, the EZ should go bang and deliver hits on target if the worst happens.

Specs

Caliber: .380 ACP
Capacity: 8+1 rounds
Action: internal hammer fired, single action
Overall Length: 6.7 inches
Barrel Length: 3.675 inches
Height: 4.98 inches
Width: 1.15 inches (1.43 at widest point across the safeties)
Weight: 18.5 ounces
Sights: white 3-dot sights, rear adjustable for windage
Materials: polymer frame, stainless steel slide and barrel with Armornite Finish
External Safeties: grip safety, tactile loaded chamber indicator, optional ambidextrous thumb safety

MSRP: $399 (available now at many gun ships including CI Shooting Sports in Bloomington-Normal, IL)

Ratings (out of five stars):

Reliability * * * * *
Flawless function while dirty.

Accuracy * * * *
Point of impact was a bit off in my specimen, but the EZ is an accurate shooter that’s easy to shoot accurately.  If the windage is off for you, you can adjust the rear sight or your local gun shop would probably do it for you for little or no charge if you bought it from them.  If my specimen had shot dead on, I'd give it 5 stars for its intended purpose.

Ease of Use * * * * *
The M&P380 Shield EZ nails it. It’s easy to operate in every way it can be.  I could carp about the full mag seating against the closed slide, but that's just nit-picking. 

Trigger * * * * 1/2
The factory trigger on this pistol is amazing – very comparable to Glock's target trigger for those familiar with that common tweak.  No, it's not a tuned 1911, but this isn't a Les Baer gun. 

Value * * * * *
An autopistol from a major manufacturer that will work reliably and effectively as a self-defense piece for those without a lot of grip strength and/or small hands?  That's priceless right there.  At under $400, that's very good value.

Overall * * * * *
Well-deserving of a full five stars. In a world of bold sales claims, the EZ delivers good hits with mild recoil.  Its ease of use for the less-abled cinches the deal.  Bigtime.

I see one of these guns in my mom's future.

Fair disclosure:  In recent days, I've read that some hot ammo in the S&W EZ can cause the external safety to actuate on its own when the gun is fired.  Smith is offering a no-cost upgrade for guns made before April 4, 2018 at no charge.  For more on this, visit this link.  I shot this gun in late March so it was clearly one of the guns affected.  In 16 rounds of zippy XTPs, I experienced no malfunctions, but that's not the full 50 rounds of real-deal self-defense ammo I'd ordinarily shoot if I were going to use that ammo and this gun for my self-defense.