Two Staccato P Duo Semiauto Pistols Tested: Is Light Always

Apr 30, 2023

(Muzzle Flash Media photo)

We’ve all heard the old wives’ tales about how lightweight, aluminum versions of steel duty guns are more difficult to manage. It's the age-old compromise of portability versus shootability. I recently reviewed two Staccato P Duos to see if the old stories held true with modern materials and shooting techniques.

Let's start with the tale of the tape. Both pistols are 2011-style pistols, meaning the grip module is polymer and houses a magazine of 16 to 24 rounds, depending on what the shooter wants. Both are single-action, recoil-operated, swinging link semiauto pistols with 4.4-inch bull barrels housed in their all-steel slides. Both are 8 inches long and 1.3 inches wide, putting them in the "duty-sized" pistol category, at least for me. Both also have very good triggers, which is important when making direct comparisons between pistols. Where the difference lies in these pistols is the metal frame that houses the firing components and the dustcover. On one pistol, it's aluminum, and on the other, it's steel. They look identical, but one weighs 28 ounces, and one weighs 33 ounces. Neither one is a super-lightweight, but does shaving 5 ounces off a pistol make any sort of practical difference? That's what I wanted to know.

I started by inspecting, cleaning, and lubricating both pistols. Look, I know that it's become popular for reviewers to get pistols to fail by running them dry and dirty, but there's time for that silliness down the road. For this test, I wanted both pistols starting on firm footing.

Staccato knows a thing or two about building solid pistols, so there wasn't any manufacturing debris or metal chips in either gun. Disassembly was simple, and the Dawson Precision Tool-Less guide rod used in both guns is a thing of genius. For those not familiar, the tool-less guide rod allows the shooter to disassemble the pistol without using a bent paper clip to hold the gun open like on most other bull-barrel, 1911-style pistols. It utilizes an internal lever that folds up from the guide rod body to hold everything in place, allowing for easy disassembly in the field. The Dawson Precision Tool-Less guide rod eliminates my biggest gripe about bull barrel, 1911-style pistols and has helped to change my mind about the fitness of bull barrel 1911s for duty use.

(Muzzle Flash Media photo)

For the test, I wanted to make it as simple as possible. Since it's impossible to remove subjectivity completely, I decided to embrace it. I compared actual carry of the two pistols, recoil between the two pistols, then a comparison of split times between the pistols. I thought about shooting both pistols against a marked straight line to measure the actual recoil of both pistols, but it didn't really work out like I had intended, so I went with split times.

There is a 5-ounce difference between the pistols, and while that might not seem like that much of a difference, it was. After carrying each of the pistols all day, every day for several days at a time, I can honestly tell you that the 5 ounces makes a difference over the course of a workday. I have multiple 6mm to 9mm bulges in my spine that cause not only pain in my back but also weakness and numbness in my leg. That 5 ounces made a noticeable difference in my ability to move about relatively pain-free after the first 7 to 9 hours of carry. Test one goes to the aluminum-framed Staccato.

Test two was subjective. I shot the hell out of both pistols with every grain and every velocity of 9mm ammo that I could get my hands on, including several +P offerings that I thought the aluminum Staccato might struggle with. I put over 800 rounds through each pistol and experienced one malfunction: a failure to go fully into battery at approximately round 740 in the steel pistol. Drawing and tracking with both pistols felt identical. If I slowed down and really tried to "feel" the guns move, then I could tell a difference, but at full speed, I could barely tell the difference.

Not shooting on a timer, recoil was similar, even with hot ammo. I mounted dots on both pistols: a Trijicon RMR and an Aimpoint Acro so that I could track dot bounce between the two. With a good grip, utilizing a sound isosceles stance, I felt very fast with both guns. The trigger on the aluminum pistol broke at 4 pounds, 3 ounces, and the steel pistol's trigger broke at 4.6 ounces, so at full speed, there was no appreciable difference between the two. As I said, when I slowed down and focused on my accuracy, there was a difference, with the aluminum-framed pistol moving a little more than the steel pistol. This was also noticeable from a rest, when I was focusing on trigger and dot. Test two went to the steel gun, albeit barely.

The third test was the most objective even though it does depend on the shooter's skill level. Both pistols were shot on a steel silhouette at 10 yards, and a timer was used to check the split times between shots. I utilized both shot pairs and multiple shot strings since I was attempting to compare mean time between shots. I used steel rather than paper because I was interested in acceptable accuracy over 10-ring precision. I shot both pistols and compared times after I was already warmed up because I wanted to get a good look at the pistol's capabilities rather than my own.

Now, I am not a world-class shooter, although I’m pretty good. So keep in mind that I’m starting on target, and I already know how many rounds I’m going to shoot whether I hit the target on the follow up or not, so these splits are not indicative of what I would do in a competition or in a defensive scenario. They were shot purely for time and to compare the pistols.

With the steel pistol, I was able to average .12 splits, and with the aluminum pistol, I was able to manage .14 splits.

This gives the steel pistol the advantage in two out of the three categories that I compared. Still, if I had to choose one to carry on duty, I think that I’d go with the aluminum version. The weight savings on my belt mean more to me than the very small advantage the steel gun had in subjective recoil or the .02 difference in split times. If I were going to compete with it, I’d go with the steel gun, even if it was just a placebo. However, for daily use as a duty pistol, I think that the aluminum version is the way.

As a last note, even though this was a comparison rather than a review, I did bench both pistols at 25 yards. They battled back and forth, but the steel pistol edged the aluminum pistol out in accuracy with a smallest group of .9 inches center to center with, of all things, the Federal Training Syntech Match 147-grain load. Neither gun shot an average group larger than 2 inches, so take this data for what you will. You can't go wrong with either pistol.