Springfield Armory XDs 9mm review

Here’s our first look and short review of the Springfield Armory XDs 9mm, featuring GunUp the Magazine Managing Editor Shelley Rae.

I also took a turn shooting the XDs, and to be honest I liked it. Of course, I liked the XDs .45 last year as well, and my first thought when I shot it was “when will this be available in a 9mm?” It seems that I wasn’t the only one wondering that, and the new XDs 9mm should be available by the end of Q1, start of Q2.

To make a good comparison, I shot the XDs back to back with the Springfield EMP 9mm. The EMP is a single stack 9mm in the style of a 1911, it has an aluminum frame and of course the rest of the 1911 options you’d expect. When compared side by side to the XDs, the polymer XDs is lighter and would likely make for a better carry choice, as 1911s that size don’t tend to run super well. The XDs shot exactly like I expected to, with almost exactly the kind of recoil you’d anticipate from a 9mm polymer gun in that size range.

The XDs 9mm will likely be the natural rival of the M&P Shield, with still no competition from Glock, who, in a fairly baffling decision decided to release another sub compact .45 instead of the single stack 9mm that everyone actually wants. Compared head to head with the Shield, the XDs wins in the trigger category and the controls category. Everything’s a bit bigger and easier to manipulate on the XDs. The trigger is like all XD triggers, fairly nice and easy to shoot out of the box. To be fair to the Shield, S&W did design it with the maximum thinness in mind, which made certain decisions about the controls inevitable.

Whether or not the XDs will knock the Shield off its perch as king of the slim 9s remains to be seen, but the new offering from Springfield will no doubt wind in a lot of holsters and a lot of pockets.