Springfield Armory was out in force at the 2017 NRA Annual Meetings in Atlanta, Georgia. They brought the winner of Night of the Saint Katelyn competition, the Springfield Armory Saint AR-15 itself, and their brand new to market pistol, the Springfield Armory XDE. They brought all of their older guns, too, but the big deal was the XDE.
The Springfield Armory XDE is a hammer-fired DA/SA, single stack 9mm, concealed carry handgun. Say goodbye to the passive safeties you’ve come to love on your XD series handguns, because you won’t find any on this new polymer pistol, even though the older XD pistols will retain them.
Both the trigger safety and the palm/grip safety are gone, and have been replaced by a thumb safety/decocker and a long double action trigger pull. And as you likely already know, the first pull is the DA shot, and the rest of the shots take place in single action with a much shorter, crisp trigger.
In all honesty, I like the length of the trigger in double action, and thought the SA trigger was fantastic. Though, I spoke to plenty of other people who were not fans of the long DA trigger. One of them even said that to remedy that, he’d carry it cocked and locked in single action.
I can say that there are some things on it that I liked off the bat, and some other things that I didn’t like so much. Of course, I have not fired it yet, so keep that in mind for the remainder of the article.
First, I tend to be a fan of DA/SA actions. The pull on the double action trigger, while long, wasn’t incredibly heavy. I haven’t had a chance to measure it, however, so I don’t have a number for you. Also, the controls and thumb safety were well within where they should be, and the decocker was easy to manipulate, as opposed to some others on the market.
The main thing I did not like was the overall shape of the trigger. Because there is no trigger safety, that gives way to designers to have a trigger that is very curved. Because it has such a curve, I wasn’t able to get my trigger finger to rest where it’s supposed to sit.
That would likely be a deal breaker for me, because I’m a firm believer that trigger finger placement is an important shooting mechanic that cannot be ignored. My best guess as to why this is, is because my fingers are much bigger than the average shooter’s. So take that with a grain of salt.
Here is a video of Rob Leatham introducing the Springfield Armory XDE:
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