The last couple of years has been a real ride for this writer as well as Remington of course. Since the first post on the R-51 until the recent release of the R-51 Gen2 we’ve all watched and waited for this re-engineered pistol. Hats off to Remington for sticking with it and taking care of the customers not only in the interim but replacing the old R-51 with the Gen2 before releasing any to the public for new sales.

I decided awhile back when I got the new R-51 I was going to test it pretty hard. After the release I watched some of the video and print articles to see what some others opinions would be. Some good, some not so good and the ever present reviewer who hated it before they even saw it. I’m afraid I don’t operate that way. I want any review to be fair and as impartial as possible. The only difference is this one would be firing 1000 rounds over some weeks time. That said lets get to it!

R51 with Galco holster.

I won’t go over the usual details and the origin of the design etcetera except to say it uses the Pederson action. Most everyone is already familiar with the particulars so lets stick with performance, reliability and wear. I used the 9mm ammo I had on hand as well as purchasing some rounds from Cor-Bon which were +P, SIG V-Crown JHP, some rounds with a copper bullet and of course lots of ball ammo some of which was Tul-Ammo. I never shoot the steel cased ammo so I just bought 150 rounds of those. The last batch of rounds was a large plastic bag of JHPs of various types, ages and weight. These would be fired in no particular order and unsorted. I thought that these might cause some problems if anything would.

I also did this short video clip to give you all an idea of how short the takeup is on the new R51. It also breaks clean.

Of course before going to the range the first time I checked and lubed the pistol. One thing i noticed is the magazines now have a thicker polymer base plate. This was a welcome change since the first model had a rather thin baseplate and flexed a bit. Not so with these magazines.

During my range sessions I averaged about 200 up to 300 rounds per trip until all 1000 rounds were fired. So, what’s the final report? Well this Gen 2 fired everything I loaded into it including the old 9mm mixed rounds. The only problem I had was with TulAmmo which isn’t all that surprising. It just didn’t like feeding these so I’d say stay away from steel cased TulAmmo in the R51. I don’t normally use this ammo anyway and only purchased it for this test. Of all the JHP the R-51 seemed to like the +P rounds the best. They functioned well and gave the best accuracy. The second best accuracy was with the SIG V-Crown 9mm. Being a small pistol I shot most rounds from 7 to 10 yards. The best group from 10 yards was 1.17 inches which is more than acceptable for a defense pistol.

I cleaned the pistol at 500 rounds and 1000 rounds otherwise I would give it a bit of lube every few hundred rounds. The slide was a bit rough to manipulate at first but smoothed out at about 150 rounds.

After firing all of my rounds I disassembled the R-51 to check for any unusual wear and found nothing amiss. Some finish was worn but nothing remarkable. The photos above show the internals for your inspection.

It seems that all of the time and effort Remington put into fixing the design paid off. It functioned fine except for the TulAmmo and showed no unusual wear on the internal parts.

As far as holsters DeSantis, CrossBreed and Galco have them on the shelves at your local gun shop. Galco also has mag pouches for the R-51.

Remington R-51