I’ve been waiting on the release of these two pistols since late 2013 so it’s nice to be able to finally tell the readers about them. The Remington new product writers seminar held in West Virginia in September gave us the opportunity to shoot this new RP series and get a feel for them. Of course, there are other new releases but you’ll have to wait a bit for those.

Shooting steel!

These are both full-size pistols. I would imagine at some point there will be a compact version. You may ask why no 40 caliber well to answer that question you have to look at sales of all guns in that caliber. Sales of the 40 cal have decreased this year and those in the know believe that trend will continue.

Specs of the new RP series:

Specs for the available models.

If you’ll take notice of the spec sheet of the models now available the 9mm version holds 18+1 rounds while the 45 acp holds 15+1 rounds! They did some serious design work to have these pistols hold that many rounds and still have a relatively small grip. In fact Remington says the grip should fit 95% of shooters. Having shot the RP9 a great deal that afternoon the grip feels great. The grip is a bit thicker than a 1911 of course but the grip angle feels very close. Each pistol also comes with a small, medium and large backstrap so you can customize the grip to fit you. The pistols all weigh in at 26 plus ounces.

Ambi slide release

The slide is stainless steel with a PVD coating. The frame is obviously polymer which has a reversible mag release. The sights have a standard notch rear with a flat front so the slide can be worked with one hand by placing the rear sight on the users belt or an edge of a jeans pocket. The front sight has a red insert which can be changed to the users preference.

Fiber optic front sight and in this case a tritium night sight

Over the hours I had to shoot this pistol I fired right at 300 rounds of Remington and Barnes ammo both fmj and jhp. There were no malfunctions of any kind. These guns were all production models. As I mentioned the grip felt very good.The contour of the grip allows for a high hold nearer to the center of the slide. This also mitigates recoil and just plain feels better than the lower grip many pistols have. The trigger was also good. The Glock trigger always felt a bit mushy to me with not much feedback. This trigger actually felt crisp with a good break and a short reset you can feel. The trigger actually felt better than most polymer pistols I’ve shot. The only other polymer pistol that comes close (trigger wise) is the FNS 9 long slide.

The targets they had set up for us were paper targets at 50 yards and steel dueling trees at 15 yards. I shot most of my rounds at the dueling tree. After some rounds to familiarize myself with the feel of this new pistol I was able to pickup speed and hit the targets without any difficulty. The accuracy was good for the situation we were shooting in. With the unexpected and unplanned release, I haven’t been able to shoot the usual 500 rounds at various distances and test for real accuracy. When writers sample guns are shipped I’ll write a follow-up article with more detailed information on accuracy with more detailed description of how well the RP9 shoots.

Overall I was pleased with the RP9 and the way it handles and shoots. It’s not a CCW gun for sure unless you happen to be a good size person.

As far as MSRP that remains to be finalized but it will be very close to the $500 mark putting the street price near $450 in my estimation. I realize some information isn’t complete but since the news was leaked and the date for announcing the RP series was moved up from late December until now I had to hurry and get this written. I spoke with Remington this morning and while the guns have not shipped to dealers yet there is plenty of stock on hand at Remington and the efforts to get them shipped will start quickly. I would imagine within a couple of weeks you’ll see them in stores. That’s just my estimation.

The bottom line is I think they made a good pistol that’s been well thought out, designed and tested. It should be rather popular especially with the price point I believe we’ll see.