I noticed a lack of content here in the review section so I figured I'd contribute with a brief(ish) review of a recent purchase of mine.
New in box initial impressions.
Being a fan of the CZ75 series of pistols for a while now the Sphinx SDP Compact had my interest as soon as it began popping up in magazines and in the hands of youtube gun review personalities. I have had quite a bit of experience in the past with both a CZ P-01 and an EAA Witness, neither were my preferred pistol (I shoot a lot of striker fired guns and HK DA/SA) but I can appreciate good engineering regardless of personal preferences.
The Sphinx SDP is imported by Kriss USA Inc. of Kriss Vector fame. The pistols themselves are built by the current manifestation of the Swiss firm Sphinx. Sphinx has quite a name for itself thanks to the 2000 and 3000 series of competition handguns; I'd say calling them the European STI of CZ75 based guns is an accurate comparison. They tend to have a very high level of fit and finish in addition to a very stand out angular look. That brings us to the current offering...
The Sphinx SDP Compact is an attempt to build a gun deserving of the Sphinx name that still remains in the realm of financial possibility for us working schmucks. The focus of this particular model appears to be decidedly more duty use with a spattering of competition rather than the pure race machines of the 2000 and 3000 series pistols.
The SDP uses a rather novel combination of materials for construction with a steel slide assembly, an aluminum upper frame, and a polymer grip and trigger guard. All three main components fit together so well the transition between materials is almost seamless. Picking the Sphinx SDP up for the first time gives the impression of a perfectly balanced all steel gun...which is a nice way of saying it's surprisingly heavy! Perhaps heavy is the wrong word, it feels dense. The weight is incredibly well balanced over the grip, and that grip rivals my much loved HK VP9. In the box three different sized wrap around grip panels are offered to suit the gun to your mitt size but I found the already installed medium to be about right.
Fit and finish are excellent with a slide to frame match that leaves zero perceptible wiggle. The story is much the same with the barrel in the slide, no side to side play what so ever. Racking the slide isn't quite the gliding-on-ball-bearings impression I've gotten with a few other guns but it is smooth. One of my major complaints with the CZ P-01 during a defensive pistol class was trying to slingshot the teeny slide in frame most CZ75 based guns feature with dirty sweaty hands. It can be hard to get a good purchase! Not so with the Sphinx SDP, the slide serrations are deep and angled and that slide is going to move! Barrel hood lockup feels like slamming a bank vault door shut, yet a firm rearward pull of the slide and the snap caps cycled easily.
This brings me to the controls. Don't bother trying to thumb the slide lock down, mine requires quite a bit of pressure and I generally prefer to sling-shot anyway. The single action trigger is fantastic. There is a bit of near effortless take-up and then it smoothly rolls through a crisp break somewhere in the range of 3lbs. Reset is crisp and audible, short enough I'd compare it with a SIG SRT, but lighter and smoother. The double action is...mediocre. This isn't as bad as I make it sound, as I find most double action pulls on DA/SA pistol to be somewhere between "awful" and "I can live with this". The Sphinx SDP decocks to a half-cock notch so this is where I dry fired from. There is a bit of take-up with almost no weight before you hit the real pull. From there the DA throw is rather short but suffers from a bit of grit and some very obvious stacking towards the end before the break. Not bad, not great, just good. It may actually wear in some with time and did in fact seem to smooth over some with the couple hundred dry fires I did leading up to my range time.
Speaking of range time...
I started off with a magazine fired at a casual pace to get used to the pistol at a distance of around 7 to 9 yards. I didn't keep a good eye on how far I was actually shooting but most of my practice is within that range. I took a few shots decocking each time to try the double action and found the bit of grit and stacking had no real effect thanks to the shortish throw, landing shots right in with the following single action pulls. The next few boxes were mostly "failure to stop" drills starting with the gun decocked. The above picture is a testament to this guns "shootability".
(continued...)
New in box initial impressions.
Being a fan of the CZ75 series of pistols for a while now the Sphinx SDP Compact had my interest as soon as it began popping up in magazines and in the hands of youtube gun review personalities. I have had quite a bit of experience in the past with both a CZ P-01 and an EAA Witness, neither were my preferred pistol (I shoot a lot of striker fired guns and HK DA/SA) but I can appreciate good engineering regardless of personal preferences.
The Sphinx SDP is imported by Kriss USA Inc. of Kriss Vector fame. The pistols themselves are built by the current manifestation of the Swiss firm Sphinx. Sphinx has quite a name for itself thanks to the 2000 and 3000 series of competition handguns; I'd say calling them the European STI of CZ75 based guns is an accurate comparison. They tend to have a very high level of fit and finish in addition to a very stand out angular look. That brings us to the current offering...
The Sphinx SDP Compact is an attempt to build a gun deserving of the Sphinx name that still remains in the realm of financial possibility for us working schmucks. The focus of this particular model appears to be decidedly more duty use with a spattering of competition rather than the pure race machines of the 2000 and 3000 series pistols.
The SDP uses a rather novel combination of materials for construction with a steel slide assembly, an aluminum upper frame, and a polymer grip and trigger guard. All three main components fit together so well the transition between materials is almost seamless. Picking the Sphinx SDP up for the first time gives the impression of a perfectly balanced all steel gun...which is a nice way of saying it's surprisingly heavy! Perhaps heavy is the wrong word, it feels dense. The weight is incredibly well balanced over the grip, and that grip rivals my much loved HK VP9. In the box three different sized wrap around grip panels are offered to suit the gun to your mitt size but I found the already installed medium to be about right.
Fit and finish are excellent with a slide to frame match that leaves zero perceptible wiggle. The story is much the same with the barrel in the slide, no side to side play what so ever. Racking the slide isn't quite the gliding-on-ball-bearings impression I've gotten with a few other guns but it is smooth. One of my major complaints with the CZ P-01 during a defensive pistol class was trying to slingshot the teeny slide in frame most CZ75 based guns feature with dirty sweaty hands. It can be hard to get a good purchase! Not so with the Sphinx SDP, the slide serrations are deep and angled and that slide is going to move! Barrel hood lockup feels like slamming a bank vault door shut, yet a firm rearward pull of the slide and the snap caps cycled easily.
This brings me to the controls. Don't bother trying to thumb the slide lock down, mine requires quite a bit of pressure and I generally prefer to sling-shot anyway. The single action trigger is fantastic. There is a bit of near effortless take-up and then it smoothly rolls through a crisp break somewhere in the range of 3lbs. Reset is crisp and audible, short enough I'd compare it with a SIG SRT, but lighter and smoother. The double action is...mediocre. This isn't as bad as I make it sound, as I find most double action pulls on DA/SA pistol to be somewhere between "awful" and "I can live with this". The Sphinx SDP decocks to a half-cock notch so this is where I dry fired from. There is a bit of take-up with almost no weight before you hit the real pull. From there the DA throw is rather short but suffers from a bit of grit and some very obvious stacking towards the end before the break. Not bad, not great, just good. It may actually wear in some with time and did in fact seem to smooth over some with the couple hundred dry fires I did leading up to my range time.
Speaking of range time...
I started off with a magazine fired at a casual pace to get used to the pistol at a distance of around 7 to 9 yards. I didn't keep a good eye on how far I was actually shooting but most of my practice is within that range. I took a few shots decocking each time to try the double action and found the bit of grit and stacking had no real effect thanks to the shortish throw, landing shots right in with the following single action pulls. The next few boxes were mostly "failure to stop" drills starting with the gun decocked. The above picture is a testament to this guns "shootability".
(continued...)
