Smith & Wesson Silently Release CSX Pistol

Smith & Wesson has just silently released the new 9mm CSX pistol for concealed carry, and it’s finally breaking the mold of the played-out micro-9 concept.

 
This last year has seen a slew of new “micro-9s” hit the market. Designed for concealed carry, these pistols were typically polymer-framed, striker-fired and had double-stack magazines, and manufacturers were mostly competing to see who could make the smallest gun with the highest capacity. Excluding the original model that started this trend, the market has been saturated with copycat designs, some of which innovated upon the concept while others brought nothing new to the table. Perhaps sensing that the market couldn’t handle yet another generic micro-9, Smith & Wesson’s newest gun has finally broken the mold and brought something different to the CCW pistol market. Silently released only weeks before SHOT Show, possibly by accident, the new S&W CSX 9mm is here to rock the boat.

If you couldn’t tell by looking at it, the S&W CSX pistol’s greatest departure from standard micro-9s is the fact that it is hammer-fired rather than striker-fired. There are pros and cons to each system, and it ultimately boils down to personal preference, but with the current handgun market dominated by striker-fireds the CSX pistol is a nice breath of fresh air. The CSX is a single-action-only gun, and like the 1911 it has a manual thumb safety that facilitates carrying “cocked and locked”. This feature alone should inherently give the CSX a better trigger than any striker-fired pistol on the market today. The thumb safety is ambidextrous, and the flat-faced trigger also has an integrated blade-style safety.

The next feature on the CSX that sets it apart from existing micro-9s is its aluminum alloy frame. This should help increase the pistol’s durability while also mitigating recoil due to the extra weight, but at less than 20 ounces the CSX pistol should still be comfortable to carry. It also features textured polymer inserts in the form of front and backstraps, the latter of which are interchangeable for different sizes. These help the user find a proper balance between ergonomics and concealability.

Chambered for 9mm, the CSX pistol can feed from either flush-fitting 10-round or extended 12-round magazines, and the gun includes one of each. It has a 3.1-inch barrel and is about .95-inches thick at its widest, making it competitively compact compared to other micro-9s. Other features on the CSX pistol include front slide serrations and metal 3-dot sights.

The CSX pistol currently has no provisions for mounting accessories or optics, but these features will likely be added in future iterations. These guns are in the wild at this point, and you may find one for sale, but they likely won’t be a common sight on store shelves until after this year’s SHOT Show. It has an MSRP of $599, and its release is hopefully a sign that we will be graced with more innovative small arms designs in 2022.

For more information, please visit smith-wesson.com.

More Micro-Compact 9mm Pistols

• The Springfield Hellcat
• The SIG P365
• The Ruger MAX-9
• The Taurus GX4
• The Kimber R7 MAKO

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