I’ve been a big fan of the work thats done over at Floyd’s Custom Shop for several years now and I have to say the porting they are doing for the Smith&Wesson M&P Competitor has worked out really well. It’s one of the fastest and easiest port jobs on the market because the cuts in the slide just line up to the cuts that already come on the Competitor. The debate so far is a question of the effectiveness of ports on the side of the barrel. That’s what this test set out to determine.
For this test I used the Garmin Xero chronograph to test velocity. You can find these units at places like PSA or Brownells and Optics Planet. Personally my advice for anyone looking for an easy to use, compact and acurate chronograph I’d go Brownells or Optics Planet because you can use 360TS as a promo code to get a little bit off the cost. See, I had to test not just muzzle rise but also velocity because people think the side ports really only dump all the velocity which is why it feels like the recoil is reduced.
In order to test the muzzle rise on the Competitor I of course busted out the Mantis X10. I don’t have a promo code for Mantis but hell, use my link if you are going to buy one. The Mantis is not only the best dry fire tool on the market but it also does all kinds of great stuff for live fire training as well. I can run and analyze a ton of drills, record data on my draw and trigger pull as well as track recoil. I cant recommend the Mantis enough.
Using 115gr ammo from RBS going back and fourth between the Floyds ported barrel and a barrel from Apex I found the results pretty interesting. The Apex barrel which isn’t ported had an average muzzle rise of 5.13° while the Floyds ported barrel averaged 2.72° of muzzle rise. Clearly the side ports done by Floyd’s Custom Shop are reducing recoil or muzzle rise depending on how you want to word it. The big question is does this come at the expense of velocity.
That same 115gr ammo averaged 1149.4fps from the Apex barrel while the ported barrel from Floyd’s averaged 1133.8fps. That gives us 15.6fps reduction in velocity between non ported and ported barrels. In my opinion a drop of less than 16fps is negligible. The projectile isn’t losing enough power to make a difference. I think this settles the debate over the effectiveness of side ports but at the end of the day thats up to the end user to decide.
I would also like to add a little personal experience on the subject of accuracy. I’ve been shooting this gun for a while now with both barrels. I generally don’t go past about 30 yards with it because why would I. Its somewhat unrealistic to go too much farther than that with a pistol. Yes it can be done but it’s not something someone is going to do in a real world application. In my experience I haven’t seen much deviation in accuracy at that 25-30 yard range while using the ported barrel. Mind you the ported barrel is the stock S&W and the Apex is a drop in, not a gunsmith fit barrel.
In the end the option to port a barrel isn’t going to be for everyone. Some people love ported guns and some people don’t. All I’m here for is to test these things out and give my results, outlook and perspective so that people can make those decisions for themself. For me, the Competitor is a great gun to port and the only option in my mind is Floyd’s Custom Shop.
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