NOTES:

There has been a talk of talk about the S&W Sigma line of pistols. Much of this talk comes from people who have not fired the Sigma or from people that are defending the Sigma like it is a puppy with AIDS. What I set out to do here was to do an unbiased (well, mostly) test of the pistol in crappy conditions. One of my friends let me borrow his Sigma 9mm for the test and here are the results:

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A local shop is having a sale on them, the price is $250 and includes (4) standard capacity (16 round) magazines. Because the price point is so attractive, I decided to do a test on this platform.
 

It has had approximately 400 rounds through it so no break-in issues should occur. I broke the gun down and I cleaned--but did not lubricate--the parts. I was surprised (although I shouldn't have) at what I found inside. The slide assembly is almost exactly the same as a Glock. This shouldn't be surprising since Glock sued S&W  a few years back for patent infringement. Here's a quick breakdown of the gun:

While stripping the slide, a part of the gun (all plastic pieces are white on the Sigma as opposed to the black on the Glock) a piece of the striker assembly shot out across my basement someplace. After more than a half hour of looking with no success, I actually broke down one of my Glocks and the Glock part fit in perfectly. Of course, as soon as I had the slide assembled we found the original parts and I replaced them. So yeah--the Sigma has all S&W parts inside of it now.

Due to this parts issue, my friend and I sat down and compared each part of the slide assembly against each other. Here are the results:

(All images have the Glock parts on top and the Sigma parts on the bottom)

As you can see, the plungers are slightly different--perhaps not similar enough to be interchanged.

Same with these parts

Extractors are noticeably different--the Glock extractor is too wide to fit into the Sigma

Yes, the Glock guide rod looks larger--this is because that is a G34 guide rod. When I used my G19 guide rod, it fit right into the Sigma.

The striker spring on the Sigma is smaller and stiffer whereas the Glock spring is longer and less stiff. Actually, the Sigma spring is much harder to use than the Glock spring when installing the retainers (hence the problem we had installing them). I think these would be interchangeable though.

The plunger springs appear to be the same

Striker pins are slightly different. Notice the spring on the Sigma spring to avoid an extruded firing pin. Frankly I find this to be a non-issue in Glocks. Perhaps a slight change to fight patent infringement?

The Sigma part is slightly longer

Slide comparison between my G34 slide and the Sigma
The slides were so similar, we decided to do a test:

the slide did not lock into place, although it fit onto the frame. The Sigma frame is slightly longer. When we tried to put a Sigma slide on a Glock frame it didn't work because the Glock ejector is in a different location.
The front sight appeared to be staked in place and also glued with some kind of polymer. Looked a bit off

:

 
The Sigma also has some marks left over from plastic injection molding that the Glock does not. This is most noticeable on the trigger.

I weighed the trigger in at a very spongey 11lbs(!) No excuse for a trigger that heavy IMHO. I also do not like the non-standard rail on the frame of the Sigma.
 

So anyway, range time:

Firstly, today was a great day to shoot. Just over 70 degrees with 50 percent humidity. Nice and sunny with very little wind.

Here' the Sigma with 1k of filthy, crusty, freshly packaged Wolf 9mm.

 
In action:
I found the magazines a tad difficult to load to a full 16 rounds. This isn't unusual nor concerning with new(ish) magazines like I was using. In order to avoid thumb fatigue I loaded only ten rounds into each magazine. A maglula would have been of great relief today.

I experienced my first failure at 120 rounds in. It was a mechanical failure, the slide did not lock back to the rear on the last shot. When I tried to open the slide it got stuck halfway and took a bit of effort to open and even more to keep it locked back

I marked the magazine so if it happened again I'd know if it was a magazine issue or not.
Second failure was 240 round in. I had a failure-to-feed

This was with a different magazine than the first.
555 rounds there was another (I thought it would be funny if it happened at 360 rounds). This time an FTE

I had to end the test at 700 rounds because I could no longer fill the magazines. My girlfriend has a problem with most mags and one of my friends crapped out on me last minute (thanks Aaron!). With a maglula I'm confident I could have finished in one day.

As I said before, I don't like the trigger. No surprise. I was getting pretty consistent hits at 25m with it though. I attempted some double-taps but the trigger is obviously much heavier than I am used to and they were slow and very inaccurate.

My friend told me that he had a failure before with the pistol when intentionally limp wristing the pistol. Even with this knowledge I could not repeat this failure. I shot weak hand for about a hundred rounds and did not experience any problems either.

I think the magazine release could be larger (the same could be said of many other guns) but I'm likely spoiled by my G34 extended release.

Lots of empty boxes

(Thank God this wasn't an IDPA match or I'd have a lot of penalties!)
Operation for the last 150 rounds or so was very sluggish. I think that if I could have continued the test I would've had more FTE's.

The aftermath:

Upon returning home I disassembled the pistol but I did not wipe or clean anything off in case my friend wants to let me borrow his pistol for a little longer for another range trip.
 

Muzzle:


Innards:


Slide:


Barrel:



There appears to be some damage on the locking lug of the barrel. This concerns me as to the long-term viability of this pistol. Only time will tell.

Striker pin channel


One other item of interest is that it took much more effort to remove the extractor than usual. It was basically glued in place with carbon crud. Once again, I think I would've experienced further failures if I could have continued. Let's hope I can finish up next week.


Conclusions:
-For $250 it isn't a bad gun.

-Comparing this to a Glock, despite the mechanical similarities, is apples and oranges. What we really need to compare the Sigma to is other pistols of similar price points. I'd like to see this done with a Keltec P11 and other medium-priced pistols.

-Bring friends to help shoot and load magazines (or bring a maglula)


I must say that I did bring along my G34 with a couple of loaded magazines so I could clean out my hands with a decent trigger. It was a breath of fresh air after 700 rounds of 11lb trigger, I tell you what.
 

SESSION II

It was a beautiful day to finish off the last 300 rounds.

No issues for the first two hundred rounds. However, I did experience another failure-to-eject at round #928

As you can see from the pics, the next round nearly loaded.

At round #950, I experienced another failure of the slide to lock back. It should be noted that this was a different magazine than the first failure at 120 rounds.

Again at round #990, I experienced another failure-to-eject, just like the last.
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