Beretta APX Carry Review by Alien Gear Holsters

Let's go over an itty bitty Italian pistol in this Beretta APX Carry review. This is Beretta's single-stack striker-fired subcompact, part of its APX architecture.

The APX is quietly one of the best striker guns on the market, with excellent ergonomics, a very good factory trigger and a reasonable price point. It can get lost in the din of similar plastic fantastics, as we noted in our Beretta Centurion review.

Is the Beretta APX Carry more of the same? Brilliant, but overlooked? Let's find out…

Beretta APX Carry Specs

But first - the tale of the tape in the Beretta APX Carry specs. As you might have guessed, it's small. It's light. It carries easily, and makes for easy packin'.

Going by the numbers…

• Barrel length: 3 in.
• Overall length: 5.63 in
• Height: 4.17 in
• Width: 0.9 in
• Weight: 19.8 oz
• Trigger pull: ~6.5 lbs
• Capacity: 6+1 (flush fit) or 8+1 (extended) of 9mm
• Colors: Frame in black, "Wolf Grey," "ODG" green or FDE
• MSRP: $450

Eminently carryable and concealable. It would positively disappear in an IWB holster, so it would make a great carry gun based on the specs.

But that only tells us so much...what is this pistol like to live with?

Beretta APX Carry Review

There's a lot to like, but in our Beretta APX Carry review time we did discover a few peccadilloes, a few little niggling things about it that you'll have to weigh for yourself.

Overall, it's a great little pistol. It's comfortable; the stippling and texturing isn't overly aggressive but remains grippy and you can actually get a decently high shooting grip on the gun. The palmswell fits pretty well, though it does lack the swappable panels of the rest of the APX line.

The slide lands allow a good tight grip on the slide for loading or clearing the pistol, so that was good.

The sights are actually pretty decent, with a black serrated rear sight with a U-notch and a white dot front sight.

The party piece is that it has the serialized trigger group of the APX family, meaning you could buy the frame and slide assembly of a larger APX and drop in the trigger group. You can also literally put the Beretta Nano's slide and trigger assembly into an APX Carry's frame as well, and that's kind of cool.

But...there were a few things that we didn't 100 percent care for.

First, takedown is a pain. After decocking the striker (dry fire) takedown is done by removing a takedown screw, requiring a tool like a flathead screwdriver and that's annoying. Granted, takedown usually happens in one's home so it's not like that REALLY matters, but it's odd.

Unlike the rest of the APX family, the slide release is left-side only. The magazine release can be swapped, but it lacks the ambidexterity of the larger members of the APX clan. Lefties are left (ha!) out.

The trigger is strange, in that it's not heavy but long, almost like a DA trigger in length but striker/single-action in resistance. Odd, but not a deal-breaker; we liked the go-pedal on the APX Centurion a heck of a lot more.

What you might have noticed in pictures is that there's a shelf inside the trigger guard, no doubt acting as a dust cover or frame guard for the trigger itself. This makes pulling the trigger...a bit problematic.

The classical shooting technique is to get as high and tight a grip as possible. When you get it, you pull the trigger straight to the rear and break the shot. Right? Right.

The trigger shelf catches the trigger finger, which means you either have to try to ride the trigger housing shelf down to the trigger face or adjust your grip for full contact, which we did not care for at all.

It's reliable, it's accurate, and the MSRP means real-world prices are liable to be in the $350 to $400 range, so it's priced to compete with the M&P Shield, Glock 43, Walther PPS and other pistols.

Would we recommend it? Well, Beretta hasn't lasted as long as they have and won its reputation by making bad guns. We would say that if you find you like it, it's an excellent pistol...but there were those little things that we didn't like. If you find those don't bother you, it's a great pick.