You'll get many answers and no two alike. All guns have cheerleaders and haters. My personal experience is with Kel-Tec, Bursa, Taurus, Springfield Armory XD-45c and now an EAA Witness (Tanfoglio) 45/22 convertible.
The first thing to note is that since people's hands differ a lot in size and shape the gun that fits one hand just right may not fit another very well. It's one thing to hold a gun fairly well but something else entirely to have it point straight naturally...then, there's the issue of not rocking it off aim with trigger pull and related issues. You can take two very good guns and find your accuracy is good with one and bad with the other. you may need to modify your shooting in various ways or add a little tape or something to pad out a part of a grip.
The other big point with autos is that they can be veerrry picky about ammo. Two guns of the same make and model may not always work too well with the same ammo.
These things mean all pros and cons are highly subjective.
I have a little taurus 22 that runs perfectly but when I bought a look-alike in 25 it was the worst lemon ever passed off as a firearm...don't knw why but so many different things went wrong it seemed to be haunted.
Taurus customer service is so slow it took months to come back. The 22 still seems nice but I couldn't in good conscience recommend them to anybody. A complete crapshoot.
In contrast, both Bersas I have run happily and their customer service is what customers always dream about. Excellent first gun for a beginner.
Kel-Tec also has wonderful customer service. Their little p-3ATs are with me when nothing else can be. You could almost hide one in a g-string.
The Springfield Armory XD-45c is the gun I shoot best of any. It points as if it was my index finger. If I lower it down, look away and point it in the direction of a target the sights are level and pointed about where I would want them to go. You can try this with varying guns and see which point naturally for you. It also doesn't seem to pull off target or rock any when I fire if I don't forget myself and jerk it. It just simply works well in my hands which are about average/medium. It's my favorite gun to fire and I can carry it all day in a SmartCarry. Customer service is good at SA.
The EAA Witness is too new to give more than a preliminary report. Seems very well made. With 45 top I fired off both magazines for a total of 20 shots without trouble. With 22 top I fired about 120 to 150 shots using both mags and had 2 or 3 failures to feed which isn't bad at all. 22 is usually hard to feed through autos and occasional ailure to feed is about normal with most of them. Still, this gives me cheap target practice for both the Witness and other similar guns. Grip is very much like XD-45c and I'll probably like this gun well. Design is based on the CZ and made in Italy by Tanfoglio. Customer service does not have a great reputation but may be improving.
Try to rent shooting range guns if you an in your area. They're often worn and likely dirty so they probably won't be as reliable as a clean gun but will let you get the feel of shooting them. A 45 really won't hurt you and the slow recoil doesn't bother me nearly as much as a 9MM or even a 380 which snap sharply but others feeldifferently. 9MM, 40 and 45 all have about the same power but bigger is more effective than smaller. You can get lighter bullet loads in45 that feel not too much different than the others.
Read bersatalk and the XDforum plus the ktrange and ktog. See what owners say and take anything too pro or anti with a grain of salt. You might do this first before starting to rent at a range. Don't be too impressed with what "official" guns are adopted by military or police. There are political stories about military issue and police often get guns at wholesale or possibly less from companies that know if their guns are carried by the "pros" they can sell a ton of them to the rest of us. Lots of off-duty cops carry something way different than duty guns. You'llfind many on the forums.
Get ahold of something and send a few down range.
