I wanted to post here my experience with my Taurus PT-145. I think that with many guns most of the posts about them are about problems because so many owners who buy them and are happy don't bother reporting their experience. I've had my PT-145 for about 1.5 years now and have around 1000 rounds through it so far. Mine is the SA/DA generation with the Hienie straight-8 sights and a stainless slide. I've had a total of 1 malfunction in that 1000 rounds. That malfunction was a FTE while my father was shooting it. He thought that he was supposed to hold it as lightly as possible, so I'm pretty sure that it was a limp-wristing problem. After I told him to get a good hold on the thing there were no more problems.
I've had it to a 2 day handgun class where we shot about 200 rounds in a day and got very dirty with throwing mags in on the ground doing malfunction clearing drills. The gun took it all in stride. I just shot my first IDPA match on Saturday with the gun. In my squad I saw a gun from just about every top tier manufacturer have some sort of malfunction, but my Taurus did not. Now I should point out that most of those guys were almost exclusively shooting reloads, so that may have been the cause of the problems. I had some factory ammo left over from a class that wouldn't allow reloads, so I figured I'd be safe a shoot factory ammo for my first match. However, I do have about 500 rounds of reloads through my PT-145 with no problems.
As for recoil, being a relatively small gun chambered in .45 ACP, it is certainly more than a full sized 1911. However, my wife loves to shoot my PT-145 and finds the recoil to be much more manageable than her PF-9. I do notice that after a day of shooting over 100 rounds my hand is a little sore the next day. Since I bought the gun for concealed carry and not as a range queen, I don't find this to be a problem.
Speaking of concealed carry, I've carried this gun almost every day for the last 1.5 years. Depending on what I'm wearing I either carry it in a Crossbreed IWB or in a Smart Carry holster. I find the IWB more comfortable, but both are comfortable enough for all-day carry. With the Smart Carry I can wear just about whatever I want and it conceals very well.
Finally, here is a list of what I like and dislike about the gun:
Likes:
Dislikes:
I hope this is helpful to anyone considering this purchase. I think that the newest generation of this gun is called the 24/7 Pro. I'm not sure how much change there was or how the new guns compare, but I'd be interested to hear if anyone here knows. I should also mention that I'm aware that there were some magazine related problems with the PT-145 for a while, but I never had any. I picked up a spare factory magazine from Cabela's about 4 months ago and it has been as reliable as the ones that came with it.
I've had it to a 2 day handgun class where we shot about 200 rounds in a day and got very dirty with throwing mags in on the ground doing malfunction clearing drills. The gun took it all in stride. I just shot my first IDPA match on Saturday with the gun. In my squad I saw a gun from just about every top tier manufacturer have some sort of malfunction, but my Taurus did not. Now I should point out that most of those guys were almost exclusively shooting reloads, so that may have been the cause of the problems. I had some factory ammo left over from a class that wouldn't allow reloads, so I figured I'd be safe a shoot factory ammo for my first match. However, I do have about 500 rounds of reloads through my PT-145 with no problems.
As for recoil, being a relatively small gun chambered in .45 ACP, it is certainly more than a full sized 1911. However, my wife loves to shoot my PT-145 and finds the recoil to be much more manageable than her PF-9. I do notice that after a day of shooting over 100 rounds my hand is a little sore the next day. Since I bought the gun for concealed carry and not as a range queen, I don't find this to be a problem.
Speaking of concealed carry, I've carried this gun almost every day for the last 1.5 years. Depending on what I'm wearing I either carry it in a Crossbreed IWB or in a Smart Carry holster. I find the IWB more comfortable, but both are comfortable enough for all-day carry. With the Smart Carry I can wear just about whatever I want and it conceals very well.
Finally, here is a list of what I like and dislike about the gun:
Likes:
- Bet my life on it reliability
- .45 ACP power
- Good SA trigger
- I like manual safeties and this one is easy for me to manipulate
- Good ergonomics. The dimples on the side above the trigger guard for indexing your finger are a nice touch.
- Concealable
- More accurate than I am
Dislikes:
- Aftermarket support is not as good as for Glocks, XD's, Sigs ...
- Related to the above, I would really, really like a .22 conversion for cheap practice
- The magazine holds ten, but getting it to seat with 10 is difficult. Once you do get it to seat with 10 in the mag, racking the slide is also a beast (but it still cycles fine). For this reason I only load 9 in the magazine.
- I haven't chronographed it, but I'm sure the 3.25" barrel gives up some velocity. I think I would prefer a little longer barrel for both the added velocity at to make it easier to use the front part of the slide for manipulating the action. I don't think I would find a 4" barrel much harder to conceal. The 3.78" barrel on the Glock 30 might be about right.
I hope this is helpful to anyone considering this purchase. I think that the newest generation of this gun is called the 24/7 Pro. I'm not sure how much change there was or how the new guns compare, but I'd be interested to hear if anyone here knows. I should also mention that I'm aware that there were some magazine related problems with the PT-145 for a while, but I never had any. I picked up a spare factory magazine from Cabela's about 4 months ago and it has been as reliable as the ones that came with it.
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