I've only been shooting for about 50 years, but the SR-9 is the best gun "out of the box" I've ever owned. I took mine to the range, popped in a 17 round magazine, and promptly put 15 of those in the X ring. I said to myself... "I am going to like this gun..." and it's performance hasn't dwindled a bit.
I bought mine about 2 months after they first hit the market, and went through the recall with it... no problems and excellent customers service from Ruger... so I bought another one... this one with the black stainless finish. It was so "well finished" that if I had any oil in the skin of my fingers, I couldn't rack the slide... so I swapped it for an SR-40 with the stainless slide. It performed just like the SR-9 had done, just with a little more recoil.
After the SR-9C came out, I railed against it because I couldn't see why anybody would take 7 rounds out of the capacity of a gun to make it a "carry piece"... until I actually got my hands on one. The barrel was only about an inch shorter, and the rest of the gun was essentially a full-size SR-9. The engineers had actually shortened the grip a bit, but designed it so that you had a full grip with either the 10 round or 17 round magazine in place, so the grip on the pistol never changes... regardless of which mag you use.
All the features of the full sized SR-9 are in the compact version, so you don't really lose anything except an inch of sight radius and an initial 7 rounds in the shortened magazine. Pop the full size mag in your back pocket, and you go to the fight with 28 rounds to keep their heads down...
I've got an SR-40C ordered, and when our distributors can get one, I'll have one of those puppies too... They are consistent, well built, and affordable, and price point somewhere around $100 under their competitors, who have many less features.
Features:
Loaded chamber indicator
3-dot sights
light rail
striker "position" indicator
ambidextrious safety and magazine release
"locked" trigger/sear system (2-piece trigger)
reversible back-strap for "straight" or "palm swell" configuration
10 and 17-round magazine capacity
finish can be black stainless & polymer, or stainless and polymer
As a recovering mechanical engineer, I think it's one of the smartest engineering offerings in the gun market. As a shooter, I think it's one of the best guns I've ever picked up... but I'm still waiting to see and play with the SR-1911... but I think the SR-9 will be hard to trump.
WT