According to the S&W website getting one without the mag safety is NOT an option.
Yeah, yeah, that's what the webstie says, and likely what S&W will tell you, But it just isn't true. The sku for the .40 with no internal lock and no mag safety (how S&W lists it) is 209300. You will notice it is not listed on the website, which is behind the times. You will also notice the nice little warning on the side of my gun. toocool has the other sku with no mag safety, which is theoretically the LEO package (hence the 3 mags). $575 is a good price for ti too as invoice on the night sight option is like $50, and new mag is like $35, and the going retail rate for the regular package is about $500-$550 depending on where you live.
Skus for them I have seen listed as
309700 - 9mm with night sights
309701 - 40 cal with night sights
309702 - 357sig with night sights.
But I have seen multiple catalogs with the 700 and 701 sku transposed and S&W wouldn't even admit they existed on the phone (I got a real dink who didn't want to admit even the 9mm existed yet, a real winner), so I can't confirm which is which, but i suspect 700 is 40 and 701 is 9mm as 200, 300, and 600 are all 40s.
As for my take on the gun, I love the ergonomics. I think the only faults it might have there is the textured area under the trigger guard. I feel it might cause irritation or chafing if you are practicing your draw a lot. The other issue is the hinged trigger. It's not bad, but I believe the fact you see reviews praising the short reset of the trigger and bitching about the long reset of the trigger is due to that. Unless you practice gettig the timing of the gun down, you really want to let the hinged park go back to it's rest position rather than keping tension on it. Based on my experience, the ACTUAL reset needed to fire another round is similar to a cz-75 or clone in SA mode.
The grip straps rock. The method of removing and replacing them rocks, as long as some bubba at the gun store hasn't ignored the instructions and ripped out the retainer by brute strengh and broken the locking mechanism. One of my local gun sotres had this issue with their display gun.
Teh trigger is decent. Heavy, but smooth. It feels a wee bit heavier than a glock 34/35 trigger, but a bit cleaner, (provided the g34/35 stock triggers I ahve run into are representative) so in the end I'd put them on about par. Some QA here from S&W would help some of the mixed reviews on the trigger. Mine arrived with NO lubricant on the gun, and the trigger was gritty and lumpy feeling. Applyu some moly grease to the contact points listed in the instructions, and it felt like a whole different trigger. Dry fired it about 500 times, and it felt like the demo gun's trigger at the same shop they broke the grip retainier at. They admitted to having test driven the display model a fair bit.
For me, the gun points very naturally and is very accurate. I have yet to shoot the thing off a bench or rest, but comparing what shooting I have gotten in with guns I own and know and have benched, it is a solid performer in accuracy. Despite having some r4attles and clunks while in battery, the barrel to frame lockup is VERY solid at both the locking block and crown end of things. The slide to frame fit is pretty tight at the front block/rail segment, but has a little play at the back block/rail segment.
The trigger is ok, it's an improved design that looks like they not only took the glock, sigma, XD, and user complaints and praise about all the above into consideration when designing it, but may very well have looked at some of the trigger jobs being performed on them as well. I have no doubt that overtravel could be reduced (and thus reset reduced), as well as lightening the trigger pull. I think if you hooked up a smith who can do XD triger jobs with some spare trigger bars, you'd have a range of nice M&P triggers available that are similar to the XD trigger jobs on offer.
All in all a very nice gun that I am liking a lot.
