Whelp... Walther PDP (full size 4.0") and Holosun 507C X2 purchased. It will be a week or two for the plate to arrive - after which I'll put some lead down range and let you know whether I have any regrets.
I laid the compact on top of the full size on a gun-store counter and the differences in length and height were not enough to make me forgo the extra three rounds of capacity for the fullsize gun. Here's a screen clip from an online tool that lets you overlay various handgun images to compare size. This is almost exactly what I saw when I did this physically.
Decision making factors for me were:
* The feel in my hand compared to the others
* The feel of the trigger (when dry-firing only so far) is the best stock striker fire trigger I've felt. Crisp break and a super short and positive reset.
* I like the feel of the heavy serrations in the slide (for grip) - and the fact that these exist on the front of the slide as well. Maybe I'll get used to racking the slide by grasping over the optic - but that really seems wrong to me. I'm sure I have a lot to learn about shooting an optic equipped handgun.
* Lots of you-tube watchin' - I found lots folks swooning over the platform. I get that this has to be taken with a grain of salt - but when looking at a slew of different sources for "best optic ready carry / duty handgun" type questions the PDP really did seem to be at or near the top more than most of the others.
The other guns that were still in the mix at the end were a P320 and the VP9. The Walther was a good bit less expensive than the VP9 and felt better in my hand that the P320.
As to the optic - it was pretty simple. There were two decision points:
1) The 507C X2 has the circle-dot reticle. At first I thought it was gimmicky - but as I compared a few of them I found that I would "find the dot" much more quickly with that bigger circle area than I did with a simple dot. It seems to give the best of both worlds between a small dot and having the edge of the reticle come into view quickly so as to not have to "hunt" for it.
2) It was half the price of the RMR, and I know a couple of folks that have the Holosun products and are happy with them - so I thought this along with the first thing above made it the easy choice.
Anyway - the proof will be in the shooting of the gun - looking forward to learning it and figuring out whether it is what I really want.
