15 Rounds in the Glock 43X and 48?! The Shield Arms S15 Magazine

hey everyone James with tfbtv today on tfbtv I want to talk to you about what I think is the most important third party Glock accessory I've ever seen and I think many of you will agree with me to be clear we're talking about an accessory that will work only with the Glock 43 X and the Glock 48 for now but I still think the rest of you Glock fans are going to be pretty intrigued by this because of the potential that it has let's talk first about the Glock 48 and the Glock 43 X as usual tfbtv got an exclusive first look at these guns you can go back and check out our video if you're unfamiliar with a 43 X in the 48 but basically what Glock did is they made slimline single stack nine millimeters with 10+1 capacity very easy to conceal very thin very easy to shoot comfortable guns that you can get a full grip on a real gamechanger and in my opinion the 43 X is one of the best guns Glocks ever made so needless to say I'm stoked about this the difference between the 43 X and the 48 is that the 48 has a little bit longer slide and Barrel eminently suitable guns great grip texture great magazine release great controls forward slide serrations which isn't found in a lot of Glock models really one of the perfect concealed carry guns out there what are the most important accessories you can get for any gun especially a concealed carry gun sights holster magazines now if you have shitty sights guns still gonna run you have a shitty holster gun still gonna run you have shitty magazines uh you see where I'm going guns not gonna run one of the biggest complaints about the Glock 43 X is a lot of people are comparing it to the Sig p3 65 which is a smaller pistol that uses like a double stack single and a half stack magazine so it jams ten rounds into a pistol that's a little bit smaller than the 43 X here's a copy of a Sig P 3 65 SAS right here in the 43 X right here both have a ten plus one capacity in nine-millimeter but as you can see the 365 is significantly smaller they're close in size but the 365 is indeed noticeably smaller so chief complaint is people are saying why would I carry the 43 X in lieu of the Sig p3 65 leading up to today the counter-argument was you can get more grip on the 43 X if you're a Glock guy if you trust Glock if you think Glocks are dependable if you like the manual of arms if you like the trigger if you like the support if you like the third-party accessories basically the excuses I can get more of a grip on it and it's a Glock those were typically the arguments but that all changed at least for me this morning because I got a copy of the shield arms 43 X 48 magazines shield Arms is calling this magazine the shield s 15 magazine and what's so great about this instead of a 10-round capacity with the shield s 15 magazine you are getting 15 rounds of 9-millimeter in the same size package as the ten round magazine for the Glock 43 X and the Glock 48 you heard me right you get 50% more capacity but with a flush fit magazine in your Glock 43 X and 48 incredible in fact almost too good to be true as I said earlier you can get by with kind of crappy sights you can get by with kind of a crappy holster but if you have a crap magazine your guns not going to work you're screwed and it's pointless doesn't matter if it's an eighth round capacity or a 27 round capacity in the Glock 43 X if it doesn't work who cares so that means when I got my pre-production copy of the S 15 magazine I had to make sure that it was gonna be reliable and durable before we talk about the range session today let's talk about the S 15 magazine generally as you see here it's the same size as the standard 10 round Glock 43 X magazine how did shield Arms accomplish this well primarily what they did is they removed that polymer wrapper around the Glock 43 X magazine and they made the entire thing metal so you've got no filler that means that they've got a little bit more clearance I decide to add in more rounds funny thing it also eliminated front to back right and because it's going to be smaller not only side to side but it eliminated some dimension front to back so they had to put this little lip this little Ridge that you can see here on the front of the magazine so it would fit snugly within the Glock 43 X not too much movement in it and it drops free just fine so they did a pretty good job getting those dimensions right and making sure you can cram 15 rounds into this tiny little mag well they also have kind of a Magpul style baseplate it's got little finger grooves little finger indentions if you in case you need to rip mag out that'll come in handy but this isn't all metal magazine so there's a bit of a catch and you're gonna see why that's kind of a pun the magazine released shield arms they highly recommend that you swap magazine releases out from the standard Glock 43 X Glock 48 magazine release to shield arms to their brand or presumably any metal magazine release will work the reason for that according to shield Arms is that the standard magazine release as you all likely know is plastic so it isn't so much the insertion and removal of the steel magazine that will wear down that plastic magazine release that comes stock with the Glock it's the fact that whenever you fire it according to shield arms there's kind of like a micro seesaw action that happens with the recoil and that leads to wear and tear on that plastic magazine release how long that'll take before you'll actually wear down the magazine release we don't have any exact numbers we don't know but it still takes a while in this bare mind these magazines will work they will work with the polymer or the plastic standard magazine release however shield highly recommends that you swap out to the metal magazine release that they offer now my question to them was then what about my polymer Glock magazines my 10 round Glock magazines is my metal magazine release gonna wear those out and their answer was no primarily what you got to worry about is that recoil action with the metal magazine wearing down the polymer mag release they say that they don't believe it's an issue to use the metal magazine release with a polymer magazine for all I know there's a third party like I don't know Vickers or somebody who might already be making metal magazine releases I'm sure it's happened and probably for a long time and I bet nobody's had those problems so please if you know if you know that there are metal magazine releases that have been in place for the Glock and they've got a good reputation for reliability and not screwing up the mags let me know in the comments I'm curious so guys it's basically for the magazine in a nutshell it's not in full production yet as of the time of this video they are taking pre-orders and I think they might be completely sold out of their pre-order run but is it worth buying because if it doesn't work again who cares and I think they're charging like 40 bucks a mag for these things which if it works reliably it's totally worth it well I've got good news for you guys and that is in my limited experience at the range today me and Brandon and Ryan we ran this thing into the ground at Knoll attack well we're in it into the ground we shot 255 consecutive rounds through it and it ran flawlessly we had no failures to feed no failures to eject and in fact relating to the ejection the magazine must have really good spring tension because it was really shoving those empties all the way across the range with shell casings were being ejected at about a 90 degree angle and they were flinging pretty far well over 10 feet in my estimation so the magazine seems to be robust spring tensions there in fact cramming the 15th round into the magazine was a little bit of a pain in the butt whenever we first got it out but after we shot it about 10 11 times getting that last round in there was no problem but you still had great spring pressure it locked open on every empty magazine which is of course a very critical element you can see it's got kind of a very aggressive follower here so that didn't fail to trigger the slide lock every time we ran 150 rounds of federal syntek and 100 rounds of federal train and protect got a plug mice in tech you guys know federal is a sponsor of the program they've been a supporter of tfbtv for a long time and they know that I love federal syntek they keep it coming because it reduces wear and tear on your gun it's a it's basically a training bullet with a polymer jacket reduces wear and tear and your gun and it's cleaner shooting and you don't get all that nasty lead so when you shoot professionally it's actually a godsend so I love the federal syntek thank God the 43 X and the shield s 15 absolutely chewed up a hundred and fifty five rounds of that and then a hundred rounds of the federal trainer protect hollow-point so this worked with a good variety of ammunition from 115 grain all the way up to 150 grains 255 rounds isn't like an absolute buttload or anything oh my god 255 rounds but in my experience if you have a crap magazine it's gonna puss out way before you hit 255 rounds this one didn't that said am I gonna continue to shoot it continue to test it especially if I'm going to trust my life to this gun absolutely I'd like to get at least a thousand trouble-free rounds through it however you can tell that this is not going to be a mag that's going to have issues I've also been in close contact with Brandon at shield arms and he seems like a pretty smart dude it seems like he knows what he's doing it seems like he knows that it is critical for this gun and for this magazine to be reliable he said that through all their testing they've had no problems whatsoever it runs flawlessly he stands by it and so far it looks like it's working and I should mention while I'm on the issue of speaking with a principle of shield arms the guys on discord at the tfbtv chatroom they're the ones who said hey look you should reach out to these shield arms people we know you're big 43 X guy so we had people in the chat room encouraging me to reach out to Brandon at shield arms so I did I just did it myself I was just really stoked to review this magazine I called him today I said look put me in line for the back quarters like I want four or five of these mags because I was so happy with them again time will tell so to speak but remember as I said and for anybody who's used crap magazine it's usually giving up or giving you at least one failure or signs of trouble before you even hit 255 rounds it's usually one of those things where it's like every other magazine you seem to have a problem and nosedive failure dude whatever and you can also just tell from the construction of this mag that it's pretty good so what's the benefit of that polymer jacket that the standard Glock magazine has presumably additional protection you've got a polymer envelope around a metal sleeve and that's going to be really really durable again it's going to take up space which is how the s15 does what it does because it doesn't need that space but you're gonna forego a little bit of protection if you're using yes 15 magazine and all you have is the the metal jacket now bear in mind that this metal sleeve is similar to 95% of all magazines out there that just are constructed exactly like this without the polymer jacket a log locked but we wanted to find out whether or not this thing could take repeated drops so we dropped it 10 times so we drop this magazine ten times of different angles we actually sweat it down the range three times let's see if it works after being dropped ten times oops eleven times perfectly 11 times on hard concrete I was like I don't think it's gonna work let's do one more time from about three feet all the way up to about five feet three do that thing's holding up for reset receipt that round though five six seven do it again that's a good shot that's what eight eight three two one right three two one and then I even took it a couple of times and slid it all the way down the range 25 yards 75 feet down a concrete it still worked flawlessly so this thing can take a lickin and keep on tickin and yes it was absolutely jammed up with 15 rounds whenever we did that who really cares like if you drop it it's not gonna nothing's really gonna happen if you drop an empty magazine but a magazine that's laden with 15 rounds of ammo that's gonna be a lot heavier there were no problems and you didn't lose any rounds rounds didn't pop out there was no apparent damage to the magazine other than on the shoulders here I got a little wear and tear from sliding it fully loaded 75 feet down a range you know oh my god point is insignificant damage from abuse this is really a first impressions review but these first impressions go like 95% of the way there 255 rounds with no issue perfect function 11 drops being slid across with the floor at Knoll attack range and the magazine still works perfectly sights are exciting holsters are exciting ammo is exciting but what's really really exciting is a flush fit magazine that gives you 50% more capacity than your standard OEM magazine and works just as well you can say that for any gun period if you can imagine whatever gun it is that you carry hey how would you like 50% more capacity with the magazine that's just reliable and it doesn't take up any more space I'll take it I mean that's about as good as an upgrade as you can possibly get so this is a real game-changer and just imagine what's gonna happen if shield designs to extrapolate this concept to other magazines in the Glock line like say a Glock 19 Glock 43 standard model to wrap things up when I receive this magazine I was a little skeptical even when I looked at it I'm like okay feels all right looks all right I'm still a little bit skeptical because it's too good to be true and I've dealt with way too many crap third-party magazines the only thing that I trust in Glock is Glock and mag poll that is it so when I got this I had a healthy dose of skepticism I ran it today and so far good before I trust my life to this thing I'm gonna run at least a thousand rounds through it but I can say for now for now it seems like the hypes justified of course I was elated with these results some might even say aroused but Brannon and Rian those guys are both hardcore Glock 19 guys and I don't blame them because the Glock 19 is of course a fantastic pistol so listen listen to Brandon right now listen to him make an excuse about why even with 15 round magazines in the 43 ex you still might want to stick to your Glock 19 as we look at going from something like a Glock 19 to a 43 X or a 48 or any of the single stack ones this is why fitment of the gun not feeling become so important Orion in myself we can shoot this is James's first group this is mine this is Ryan and then this is mine so once I got used to it the group got tighter but if you look at it it's still a low left group now I know enough of how to shoot and I can certainly put these in here with my Glock 19 I'm not suffering from that normal low left jerk that a lot of people have but this grip is significantly slimmer than what I'm used to which means my trigger finger as I just grab it instinctively is off of where would normally be so I'm not necessarily jerking it but I'm applying different directional leverage on it and it shows in the groups for example James carries this gun he shoots and carries almost predominantly single stacks so for him there wasn't a change as drastic as it was for us and normally when we shoot and James you're shooting double stacked you actually see the opposite where James's stuff is low left and my stuff Center so it all comes out to the fitment of the gun to the person god that guy is so wrong no I mean he does make a good point he makes a good point some people they're still gonna want the Glock 19 anyways even though for me it's a no brainer I'd rather have the much thinner the much lighter 43 X over the Glock 19 because in my opinion it shoots just as well or in my case better guys thanks a ton for watching this video I really appreciate it you and your for it speaking of support if you guys want to enter drawing to win a free gun every month go join us on subscribe' Starcom slash TFB TV or patreon.com slash tfbtv support us at the 5 or 10 dollar level you're automatically entered into drawing to win a gun every month it's actually one gun for every 500 subscribers right now we're almost at the 3 guns a month giveaway level thanks as usual to Ventura munitions the best online ammo store in the entire world and thank you to blue alpha gear they make the best belts that money can buy blue alpha gear calm once again thank you wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you guys I will see you [Music]

Channel: TFB TV

Views: 268,791

Rating: 4.9309368 out of 5

Keywords: tfb, tfb tv, tfbtv, the firearm blog, firearm, 2A, gun, Shield Arms, S15, s-15, glock, 48, 43X, 43, 15 rounds, capacity, flush fit, new, magazine, clip, high capacity, steel, firearms, new gun, guns, preview, 19, Glock 19, james reeves, sig p365, glock 43x, g43x 15 round mag, plus 5, g43x, magazine extensions, magazine extension, john wick gun, g48, p365, handgun

Id: NzsY4iKUbrw

Length: 18min 51sec (1131 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 29 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/e36__tex]

Before this, I had regarded the Glock 43X and 48 as irrelevant compared to the likes of the Sig P365. Now? I’m gonna have to take another look at these guns.

[u/TwoSkewpz]

James already called it, but hey Shield Arms - what I really want to see is this same technology applied to Glock 26 magazines!