Kalashnikov USA KR9 - An AK Styled 9mm PCC
Updated
43 months ago
Good morning everyone, hope you’re all having a wonderful day today. Today we’re gonna be taking a look at the Kalashnikov USA KR9.
Full disclosure on the Kalashnikov USA KR9 is that we have absolutely no affiliation with Kalashnikov USA fir this review. We paid our own money about 1100$ for KR9 from GunZoneDeals and, again, we have no affiliation or communication with Kalashnikov USA about this review.
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If you can tell this is basically an AK chambered in 9mm that is modeled after the AKV or the Vityaz I believe, so this is going to have all of your standard AK-esque ergonomics but, of course, taking 9mm instead of 762 by 39.
The KR9 is the rifle-length version of the KP9, the KP is, of course, the pistol version, so this actually has a 16.25-inch barrel that is hidden under the faux suppressor here at the end. Personally, the only reason that I got the KR9 over the KP9 was that this one here was actually cheaper at the time of purchase and it came with the very nice folding stock that is standard and, of course, I didn’t have to go through any annoying SBR process to get the nice folding stock. If we were to keep this long term which we may do, I would actually have the barrel chopped off and then threaded right about here to give it a 9-inch barrel and then put a suppressor on here and that would be a very cool, very short SBR package and depending on how you guys feel about that maybe we will go ahead and do that, but getting into some more specifics on the KR9, this is, of course a 9mm SMG or whatever you want to call it, PCC really since this is a 16-inch gun. It does use the unfortunately proprietary Kalashnikov USA magazines. These are completely polymer magazines, they hold 30 rounds and I believe they are usually, if you find a deal on them, they’re about 35 to 40$ which is not the cheapest but it’s also not the worse that I’ve seen. It is unfortunate that they’re not, you know, standard like Scorpion pattern or even the Palmetto State Armory pattern magazines. Now, those could work in here, I have not tested them whatsoever. The only magazines that we used so far in the review process are the factory Kalashnikov USA magazines and I picked up 4, including the one that it came with.
It actually does come with a really nice plastic hard case, all the extra stuff that you would need and on top of that, the barrel itself is threaded half by 28, so if you were to unscrew the faux suppressor here. It actually comes with a muzzle brake that you can install at the end. I didn’t do any shooting with the muzzle brake because I really like the look of this and as we’ll get into it later this actually does shoot very softly.
Up front we do have our standard polymer-style handguards. I’m sure you could swap these out with some other nicer handguards on the market and, in fact, I believe Kalashnikov USA does have other like M-LOK handguards that you can put on here. Now, up front we do have a metal attachment point as well as one here in the rear. There are no QDs on the gun, but that kind of fits with the whole aesthetic that we’re going for. As far as the iron sights go they’re pretty standard for an AK, as far as I can tell, and they work quite well, the sight picture is fine for an AK. We do have, I believe, 50-meter graduations on the rear leaf iron sight so I believe it goes from 50 to 100 to 150 and then to 200 if you wanted to do shooting, you know, at extended distances with the iron sights with 9mm, it’s totally usable. We didn’t take this out past 120 yards so we didn’t try the iron sights at like extended distances so for an AK they work just fine.
A very nice thing on both the KR9 and KP9 is we have this very nice railed top cover that is a hinge design so when you take it off it just comes straight off and you can do your cleaning or whatever else you want to do to the insides of it and then when you’re done just slap it back down and you’re good to go. When it’s in the down position there is virtually no wobble. It has a very nice tight fit so as far as holding zero goes for a 9mm PCC it is definitely acceptable and the return to zero is also, again, decent, we didn’t have any crazy shifts when, you know, taking the dust or the top cover up and down but, again, your mileage may vary on that a slight bit depending on the fit on your specific gun, but, overall, it works quite well so if you want to mount an optic to the gun it’s gonna work very nice. Now, they don’t co-witness with the iron sights unless you had some sort of crazy, super, super low mount, you could probably get it to co-witness.
As far as ergonomics go on the KR9 they are fairly standard for an AK, so starting with the safety slash dust cover, it uses the standard style, I wish that it was a Kreb-style safety so you could push it down and then go into action a lot faster. However, it’s still more than usable and more that reachable so you can go into action quite quickly. It has very nice, very positive clicks and it has a little stop at the bottom here to make sure that you don’t accidentally throw it off, of course, so you can’t push it off of the receiver. So, overall, it feels nice, very crisp, not too hard not too loose.
They give you a very, nice somewhat extended charging handle on the KR9 means that you get a lot of leverage on that bolt for opening and closing, which, since this is an AK style of gun you’re gonna be using that charging handle quite a bit. The magazine and magazine release, it works quite well. Something that I have noticed is that when the magazines are fully loaded or close to fully loaded it takes a lot of force to get them in there. They’re not rock and lock design, but you do kind of need to push them back to get them to actually click into position.
The magazine release itself is somewhat small paddle-style magazine release. I didn’t have any problems hitting the magazine release itself, most of the problems that I had with reloads were the fact that you need to use a lot of force to get that magazine in there and then, of course, come over top and charge the gun.
As I mentioned, the charging handle is quite nice, it’s definitely what seems to be a little bit extended from other AKs that I’ve used which, again, is nice because you are gonna be using it every time you reload the gun.
One of the best things about this gun, in my opinion, actually going to be the trigger so, what we have here for a mil-spec standard trigger is actually quite good and I would honestly be happy with this trigger as a standard trigger in just about any gun that I own. So, it’s kind of like a two-stage trigger, you have this very soft take-up and then you hit a very hard defined wall, you pull, there’s a little bit of a rolling break and then it kind of breaks at around 5 pounds. It honestly feels very good as far as being a very usable trigger. Again, it has that nice rolling break at about 5 pounds and then it has a very positive short reset and then you have a little bit more creep ‘till you break the trigger again.
With a little bit of getting used to I was able to run it fairly quickly and, of course, when I was shooting at a little bit more of extended distances it was very easy to break the shots exactly when I wanted to.
The grip that they’re using on it, this is their own Kalashnikov USA grip, it’s kind of a standard AK grip, it really feels like the most slippery basic polymer plastic possible, there is absolutely no texturing on it whatsoever. I would like to see a bit more of an AR-ish grip, if you will, with a little bit of a shallower angle, maybe a little bit more texture on it but that’s a pretty minor gripe.
Getting back into the stock, the stock is very nice, I like it, it is this fairly thin metal stock with a decent drop on it so that’s why I’m not using a riser on the SIG Romeo 5 because, of course, you already kind of have a bit of a chin weld going on. While the stock is very nice, the locking mechanism works very well, it kind of has a little tab here that it locks onto so it will not just come off and then if you want to take it off you simply push up and then bring it back and then it locks in place very, very secure, so while the push button, hinge mechanism and the retainer work quite well and they have a very nice solid lock-up as you can probably tell just by looking at it. It’s not very comfortable because it is just a very thin piece of metal that is kind of pushed up against your face and so to remedy that what I have done here where my cheek usually goes or kind of my chin weld goes depending on what optic I’m using. I went ahead and I just wrapped it up with a bunch of electrical tape as well as here on the back as well and that quite literally allowed it to take a little bit of the edge off and just make it a little bit more comfortable and honestly cost about a dollar or so. So, while the stock itself is very functional and works very well it’s not all that comfortable though that is fairly easy alleviated with just some electrical tape or you can insert your own creative solution here.
With all of that out of the way, we can kind of get into how it shot and honestly I was very surprised. Usually with AR-9s or other 9mm blowback PCCs because this is just a blowback operated 9mm, usually they’re fairly snappy, they’re fairly punchy, they usually have a lot of very quick recoil. While this is still, you know, no different than any of those in terms of its recoil operation it does have a very long stroke for a 9mm and it has a rubber buffer here in the back as well.
Overall, I felt that it was actually very soft and very pleasant to shoot, a lot softer than a lot of other 9mm PCCs that I’ve used in the past especially AR-9s. So, while this does have much better recoil impulse it still at the end of the day is a 9mm blowback PCC. So, while it is a little snappy and a little pushy, I would say that it is still better than most AR9s on the market, maybe some of the much more expensive, nicer ones might have a slightly softer recoil impulse but overall I was very impressed and it was a very pleasant, very fun, fairly fast gun to shoot.
So, as far as actually shooting it goes, as far as the fun factor, if you will, goes, it is a very, very fun gun to shoot.
Is it the most practical in its current configuration?
Absolutely not!
When we get into competitive options that is where the KR9 and the KP9 can kind of start to fall off a little bit. As far as AK-style 9 millimeters go they’re actually not that bad of a value, so even Palmetto State Armor’s, AKV I believe is what they call them, theirs start is at around a thousand dollars so this is a little bit of a premium above them but you also got to factor in that the magazines here are also a little bit more expensive on top of that. I do think that the build quality here is very nice, the reliability was 100% flawless, we did not have a single issue while we were out in the range.
We are gonna continue to shoot this and test this and maybe do some different configurations on it as well but the reliability was perfect, we did not clean oil or lubricated it at all, we basically just shoved some cheap steel case 9mm in it and let it run.
We start to compare this to other dedicated 9mm PCCs like the Stribog and the Scorpion’s, those are gonna be a way more cheaper and way more modular with a lot more aftermarket support so, well, if you’re looking for the best performance per dollar I don’t think this is gonna be at the top end of the stack. I think that this is still a very fun gun to shoot and if you want, you know, Kalashnikov USA you want that sort of quality and you want a very nice AK in 9mm. I think this is a good way to go but, again, if you’re looking for a dollar for dollar performance the top tier of that is gonna be like home-build AR9 and then you’re gonna go to a Stribog and then maybe a Scorpion and then somewhere after you’re eventually gonna land on the KR, KP9.
So, all this has definitely been a very fun gun to use and something that I am going to continue to shoot and enjoy shooting of whether or not it’s worth it. In terms of its value is totally gonna be up to you.
