The Most Versatile Handgun? - Glock 19 Gen 5

Updated 12 months ago

Good morning, everyone, this is John with gun.deals, and today we're going to be taking a look at perhaps one of the most popular handguns in America, this is the Glock 19 Gen 5. It's a long-standing popularity, is for pretty good reason, it is an excellent little handgun, if a little bit plain, boring and played out at this point, but it still does what it's designed to do very well.


Full disclosure on this handgun, this was not sent out to us by anyone, we paid our own money for this handgun, we don't have any affiliation with Glock whatsoever, so there is no relationship there whatsoever, I do own a couple Glocks, I shoot Glocks primarily, as far as handguns go, and overall I do like them as a company and as a product for what they do, and they're not really going to be the best at anything, but they are going to be very, very good at a few things.

Getting into the Glock 19 Gen 5, if you're not familiar with Glocks at all for some reason the Glock 19 is kind of the middle sized handgun, so you get a 15 plus one grip capacity, which for my small hands does fit fairly well, however, if you have larger hands that can be an issue. You have the Glock 17, which is your full size, four and a half inch, 17 round capacity, so a little bit longer grip, a little bit longer barrel, this is the four inch model, and then you have shorter models, the 19x, the 45, and bunch of other intermediate sizes and shapes and configurations for basically the same handgun.

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While the Gen 5 Glocks might look very similar to other Glock iterations of the past, the Gen 5S do have some very nice improvements. Starting off with the grip, the magwell itself has been very nicely enhanced, it is a flared and beveled magazine well, it is almost the same size as some competition magwells, though it is very thin around the edges so it doesn't have two bulky of an appearance so it's not going to be too hard to cover when you're concealed carrying, however, it does make those reloads very nice and easy intuitive, again, very nicely flared and beveled, makes it very easy to insert magazines and to change them very quickly, should you need to.

Moving on to the grip itself, you have the standard Glock angle, which is a kind of a love-hate relationship for most people. If you shoot a lot of Glocks like I do, or primarily Glocks, you're going to be very used to it and it's going to be very natural at this point. The texturing is kind of a diamond texturing that wraps around the bottom half of the grip and stops about two-thirds the way up. Unfortunately, I do wish that they would continue that grip texture, basically over the entire frame. It's not particularly aggressive, especially on the front strap, it doesn't really bite into your fingers all that much, so it doesn't give you all that much traction, however, it is not terrible, it's better than some out there.

glock-19-gen-5-sights

It's one of those areas where Glocks have never been really well regarded for their grip texture, except for a few models, I think they actually have like a model that like specifically has like an insanely high texture grip finish on it for some reason, but normally the factory Glocks are pretty poor in that regard and in fact there are a lot of companies and industries solely dedicated to stippling Glock frames to grips and attachments that you can put on here, wraps and whatnot, to give you better texturing. The Gen 5 is maybe an improvement from the Gen 3 and Gen 4, however, it's certainly nothing to write home about.

The trigger is very nicely improved on the Gen 5 model, it's not necessarily anything groundbreaking, but it is pretty nice, so you have your standard amount of Glock take up of about maybe a little bit under a half inch, you hit your first wall and there's a little bit of mush into a rolling break, and then it ends at about five and a half pounds, and this is a fairly new gun, it probably only has about four or 500 rounds, so at this point, so that will inevitably wear in and lower down just a little bit. Reset is smooth, forced and short, which are three very good things when it comes to reset, then you're right back on that wall, and then you kind of roll through it a little gritty, a little sloppy, but coming in at five and a half, six pounds for a fairly new Glock Gen 5 feels really good and kind of the benchmark for what a concealed carry, duty trigger should feel like.

You do get a lot better triggers on the market, and that is going to be one of the areas where Glocks are definitely outdone. Buy other handguns on the market. I don't believe that concealed carry triggers have to suck. I don't think that that trigger sucks, however, I think if there is a trigger out there that is worse than this one that's where it starts to become a problem, and become very noticeable. This trigger is certainly functional, in fact, even with just the stock iron sights on this Glock 19 Gen 5 I was able to make repeated hits at 100 yards with very little issue, but I do shoot Glocks quite a bit.

glock-19-gen-5-trigger

On the Gen 5 models, I believe the magazine release itself is swappable, so you can have it on the left or the right side, depending on what hand you prefer to shoot with. For me, on the left side is the natural side as I’m a right-handed shooter. The magazine release itself is very large, though very low profile, so I have never accidentally hit it, which I quite like.

Moving up from there, we have our slide stop/slide release, which is truly ambidextrous, so you have an identical one on the left and the right. It is fenced in, no issues with my hands, with a high grip accidentally actuating it when I don't mean to, and or depressing it when I don't mean to, that sort of thing. For the lefties out there it is a truly ambidextrous, so you can of course drop it from either side.

The rest of the grip frame is a fairly standard Glock, you do have a kind of squared off trigger guard, and you have your Glock accessory rail, which looks very similar to a Picatinny rail, however, it is not, it is slightly different because Glocks are so popular and there are so many aftermarket companies making products for Glocks, basically every single light on the market will fit a Glock frame.

Moving on to the slide, unfortunately, the slide still comes with your stock plastic sights, however, they are adequate and usable. I do think if you're going to be concealed carrying it for an extended period of time you're not going to be swapping to like an MOS or a red dot or something on it. You probably want to upgrade them eventually, however, they are serviceable, I was able to make hits out to 100 yards without much issue. The sight picture is very standard Glock, it is nothing special whatsoever, and they're just kind of okay, but they do work.

glock-19-gen-5-shooting

The rest of the slide is very nice, they have updated the front and rear serrations to be very grippy, and you actually have front serration, so if you like to do your cool looking press checks you can totally do that. On the front of the slide they did update some of the geometry, so you have these very aggressive radiusing and beveling on the front of the slide, so supposedly it's a little bit easier to get in and out of a holster, though that's not something I've really ever noticed when compared to like my Gen 3 guns.

The last thing about the upper that you need to talk about is the barrel, the barrels are all what Glock calls they're Marksman barrels, which is supposedly a more accurate, reliable barrel system. As far as practical accuracy it is very, very good, though is it better than a Gen 3 Glock that I shoot a lot with, maybe a little bit, it is certainly a very capable, very accurate handgun, well you might be splitting hairs as to the actual mechanical accuracy difference of this Marksman barrel versus what people are actually going to be able to get out of it in a practical sense.

Fortunately, the disassembly on the Gen 5 Glock is going to be identical to basically every other Glock out there, you pull back on the slide a little bit, pull down on your takedown lever, and the upper and lower separate just like that. On the Gen 4S and up, so Gen 4, Gen 5S, you do get a dual stage recoil spring, which does help the gun to shoot a little bit softer, mitigate that recoil a little bit, and in terms of shootability the Glock 19 Gen 5 is very good, it's not the most snappy handgun on the market, some of that has to do with the dual stage recoil spring with the very aggressive grip angle. If it had a little bit better texturing or purchase like some aftermarket Glock frames do, it would shoot even softer, but as it is, it is definitely a pleasant gun to shoot, a decent trigger on it, good ergonomics, means that if you can't shoot a Glock it's because you probably can't shoot very well to begin with. That's not to say that Glocks are the easiest guns in the world to be good with, but they are kind of a gold standard, if you will, and something that everyone should be at least proficient enough with.

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When it comes to features, ergonomics and price, in a lot of cases as well, there are going to be a lot of really good handguns on the market that kind of eclipse the Gen 5 Glock, so some of them will have better sights, better triggers, better grips, so on and so forth, a few features here and there, a lot of them come standard optics cut versus having to either get a aftermarket slide, have your slide milled or go with the MOS version, there are just a lot of really good competitive options, and Glocks to me are more like workhorses or Jacks of all trades, they are not great at any one specific thing, but they do everything to a high enough level that it kind of as a whole works out very well, and the best thing that they are known for is their dumb reliability, and this handgun here does not have that many rounds through it, only about 500 though.

I do have a lot of experience with Glocks at this point 20, 30, 40 000 rounds, something like that, and they are almost all indomitably reliable or right out of the box, no sort of nonsense break-in period or anything else like that, on top of that, you have aftermarket magazines, aftermarket anything whatsoever you can think of, there is a company making it for a Glock, and keep in mind this is a bone stock absolutely, no modifications whatsoever, Glock 19 Gen 5, and this handgun is very, very capable.

There are going to be other competitive options on the market that are going to eclipse it in certain ways, however, if you are somebody that is just looking for the most reliable handgun you can get and still not break the bank because you can definitely find these under 600 bucks, in some cases under 500 bucks as well, which is not too expensive, especially when you take into the fact that the magazines are a lot cheaper than other magazines on the market, so say you buy a 400 gun and eight magazines, this gun might be a little bit more expensive, but with eight Glock mags versus like eight Beretta mags you might end up actually ending up saving money going with a Glock just because the aftermarket magazines or whatnot are going to be a lot cheaper than some of the other options on the market.

Overall, I do think Glocks are excellent handguns, and the Gen 5 Glock 19 is no different, it's a very basic, very simple handgun that is very, very reliable, and if you're looking for the most reliable handgun you can get on the market it is still probably a Glock.