Good morning everyone, I hope you’re all having a wonderful day today. Today we’re gonna be taking a look at the Winchester SXP Extreme Defender.
Full disclosure on the Winchester SXP Extreme Defender is that we paid our own money for this we have no affiliation with Winchester specifically for this review. I picked this up at my local gun store East Country Guns in Centralia Washington I think I paid 490 dollars for it which for the pump shotgun with a lot of additional features which we’ll talk about in just a minute is not that bad of a deal. So, let’s go and get rid of some of the specifics about the Winchester SXP.
Starting out we have a 18 inch barrel, which is as short as you can go, this is definitely more of a self-defense, home-defense style shotgun than like a hunting shotgun, of course you can use it for hunting, but a longer 24, 25, 28 inch barrel is probably going to be a little bit more preferable for hunting in general but 18 inches 18 and a half inches I think specifically perfect for home-defense, self-defense, that sort of thing. It’s still definitely a long gun, but for a shotgun specifically a pump shotgun with a stock, it is not too long. Now, getting into specifics on the barrel itself, the material, I believe, is a 41-50 chrome moly steel, which is a very high quality, very tough steel. On top of that the chamber and bore is very nice chrome plated which is going to make it very heat-resistant very lubricious all, very corrosion resistance very, very good.
Chrome lining on basically nay gun is incredibly high quality coating and we do like to see, especially with shotguns, they do like to build up a lot of gun coating on the inside of their barrels. Now, from the factory the Extreme Defender model does come with the stand-off device, breaching device, muzzle brake, whatever you wanna call it, it’s not a true muzzle brake though I do believe it does some recoil reduction though it still does have a good amount of recoil, it’s not like a true muzzle brake. Honestly, I would prefer a muzzle brake on a pump action shotgun that doesn’t really affect with the cycling of the gun, I think that would have been very cool but again a breaching or stand-off device is still quite useful in certain applications. You can also, of course, remove the choke if you wanted to do something else. I believe it comes standard with a cylinder bore so, of course, you can kind of put in whatever other Winchester chokes that you want to.
The tube
The tube itself, this one here is an extended tube, I have a +3 extension which we’ll get into later, standard, it comes with a five-shell capacity for two and three quarter inch shells and then, of course, if you go three inch you only get four so this is either a 4+1 or a 5+1 depending on again your ammunition choice as you see it right now, depending on the shell you can actually get it nine in the tube plus one in the chamber which for again a pump action is a very good capacity which, of course, means you’re doing less reloading and more shooting and then after you’re shooting you’ve got to do a lot more reloading and then a lot more shooting so very fun.
The slide itself is fine, it’s kind of this large piece of just kind of this, kind of cheap feeling plastic honestly, it is ribbed a little bit, which does help with grip however personally I think I might actually just cover this whole thing in like skateboard tape just to give it even more grip on top of that. It doesn’t feel all that great in the hand and if you’re using gloves even though it is ribbed you can still slide off a little bit, especially when it gets wet outside so it’s ok, it’s nothing special, it has a little bit of wobble to it, it is attached to two steel guide rods on either side which is quite nice. I haven’t had really any issues with other than to say it’s not quite as nice feeling as some other slides on the market.
Moving back to the bolt itself, I really couldn’t find any specifics on the material choices other than to say it looks and feels exactly like every other shotgun bolt on the market. You have a very large bolt face, a single extractor on the right side and a fixed extractor on the inside, sorry, a fixed ejector on the inside so as you’re obviously pulling it back and then it hits that fixed ejector and then shots the shell off into oblivion depending on how hard you’re racking the gun. Standard shell elevator on the bottom or a shell-evader on the bottom, it’s fairly easy to load it’s not quite restrictive as certain other shotguns on the market. If you’re wanted to, you could totally take a Dremel or some other tool and really open up the loading port on the bottom if you just wanted really fast really smooth loadings for me personally who’s not all that familiar with shotguns and don’t have all that much time and experience with them. It was fairly easy to load, really didn’t have too many issues getting it back into battery. Personally, if you had any questions about it, I am using the Esstac shotgun cards, I believe I bought three of four of these from Esstec, they’re actually just up the road for me and they work really well, so I have them velcroed onto the side of the receiver so when I use one I can just grab another one off my plate carrier and slap it on.
Ergonomics and controls
When it comes to ergonomics and controls of the shotgun they’re actually fairly well done so you do, of course, have a pistol grip which is kind of the tactical thing to have on your shotgun. I’m perfectly fine with like a standard grip or a pistol grip on a shotgun, either one works just fine for me although again because I shoot mostly AR platforms this is the most normal thing to me however one downside of this is that you do, of course, have a cross-bolt safety right here so you need to sweep that on to go to fire however to put it back to safe you either have to really brake you grip and flip it from the other side or bring your other hand your support hand in to put it back into safe, not really a big deal for most people whoever if you’re doing a bunch drill have this on a sling and you’re doing a bunch of other stuff it can be a little bit obnoxious to constantly actuate. The safety that way versus if you had a normal grip and just a safety up top you can just very easily actuate it with your thumb.
A couple of very nice things about this shotgun is that it has not only adjustable comb but also adjustable length of pull. Now, I believe, is 13 and a half inches, though it comes with two quarter inch spaces so you can stretch that all way out to 14 inches depending again on your body type.
Now, for me, I’m a little bit shorter so I keep it as short as it can be. The adjustable comb height if you’re using an optic which we are on this because it does, of course, include a Picatinny rail, which we’ll talk about in just a second so it comes with a lower height and then this which is about a half inch to three quarters of an inch higher so if you’re using either a low mount or like an absolute co-witness mount like a taller mount or so you can totally make do with that and still have a decent chin weld or cheek weld versus having a chin weld if you have the lower spacer in.
The main reason that I was interested in picking up and checking out this shotgun is the fact that it does come standard with a Picatinny rail on top, which means that for me it adds a lot of versatility in terms of optics because that means that not only can I test a shotgun while I’m shooting, but I can also review an optic that is on a shotgun, which is again kind of doubles its versatility for me as a gun reviewer also, of course, having optics are nice, red dots are very nice to use and you can use basically whatever you want. I use it with an EOTECH and Sig Romeo 7 all of which perform just fine, but on top of that, it comes standard with your very nice ghost-ring sights, I think people are kind of half and half on ghost-ring sights whether they’re too slow versus a bead sight or they’re more precise. For me personally I like ghost-ring sights, I think they’re a cool feature, I think bead sights are just fine as well, especially if you’re doing more close like fast stuff, I think a bead sight is going to be perfectly fine for 99% of people, however, ghost-ring sights for some people are nice and me personally I’m one of those people who like to see ghost-ring sights, sure they are probably a little bit slower but for most people not running 3- gun matches and you’re still not gonna be running 3’gun matches with this pump action shotgun, it’s not gonna be that big of a deal.
A couple things that the Extreme Defender does come with but are not currently on this shotgun are, it actually has an attachable piece up front that has a Picatinny rail section which for a home-defense shotgun is very important because if you’re planning on defending your home you probably want to have some sort of light attached to it since you’re most likely going to be doing that at night so for me having a picatinny section up front again currently not on there because it’s not set up for home-defense currently although it could be very quickly, I would definitely have some sort of push button light here on the side so I could actuate is so that, you know, if you need to respond to something during the night you will have something to be able to identify your targets. The other piece that is not currently attached, is it actually does come with a heat shield, it didn’t really need to have it on, it does look cool on photos, but for functional use, it doesn’t help me out all that much and just ads about six ounces on the top of the gun.
Overall length
From the factory the overall length on the Extreme Defender is 38.75 inches, I wanna say then, of course, you can make it about a half inch longer on the back and now with the +3 extension on here you’re looking at an overall length of about 42 inches so it’s not crazy long for a shotgun but definitely considering other firearms, you know, other semi-automatic rifles and handguns, SBRs, that sort of things, it is still a long gun though again for a shotgun it’s kind of middle of the road, nothing really special in that regard.
Weight
The weight on the shoot gun from the factory is only 7 pounds from the factory, though again that’s with nothing on it and unloaded, when you fully load this guy, especially with the +3 extension which adds some weight as well plus an optic on top plus seven rounds on top so you’re talking about like, you know, 16, 17 rounds at that point on your shotgun, you’re looking at much closer to 10 pounds overall.
We are talking about a pump action shotgun with a muzzle device that probably does a little bit of recoil reduction and it shoots fairly soft, so in the review of the shotgun we shot, I wanna say, 70% Buckshot, double buckshot, I believe we were using Rio Buckshot and then we also had some Sterling two and three quarter inch Birdshot that we were mixing in as well. Overall, basically everything that we fired through felt nice. You can definitely tell that Buckshot was a lot stiffer than a Birdshot. Overall a couple hundred rounds in a range session and I really didn’t have any sort of lingering effects whatsoever, especially when it’s fully loaded it’s gonna be a very smooth, very soft shooter again for a 12 gauge shotgun. The only issues that I had with it whatsoever were a couple personal issues or user errors basically where I would short stroke just a little bit and not quite get it all in here see if I can induce, they go back not quite all the way to get that shell on this elevator and then not quite using enough force to get it back into battery.
The trigger
Talking about the trigger on the shotgun for just a minute, the trigger is actually not bad so it is almost kind of feels like a two stage because you kind of have this really light take up maybe a couple pounds and then you have a very hard to find wall and then is a little bit of a rolling break and then it breaks so it probably breaks at about five pounds total so not too bad overall so you have again kind of that quarter inch or so take up or probably a little bit less than that, you hit a very hard wall and then there’s a soft rolling break at again maybe 5 pounds total so overall the trigger is very good if you did want to use this for hunting using slugs as say 50, 75, 100 yards. The trigger’s not bad, it’s definitely not a match trigger by means if I had to compare it to something I would say if it feels like a good mil-spec AR-15 trigger, it’s fairly light, it’s fairly crisp, it does have kind of a long rolling break that if that makes sense but overall it’s light enough that it’s not that bad. So, again what you’re looking at here, again, not with everything else on it but even with the +3 extension with the Esstac shell card on the side you’re really looking at a package of a little bit over 500 dollars and this in this configuration would be an excellent home-defense style shotgun or just a fun destroyer of clay targets and destroyer of trash in the woods. It is a fun gun to shoot if you like running pump shotguns kind of like a manual in that regard, it’s not necessarily the fastest gun out there, but if you get good with it and you enjoy it you’re going to have a very, very good time with it.
Is it the fastest thing out there, is it the softest shooting out there because, of course, if you have a semi-automatic shotgun, some of that excess energy is going to be bled off with the actual recoil system. Well, sure you’re going to find faster things, softer things but in the world of pump action shotguns especially budget-ish pump action shotguns it was 100% reliable with three or four different types of ammunitions that we tested it with and I don’t really thing we’re done with this shotgun either because, of course, you can mount it, we probably will do some optic on this shotgun just to test them out and see how they handle 12 gauge recoil and maybe a little bit later down the road we will do a dedicated home-defense setup for your 12 gauge pump shotgun but with all that out of the way I think this is a very good pump action shotgun that comes with a lot of additional features and options that a lot of other shotguns in the same category don’t which is one of the main reasons I was interested to check it out.
It’s not entirely perfect, of course, I do wish the slide felt a little bit better but that’s fairly subjective and could be fixed with some skateboard tape or some stippling or something else like that to give me a little bit more grip on it but other than that, guys, I do think it is a very good shotgun especially if you’re in the market for a pump action shotgun that can, you know, accept optics, comes with ghost-rings sights, has adjustable length of pull and comb height and, of course, you can always slap on a longer extension, comes with a breaching device, it has a lot things going for it especially when you consider that its street price is around 500 dollars.
