Comparing the Springfield XD Mod.2 and XD(M)

One of the things I get asked about with the Springfield line of pistols is what's the difference between the XD the standard model or now the Mod 2 and the XDM and which one should I choose for personal defense? Well, we've got two examples here that are really close to one another in terms of all the features and the sizes. We've got the XDM 3.8 inch and we've got the Mod 2 XD in a four-inch model. Now the main difference that I think most people are going to find when they pick these two guns up really just comes down to the way the grip feels. Generally, the M models are a little bit wider and fill the hand a little bit more.

If you have smaller hands, you're probably not going to like that M model quite as much. If you go to the Mod 2 model, you're going to find that the contours here are a little bit more aggressive. The contours are much more appealing to a smaller hand. Now it doesn't mean that a large hand isn't going to fit these guns well and in fact, I find that the Mod 2 and even the standard XD tends to fit more hands than just about any of the other standard, reliable guns that we recommend for your first choice when it comes to personal defense. So when we go back to the 3.8, here's one of the biggest differences.

The 3.8 has a smaller grip obviously than the four-inch and what that means is you're going to be able to conceal this a little bit better. It's going to print less appendix or behind the back because of that shorter grip, it's going to print a little bit less and you can see what that difference looks like when you carry the gun. When we put them side by side like that and that may not seem very significant but if you've carried guns underneath your clothing, inside the waistband, you know that that length of grip is one of the hardest parts to conceal. So that's going to be one of the advantages to this XDM. The other advantage is that when we get away from the compact magazine that sits flush, and we look at the full-size magazine that we can also put into the XDM, we're going to see a dramatic increase in capacity.

This is a 19 round magazine. That's a 20 round pistol with your spare magazine. Or if you were going to double duty this for home defense when you weren't carrying it, weren't worried about printing, you put one of these on there, you might even have one of those extensions on there, you now have a 20 round gun as opposed to this gun with its full size magazine, you're going to have 17 rounds, three extra rounds. Is it going to make a difference? I don't know.

To some people, magazine capacity is a big issue and the XDM definitely wins out there. As far as shooting the guns, obviously I have my eye protection, ear protection on. As far as shooting the guns go, you do notice for someone with any kind of a moderate or large size hand that the hand isn't going to completely fit on there. Your pinky fingers probably going to float a little bit with the standard magazines, but not a big deal. Relatively easy to shoot that gun, get the hits.

This gun fills the hand a little bit better and like I said, I probably have, you know on the larger size, larger side of medium sized hands. And I find that this Mod 2 is just about perfect. I really like this grip as have a lot of my students. So magazine capacity and grit really come down to the choices that you're going to make when you look at the XDM versus the XD Mod 2 for your personal defense carry gun from Springfield.