Glock 17 gen4 Endurance Test: Week 39

53,470 rounds

9 stoppages (+1 w/non-LCI extractor)

0 malfunctions

1 parts breakages

So, remember when I said I was going to clean it? Yeah… didn’t happen. Maybe next week. Maybe not.

This week was all about the LG-850 Lasergrip from Crimson Trace. CTC originally sent it to Caleb of Gun Nuts, but he doesn’t have a gen4 G17-sized pistol and generously offered to pass it along to me.

As much as I love CTC Lasergrips and relied on them for a decade, their Glock offerings have always sucked. Not to put too fine a point on it, but previous Glock Lasergrips were designed for people who think Taurus is the pinnacle of quality and “minute of badguy” is a scientific accuracy standard. That’s ironic considering Crimson Trace actually got its start with an integral Glock laser that had to be installed at their factory.

The two biggest complaints about the previous LG-617 series Lasergrips were:

1. their lack of a master on/off switch preventing you from practicing without the laser coming on; and,
2. the fact that they retained zero only so long as you never fired the gun… and even then, not always.

So how does the new LG-850 stack up?

The first problem was easy to fix. Much like the M&P Lasergrips, the LG-850 uses a recessed button that you hold down for a couple of seconds to turn the grip on or off. When the grip is turned off, touching the raised activation button does nothing.

When the grip is turned on, it takes almost no force on the activation button to emit the laser beam. In my opinion, the button is too light. I much prefer the ability to have the gun in my hand without activating the laser. While my trigger finger blocks the beam when indexed on the side of the gun, it still creates enough light to be visible at significant distance in the dark, especially to someone with line of sight to the right side of the gun. It’s a minor nit, but ideally I’d like the laser off until I grip the gun hard enough to fire it.

The second problem, retaining zero, seems tougher to crack. The first thing I did at the range was try to zero the laser. At 15yd, my first shot was right in the center of a 2″ circle. The next shot was about an inch high and right. The shot after that was another inch high and right. The next was another inch, and the fifth was half a foot away from the first shot. It was clear, looking through the iron sights, that the laser was now pointing noticeably low and left. I started the process over again and got the same result.

At this point, I was sending Caleb a lot of emails about how much the LG-850 continued the Glock Lasergrip saga of suckage.

For about a hundred rounds, I alternated between rapid firing a full magazine through the gun and fixing the zero. The shift in zero was less and less after each mag. Finally, a little over 100 rounds into the process, the grip settled in and seemed much better. I re-zeroed one last time and began actually practicing with the thing.

First, I decided to do a comparison between the laser and the iron sights using the F.A.S.T. for data. I shot ten runs with the laser, then ten with the irons, then ten with the laser again. Let’s look at just the the first two shots:

	laser (1st)	irons (2nd)	laser (3rd)
Time (avg)	2.14s	2.13s	2.09s
Misses	7	3	6

Times were fairly similar, but the accuracy with the laser was substantially worse.

Next, I shot the 99 Drill. The results made my F.A.S.T. runs look good. On the first string I dropped nine points… more than I usually miss for the whole drill. The second string, the reloads, has a very generous PAR time so I slowed down and only dropped two. At 10yd on the third string I dropped twelve. And out of just nine shots at 15yd, I missed another five. Total score was a 71.

So 300 rounds into the session, the laser was pretty disappointing and I was very frustrated. Still, was it the shooter or the accessory?

I burned 180 rounds shooting three to five shot groups at 2″ circles at 7yd. I started slow, working on getting hits rather than speed. With each new mag and new circle, I upped the speed a little bit. By the end, I was getting almost all of my hits at a pretty good pace.

Next, I shot the Drill of the Week, SWYNTS (See What You Need To See). I actually wrote this drill specifically as a way to compare the laser against the iron sights.

	irons	laser
6″ circle	12.11s with two misses	11.35s with one miss
3×5 card	15.20s with one miss	14.45s with no misses
2″ circle	19.88s with two misses	18.18s with two misses

Clearly, the laser was better in every instance. It took about 7% less time and had 40% fewer misses. Feeling pretty good, I ran ten more F.A.S.T. with the laser. Average time for the head shots was 2.02 seconds with two misses, better than any of the previous runs. Average for all six shots (including accuracy penalties) was 4.97 seconds.

Of course, one night’s worth of shooting isn’t proof of anything. But the LG-850, with some practice and effort on my part, turned in decent enough results that it’s staying on my gun for more testing.

Other thoughts about the LG-850 in no particular order:

• Build quality seems very high. I’ve had more than one set of Lasergrips fail on me after serious use and the LG-850 appear to benefit from a lot of hard-earned lessons at Crimson Trace.
• The laser diode is recessed deep in its housing (see photo at right) which should help stave off interference from dust, water, and other contaminants.
• Trigger reach is substantially longer with the grip installed. I normally press the trigger with my fingertip so it’s not an issue for me, but if I wanted to use the center of the finger pad I do not think I could with these on the gun.
• The Lasergrips position my hands lower on the gun than the Grip Force Adapter. It remains to be seen what if any impact that will have on my overall shooting.
• The battery compartments didn’t cause any pain or leave any marks on my hands even after more than 1,000 rounds of shooting in one night. The jury is still out on whether they’ll break my grip or improve it by acting as palmswells like the M&P version of the Lasergrip.
• Crimson Trace has modernized the wrench it includes for adjusting elevation and also includes a nice custom version of the ubiquitous Glock armorer’s tool for installation of the grip. The grip simply rests on the frame and is kept in place with a slightly elongated version of the trigger housing pin (also included).
• By the end of the night the zero hadn’t changed enough to be noticeable at 15yd after more than 500 rounds. Obviously, that’s something else that will continue to be evaluated over time.

See you next week.

Train hard & stay safe! ToddG

Previous Glock 17 gen4 Endurance Test posts at pistol-training.com:

• Week 38
• Week 37
• Week 36
• Week 35
• Week 34
• Week 33
• Week 32
• Week 31
• Week 30
• Week 29
• Week 28
• Week 27
• Week 26
• Week 25
• Week 24
• Week 23
• Week 22
• Week 21
• Week 20
• Week 19
• Week 18
• 25,000 Rounds with the G17 gen4
• Week 17
• Week 15
• Week 13
• Week 12
• Week 11
• Week 10
• Week 9
• Week 8
• Week 6
• Week 5
• Week 4
• Week 3
• Week 2
• Week 1
• 99.8%
• It Lives
• Week Zero
• When Will It Stop?
• Announcement