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Magpul Mags for the Glock.

Magpul Mags for the Glock.

I’m a huge Glock fan. I’ve owned Glocks for years. I have a lot of different models of Glocks. When I heard that Magpul was introducing the P mag for the Glock 17 I was really excited because I knew the price would be right and the quality would be there. You know there’s a lot of aftermarket mags out there and you should not buy them because there have been so many problems with them. And you know that Magpul is standing behind it, it’s gonna be a great product.

Magpul has been making quality AR 15 magazines for a long time but one of the great things that Magpul has done recently is to release their Glock magazines. These fit the 9mm Glock pistols the model 17 and the Model 19. We’re gonna take a look at some of the intricacies of this magazine system. One of the things that many already know is that originally when Magpul released these magazines they had a recall and they fixed it. There’s a couple of really cool things about these magazines but one of the biggest is the price. P mag Glock magazines retail for about $15.99. So that’s already about a ten dollar difference. Now you can find other prices of course for the Glock and Glock factory magazines, but really we’re looking at about a $10.00 difference per magazine.

There are some big differences between the two. Aside from price, one thing is you can see the metal feed lips on the P mag and it is of solid polymer construction. Now of course with the standard AR15 P mags that has not been a problem or with the AK-47 magazines having just a full polymer frame but one of the things that does give it added strength with the OEM mag is the metal sleeve that fits all the way down on the inside of the frame and one of the things you’ll notice though is that Magpul did include the cuts for the handy mag release that’s available for the Glock Gen 4. You know you can switch your Gen 4 mag release if you’re a left-handed shooter. On the old style Glock Gen 3 mags there is no cut out. Also, on the back of the Magpul magazine there are no witness holes which there are of course with the Glock. They do have witness holes on the other side just to show that you have full capacity. With the Magpul mag the follower is a high viz orange for easy recognition.

This orange it’s a little bit different in color from your standard Glock magazine but the geometry is the same on the P mag. One of the big things though that I really like, and a huge advantage, other than price with the P Mag is that it’s really easy to remove your base plate. If you’ve ever removed a Glock base plate basically you know what a nightmare it can be without the right tools. With the P Mag there’s a little button and of course you can take a 9mm round just push it depress it and then just pull your base plate right off and I mean that is really super simple. It does have a stainless steel spring and it is captured in your base plate of course and your follower is also captured with the spring. So if you ever need to pull that off you don’t have to worry about these pieces flying like out with your standard Glock magazine. Brownells sells this little tool which is highly recommended if you want to change out your Glock mags and do any kind of maintenance. You just squeeze down and what that does that allows for the body to squeeze then you take a small punch push down. And you can move your base plate forward. It is even more difficult doing it without this tool. Reassembling your standard Glock magazine does not require the tool you can just push your plate right over but with your Magpul mag just slide it in push down the follower

One of the cool things Magpul has already done is they’ve released an over molded base plate that has a rubber over mold that makes it really easy to grab and to pull out of your gun. Very similar to the original Magpul that you can put on your AR 15 mag. That’s how Magpul got their start. One of the other things that you want to pay attention to is it has a matrix for being able to identify your magazines. I’ve gone ahead to take the liberty of making this my number one magazine for my Glock and it makes it really nice and crisp. Much better than doing this on the standard factory Glock mag which does wear off over time. Another really cool feature that Magpul incorporated is ribs that go along the base plate of the floor plate. You can grab hold of this and it allows you to really get a good solid grip on your base plate when you’re either stripping it from your magazine or you’re pulling it out of a carrier. One of the cool things though also about the Magpul mag is they drop free whether they’re loaded or unloaded

Now the magic of being all polymer is it’s definitely lighter you can feel how light it is going to be and put it on a scale a 1.7 oz. with a steel insert for the factory Glock magazine 2.7 oz. So we have a total ounce difference between the two. The surface itself is a little different from the original factory mag. It has a little bit more of a plastic feel to it with soft plastic polymer. With the P mag it’s a little bit more rigid in fact they’ve made it that way just to be a little stronger and hold it the strength because they don’t have the insert. The P mag is as tough and durable as your standard Glock factory mag. Magpul has proven it to be a very strong system and we’ve done a few tests on it. I’ve seen guys that have shot through the magazines and you hit them with a hammer and a bunch of other things. I’m not necessarily going to do that, but we are going to go through some tests just to see how tough these little magazines are. Now we tried to keep the durability testing down to real world conditions. One thing is you know how you dropped your magazine at the range and people are stepping on it. That is one thing that can happen and does happen quite often like dropping it on cement. Here we get a little bit of just some scuff but no big deal nothing chipped nothing cracked.

Now to test the standard function of the magazines I want to use all three of the different Glock sizes the 17 to 19 and the 26. Just checking for reliability durability and function and they function flawlessly. Now as far as ease of loading in is concerned, we’re going to load a P mag and just see how easy it is to get to full capacity. There were 15 rounds the last two with the Glock factory mags that are fairly difficult to load in. This is the first time this magazine has been loaded so that’s definitely a good sign that it was easy to go ahead and load. With the spring compressing it was getting a little bit more difficult but very doable. One of the things about this that’s different from most of your Glock factory Mags is these are made in the USA.

We ran 300 rounds through these magazines using the Glock 17 19 and 26 mixed and matched the to 19 and 17 mags in different ones and just had a great field day. I mean it was a lot of fun at the range. No malfunctions. And honestly, I was expecting that it would be just a great shooting little magazine for the money. The Magpul mags for the Glock 17 and 19 are thumbs way up. Anyone who owns a Glock probably has 15-20 magazines of various types and on top of that has them loaded with different ammo (what good is an empty mag?). The challenge is how to organize and index them so that you can get the right one when you need it. Hyskore www.hyskore.com has come up with the perfect solution in their 30316 Double Stack Magazine Rack and Organizer https://hyskore.com/products/30316-double-stack-modular-magazine-storage/. This handy device mounts directly to 16” on center studs and holds 12 mags that can be easily inserted and retrieved. It is also perfect for a Beretta, Springfield, or Smith & Wesson double stack magazines.