For Christmas to myself from myself I obtained an Advantage Arms .22 Conversion Kit for my Glock 30SF. The 30SF is my new primary carry gun and thus I want to practice with it as much as humanly possible. Alas a predicament exists the 30SF fires .45 auto ammunition which is a touch expensive. On the other hand nothing I’m aware of is cheaper than .22LR. Thankfully Advantage Arms decided a market exists in combining both full size pistols and .22LR ammunition.
First what the kit is and what it isn’t. What the kit consists of is a replacement slide and magazine. The slide consists of your usual stuff including a firing pin, barrel, and recoil spring. One very nice thing about the slide is the size and shape are the same as your Glock so with the kit on you can still practice with your standard holster. The kit also allows you to practice with the trigger on your Glock, be it the stock one or an aftermarket one. What the kit isn’t is a perfectly accurate representation of your Glock, the slide weighs much less than the factory one. This in itself is fairly obvious because a puny .22LR round isn’t going to budge a slide made for a .45.
First off installation is a breeze. You remove the slide from your Glock and than put the Advantage Arms slide on. It’s no different than field stripping your Glock and than putting the slide back on. You couldn’t make it any easier. Likewise you need to use the Advantage Arms magazine with the slide since a regular Glock magazine isn’t going to hold .22LR ammunition.
The magazine is simple enough. Form-wise it’s almost exactly the same as the Glock factory magazines. This means it goes right into the grip without any need for an adapter. It also drops free, usually. The Advantage Arms magazines don’t have the full metal liner that Glock magazines do any hence it’s lighter. Usually the magazine simply drops free but oftentimes you have to make sure you really push in the magazine release. If it doesn’t drop free you just have to give the gun a firm shake downwards. Advantage Arms is located in the People’s Republic of California so 10 round magazines is all you can get. And they’re expensive coming in at $25.00 a piece from the manufacturer. Also they’re in short supply at the moment as nobody has any in stock (much like the kit itself). And finally the kit only comes with one magazine which is a drag in my opinion, but whatever.
There are two types of kits. The target and the law enforcement ones. You don’t have to be a law enforcement officer to get the law enforcement model, and that’s the model I got. The difference between the two types has to do with the sights. The law enforcement model uses stock Glock sights. You can replace them with any sight that fits a Glock. The target model has proprietary sights that are raised up higher than standard Glock sights. From the factory the law enforcement model has a stock Glock front sight and an adjustable Glock rear sight. I really like the fact that this kit uses standard Glock sights. If you want to put night sights on your Glock you can and you can also put those same night sights on the Advantage Arms kit so you’re practicing with the same setup.
When you open the box there is a very large orange piece of paper alerting you to the fact the kit is finicky with ammunition. They recommend Remington Glod Bullets or CCI Mini-Mags. The not also strong recommends against any Remington Thunderbolt, Federal, or Winchester ammunition. I had some CCI Mini-Mags and Remington Cyclones around so those are what I tested with.
Since I’m talking ammunition let’s start with that. Another note mentioned that the kit may not settle in for a couple hundred rounds so until then you may experience higher failure rates than expected. I notice this. With both types of ammunition I had with I experience on average one failure per 10 rounds. But as I shot more and more rounds through it the failure rate started dropping pretty decisively. I got about 200 rounds through today and the last fifty fed through with only two failures. Both ammunitions performed roughly the same although I noticed slightly more failures with the Remington ammunition. I expected as much since I always have more failures with bulk Remington ammunition, but for the price I don’t care. And even with all the failures the kit is more reliably than my Smith and Wesson 22A I got for uber cheap.
The failures aren’t all bad either. Since the kit operates the exact same as the standard Glock setup failures make great opportunities to practice failure drills. Tap, rack, bang works just fine with the Advantage Arms kit.
Accuracy was very good for a .22 pistol. I had no problems hitting a man sized target at 25 yards with it. My groups weren’t great but again they never are. With multiple magazines you can practice reload drills but I only have the single magazine the kit comes with at the moment. Still performing draw and fire drills is great with this kit. Likewise I can work on my point shooting without feeling like I’m wasting a ton of expensive .45 ammunition. All these reasons are why I wanted this kit in the first place and it does very well at all of them. Overall I’m very happy with this kit.
Unfortunately nothing is prefect. The kit itself is the price of a .22 pistol coming in at $265.00. Still I think the advantage of being able to practice cheaply on your desired platform is worth the money. Likewise if you pistol is a .45 auto like mine (Advantage Arms makes kits for 1911s and other Glock models as well) you save a butt load of money when using the kit. This will make up for the cost of the kit after some time.
Because many people hate reading entire reviews I’m going to include a simple bullet point summary.
Pros:
– Easy installation and removal
– Perfectly mimics the function of your pistol
– You can practice with the same trigger
– .22LR is much cheaper than .45 auto
– Uses standard Glock sights
Cons:
– Expensive
– One includes one magazine
– Magazines are expensive and capped at 10 rounds