The VP9SK’s three sizes of backstraps and side-panel pairs allow you to completely customize the grip to fit your hand.
Heckler & Koch has been on a roll thanks to the solid, reliable and effective VP9, and now the company has introduced a subcompact version, the VP9SK. The VP9 line features the HK precision strike trigger. This is a refinement of the striker-fired system, where the precision strike has a shorter and lighter take-up than your basic spongy crunch-en-squish striker trigger. Then, once you’ve pressed through the clean break, the reset is shorter and cleaner.
I don’t want to sound too snarky, but it’s as if the engineers were told to listen to shooters and make a trigger that satisfied them and yet still had all the usual safety mechanisms built in. The trigger has a safety lever that blocks trigger movement until your finger has pressed it out of the way. There’s also a striker safety, blocking the forward progress of the pre-cocked striker until the trigger has cammed this safety out of the way.
The only other control on the VP9SK, the slide stop, is ambidextrous. It’s a low-profile lever inset on the left side and a longer lever flush with the frame on the right side. In handling and shooting, the right-hand lever never caused a problem, even though I fully expected it to.
The pistol features an ambidextrous slide lock lever. The magazine release is an ambidextrous paddle at the bottom of the trigger guard. The trigger is crisp, with a short reset.
Also ambidextrous is the magazine release, and here HK and I part company. The magazine release is a dual paddle design, where the paddles parallel the bottom of the trigger guard. This is a clever, positive and solid
