SIG Sauer P238 Review:

Caliber:  .380ACP (9mm short, 9mm kurtz, 9x17mm)

Capacity:  6 rounds

Action:  Semiautomatic SAO

Front Sight:  White dot or tritium insert; post dovetailed to slide

Rear Sight:  2 white dots or tritium inserts; dovetailed to slide

Price: 

MSRP $720 as shown (Rosewood grips, tritium sights, Nitron finish); 4 other models currently available (see link above)

Expect to pay about $600 as shown

The HD model cost about $700 as of March 2011

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There are several variants of the P238. This review discusses the Nitron/Rosewood and HD (steel-framed) models.

Overview, Photos and Comparisons



I know it doesn't look great but this Hogue slip-on provides a better purchase on the grip. As lovely as the rosewood panels are, I will replace them with Hogue wrap-arounds if/when they are released.


Hogue finally started making dedicated rubber grips for the P238. Hurray! No more cheesy, generic slip-ons. These grips come in black, tan, green and pink. I like the green and tan most.


You can see the Hogues add a slight bulge towards the bottom of the grip. It does make the pistol a little more comfortable to hold but sacrifices the P238's slim profile slightly. Overall I wish the bulges weren't there but it won't stop me from using these grips. The P238 is still the easiest pistol to carry that I own.


This High Noon Holsters Hidden Ally is a terrific companion to the P238. It's thin, light and comfortable. At $35 it is an absolute steal. I see a lot of talk on the forums about how single-action-only pistols have no place in a pocket. Well who said you have to carry it in a pocket? And why would you when this holster is available? I carry it cocked with the safety engaged in this rig wearing shorts and a t-shirt. It's comfortable and no one is spotting it at all. My wife knows it's there and forgets. I'm 5'10", 150 pounds; handguns normally stick out on me like a tumor if I don't dress for it. With this setup I don't dress for the gun.


This particular hostler is tuckable as well. Due to my small frame I really can't tuck it but I hardly ever tuck anyway when I'm not wearing a jacket.


I have found that Colt Mustang magazines work flawlessly with the P238. This is convenient since you can buy the Colt magazines from Midway USA in blue or stainless finish for about half the cost of the SIG magazine. I like the look of the blue magazines with my pistol anyway. The magazine on the left is a blued Colt; it looks stainless because of the flash.


You may notice that the floorplate of the Colt magazine sticks out a little farther than the SIG and will stick out slightly from the bottom of the frame when inserted in the pistol. I have not found this to be a problem. I use the Colt magazines most often after I verified they work. I prefer them to the SIG magazine.


Here's a better view of the difference in the magazine floorplates. If you look closely at the lettering on the SIG magazine you may notice slight corrosion in the lettering on the floorplate. I was really surprised by this as it never contacts my skin during carry; I always wear an undershirt. It may be some kind of discoloration caused by the manufacturing process; I can't really tell. Other SIG P238 magazines I have since acquired also have this discoloration so I think it's part of the manufacturing process.


The Colt magazine is on the bottom, SIG on top. Notice there is some extra metal on the Colt magazine. The only problem this seems to cause is making the magazine a little difficult to put in the pistol. However, if you don't push the top round all the way to the back of the magazine, there is no issue. If that top round is all the way to the rear its rim and that extra metal at the front have dimensions close to the magazine well of the pistol. This makes for a tight fit. Just push the top round slightly forward and you should have no issues.


Bottom to top:  S&W 351PD .22 Magnum, SIG P238 .380ACP, Glock 26 9mm
The SIG is SIGnificantly smaller in all dimensions than my other two concealed-carry guns.


Left to right:  S&W 351PD .22 Magnum, SIG P238 .380ACP, Glock 26 9mm
The SIG is so much slimmer than either of the others. I carried the Glock constantly, but no more. I am a small-framed guy and need something slim. I will sacrifice power for ease of carry, if accuracy isn't lost, and this SIG .380ACP fits the bill.
Check out the sights on the SIG; real 3-dot sights just like you find on its big brothers. That and the decent single action trigger make this "pocket" pistol a serious carry gun.


These are the pistols I carry (or rather carried) most often. I was carrying the Glock 26 in a High Noon Holsters Hideaway regularly. After carrying the P238 I can't stand to carry the Glock. The SIG P239 feels about the same as the Glock. The SIG's holster is a High Noon Holsters Mr Softy. In case you couldn't tell, I think High Noon offers the best bang-for-buck in any holster I've found.

Here are some comparison photos of the guns I carry often. The P238 has them all beaten for ease-of-carry, hands down.

Glock 26


S&W 351PD


SIG P239


Glock 26


S&W 351PD


SIG P239


HD model and Nitron/Rosewood model


SIG P238 HD slide (left) vs standard (right)

SIG P238 HD Slide Issue:
You should notice the HD slide is significantly thicker than the standard model slide. For some reason SIG had to increase the thickness to avoid damage to the slide by the slide catch. A standard thickness slide would become deformed when the slide catch engaged. It was noticeable after shooting through only a few magazines. The thicker slide does not add a lot more weight but I carry in-the-waistband (IWB) and find the extra thickness to seriously detract from the original design's comfortable feel while carrying. The HD is now almost as thick as my Kahr MK9 (see below). The extra weight of the Kahr doesn't bother me so I'd rather carry the 9mm than the HD.

In shooting these P238s side-by-side I did not see the extra accuracy of the HD shown by the Guns & Ammo article that inspired me to buy it. I get equally good groups from each pistol and have no complaints in that area. However, I see no real reason for the HD's existence with the thicker slide. It's not as good for pocket-carry as the aluminum-framed versions due to the extra weight. It's not as good for IWB carry due to the extra thickness. The P238 is not a range gun. Are you going to wear out an aluminum frame? Not likely. My advice is to skip the HD all together. I also had crazy amounts of malfunctions with the HD until the slide was replaced. There were several failure-to-feed and failure-to-eject malfunctions in each magazine. With the new slide it runs much better but it's still not fully reliable. I still get spent casings that don't fully eject. If I could go back I would not buy the HD and I did in fact sell the HD to buy my BMW F650FS motorcycle. I still love my Nitron/Rosewood model though.

I bought my HD in July 2010. Myself and many others had to send our HDs back to SIG for warranty work where they replaced the slide with a thicker one and changed the profile of the barrel around the feed ramp. There were threads on sigforum.com documenting all this but I could not find them when I went to link them to this review. It seems they have been deleted. Like I said, avoid the HD or at least make sure any one you want to buy has a thick slide.


SIG P238 HD (left) vs Kahr MK9 (right)
The MK9 is much heavier but they are about the same thickness. For me and IWB carry thickness is a greater factor than weight so I'll take the MK9 in 9mm over the P238 HD in .380ACP.




With the new, heavier slide there appears to be no damage to the slide stop area after firing 100 rounds. Unfortunately I did not photograph the damage to the original slide but you'll know it if it happens. The slide will deform where the catch engages it on an empty magazine.


P238 HD and Springfield Armory 1911-A1

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Performance

Well all that's just great, huh? The P238 looks nice (in my opinion, but only this model; the others are UGLY, especially that rainbow titanium) and it's easy to carry. If you need to use it, is it a valuable tool? If you do your part, is the P238 capable of hitting the target? Is it reliable? In short, yes and yes with a few notes.

I've fired about 250 rounds through my P238. I have had no failures to fire/eject/feed. The only issue I've seen is that the slide does not always lock open on an empty magazine. I would say it fails to do this about 25% of the time. I had this same issue with my Beretta 85 (I traded it for the P238) and a Browning BDA I owned (my first handgun). I never saw the issue with my SIG P230 or P232 though. Anyway, this issue is not a concern for me. I am not going on tactical missions with this gun. The problem does not require any serious corrective action. Finally, the P238's accuracy, reliability and ease-of-carry far make up for this shortcoming. The safety disengages very naturally with just enough force that I feel it won't be flipped off by accident. It is difficult to sweep the thumb of the shooting hand up to engage the safety so I usually use the non-shooting hand. But you can take your time engaging the safety as long as it comes off easily when you need it to do so.

A few things did cause me a little concern. I could only load the supplied "6-round magazine" with 5 rounds. With 6 rounds loaded the slide cannot be pulled back. I have two Colt Mustang magazines that I bought from Midway USA that have the same problem. Otherwise, the Colt Mustang magazines function flawlessly. Also, my particular pistol seems to have a loose slide-to-frame fit. I've compared it to other P238s, both new and used, and my slide has more play. However, this has affected neither accuracy nor reliability. I did send the pistol to SIG to have these issues looked at, just to be safe. SIG returned the pistol within about a week. I was really impressed with the turnaround since it was over Thanksgiving. The slide may be a little tighter but I could be imagining that because I was so happy to get the pistol back. I don't care about that anyway because it works so well. SIG did fix the magazine capacity issue. Now the SIG magazine and both the Colts can be loaded fully with six rounds and the pistol will function. I don't know what they changed but it has to be something with the gun. I only sent them the SIG magazine so the fact that the Colts work now leads me to believe this.

When I first got the pistol it would not load a round when I racked the slide. The round would just nose dive into the feedramp. It only took a seconds of polishing with Dremel tool and felt polishing wheel to fix that. Now that ramp is slick as glass and never misfeeds.

The recall. I'm sure anyone who has looked into this pistol is aware of the recall. My gun did fall into the serial number range. I called SIG and apparently it was one that was fixed before shipping. I have had no issues in this area. I messed with the gun for a week with only snap-caps (carry, draw, safety on/off, etc) before using live ammunition.

As far as accuracy, this gun was a big surprise in a good way. The gun points very naturally. Check out the targets.


This target was shot a 30 feet in a Weaver stance for the group in the center (30 rounds). I think that's pretty damn good for a gun that fits in my palm. The sights on the P238 are serious and highly usable. The tritium 3-dot setup is great.
I pushed the target out to 50 feet for five rounds; that's what the four holes at the bottom are. I think one of the five went too low for the target.


Here is the second target of the day. Once again the center group (20 rounds) was shoot at 30 feet in a Weaver stance; even better than before.
I got a little more serious about the 50 foot distance. The lower group (15 rounds) was shot at 50 feet in a Weaver stance, aiming for the lower "8". Not too bad. Remember this pistol has a 2.7" barrel and a very short sight radius. From a bench rest this little pistol would probably do pretty well even farther than 50 feet.
Finally, the upper group (5 rounds) was shot at 30 feet but using only one hand. I was aiming for the upper "8" and using a "oh s**t, someone is coming at me" stance. After all, that's going to be the most realistic scenario for this pistol.

I am very pleased with the accuracy of this pistol. There are a few things that I believe contribute to these groups:  a decent single action trigger, good sites (outstanding for this class of pistol) and low recoil. Many .380 autos have a fixed barrel; the barrel does not move as the weapon cycles. This gun uses a locked breech design where the barrel and slide travel reward together for a short distance before disengaging so the slide may continue back and feed a new round; see an explanation here. This allows for a lighter recoil spring which means weaker folks can rack the slide more easily. My wife could barely rack the slide of our fixed-barrel Beretta 85. It also lightens the felt recoil since the mass of both the slide and barrel move and absorb more of the force of the round.

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Conclusion

I am very pleased with this purchase, at least the rosewood/nitron model. I have not found a gun yet that makes a better carry piece thought my Kahr MK9 is a very close second. As with anything there are compromises. It's easy to carry but shoots a weaker round than some like. There were a few issues but I bought an early production example and knew there might be. Hopefully these have been or will be worked out in future pistols. Mine is great now. I would purchase it again and have no intentions of getting rid of it. None of this applies to the early HD model I bought though. Maybe SIG has fixed the issues with it in later iterations but I ditched mine and wouldn't buy another.

It has all the attributes I value:  easy to carry, accurate and nice looking. It is a little pricey but I feel you're getting what you pay for in this instance. No other pocket-sized .380 offers usable sights (and tritium to boot). Plus this model has nice grips and a nice finish.

I believe the P238 stands alone in the pocket .380ACP category. I have fired the Kel Tec P3AT and hated it. It does not feel good in my hand and the recoil is too sharp. The Ruger LCP appears to be the same gun for all intents and purposes. I haven't shot the Desert Eagle or Kahr .380s but neither felt good enough in my hand to invest the money in either one.

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