First Look at Springfield Armory's New Echelon Compact Pistol

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Every year, there are dozens of new pistol introductions; most of these are just line extensions, variations on a theme. But, I’ve found that, perhaps once a year, a pistol is introduced that is really something noteworthy, whether it’s just an innovative improvement on an existing design or something completely new—2023’s standout was the Springfield Armory Echelon. A completely unexpected introduction, a totally brand-new full-size striker-fired pistol from Springfield that offered every modern feature today’s consumers want, including some that are unique, while being very shootable and good-looking.

With such a success on their hands, Springfield has of course started the expansion of the Echelon line; first we saw compensated (ported) versions of the original full-size model, and now we have the Echelon Compact, which shrinks the barrel from 4.5-inches down to 4.0, and tucks up the grip so that flush magazines now hold 15 instead of 17. This model will likely be a much more popular choice for concealed carry. Let’s dive in. First, the Echelon is a chassis gun, and this is smart. It means the trigger group is the serialized part, and you can swap out the grip modules without having to buy a new “gun.” Currently, replacement grip modules are $64.99 on Springfield’s website—more on this in a bit.

The 4.0-inch barrel is hammer forged with a 1:10" twist. Overall, this pistol is 7.25-inches long and 5.2-inches tall. With an unloaded magazine in place, it weighs 24.0 ounces. This pistol is only chambered in 9mm, and while some day you may see an upsized version in .45 ACP, I doubt you’ll ever see one in .40 S&W as there’s just no demand for new .40 pistols. One flush 15-round magazine is provided with the pistol, as well as one extended 18-rounder. Neutered 10-round magazine versions are available if you live in one of those places. Springfield is also offering versions with extended threaded barrels and/or 3-dot tritium sights.

Aesthetically, I think this pistol looks great, but what’s better is those looks have a function to them. The distinctive slide texturing looks attractive, sure, but it’s perhaps the most aggressive I’ve ever seen (even more so than the Walther PDP), and no matter how slick your hands are you won’t lose control of the slide. There are wide, flat-bottomed serrations front and back. The slide is narrowed forward of the ejection port in what Springfield calls a “trench cut,” and the rear scalloped edge just in front of the ejection port is another grasping point. And you’ll find a second one of those at the rear of the slide, which flares out.

The barrel, slide, and stainless-steel magazines all have a black Melonite (nitride) coating. The barrel and slide have a matte finish, whereas the magazines have a glossier finish and are slick to the touch. Like their XD/XDM and Hellcat pistols and Hellion rifle, the Echelon is made in Croatia for Springfield Armory by HS Produkt, which is why you’ll see the serial number not just on the fire control group but also the slide and barrel.

Springfield’s Hellcat and the Echelon have what I think are the best sights on any factory gun on the market. The “basic” sight set on the Echelon as seen here is less expensive than the version with 3-dot tritium sights…and I feel this is the superior sight setup. These are great day/night sights.

If you’re new to this, let me explain—day/night sights are ones which are useful and provide a good sight picture whether it’s day or night. The front sight has a tritium insert. Tritium is a radioactive element that glows bright light green, usually for at least ten years. It is in a metal cylinder inside the steel front sight. Around the tritium is a ring of highlighter-yellow photoluminescent paint. The ring is very visible in all lighting conditions, but if you take it from a brightly-lit area to a dimly-lit area (or hit it with a flashlight beam for a few seconds), that ring will glow for a few minutes, increasing the visibility of your front sight.

The rear sight is steel. It has a U-shaped notch around which there is a white semi-circle—nestle the circle of the front sight in the U of the rear sight, and pull the trigger. This is both quick and instinctive, exactly what you want in a combat-style sight—follow the bouncing ball of that front sight. The front of the rear sight is flat, so you’ll be able to rack it one-handed on a hard surface, if you’re not running an optic. And on that note.... With the Echelon, Springfield Armory introduced their Variable Interface System, which allows you to directly mount to the slide nearly any optic on the market, and the compact has the same VIS setup as the full-size Echelon.

Direct-mounting optics to the slide is generally thought to be better than the alternatives as there are fewer parts and/or less opportunity for flex/breakage. The VIS accomplishes this via several screw patterns and the use of steel pins. When you take off the protective steel slide cover, you’ll see the slide is cut for direct-threading of optics mounting screws, but you’ll also see other cutouts. Those are for indexing pins that either lock into optic bodies, or allow the lugs in the bottom of various optics to lock into the slide.

Using optics screws and the pin sets provided by Springfield, the slide allows direct fitment of the Trijicon RMR/SRO, Leupold DeltaPoint Pro, Holosun 507C/508T/509T, Shield RMSc/SMSc, EOTech EFLX, and the Swampfox Kraken. Springfield also sells adapter plates for the Aimpoint ACRO/Steiner MPS, and the Burris Fastfire 4. Depending on your optic, you should be able to see your sights through the window, for that dead battery eventuality. My test gun was shipped out with a Vortex Defender-ST mounted, but as that’s not a package offered by the factory, I did all my accuracy testing with the iron sights. That said, as an FYI, I could see the top half of the iron sights through the window of the Vortex.

The magazine release is a steel oval button with texturing identical to that found on the polymer grip. The buttons on the left and right side are identical. When you push the magazine release, inside you’ll see it pivots a steel piece which locks into the front of the magazine. When I tested the full-size pistol the function of the magazine release wasn’t as clean as I would have liked (although I had no problems), but the mag release on this pistol was crisp.

At the front of the pistol you’ll see a three-slot MIL STD 1913 “picatinny” rail for mounting weaponlights. Being able to attach a white light to your pistol so it can serve double duty as a home defense gun seems a great idea. A lot of younger guys these days are mounting white lights on their concealed carry guns, because tricked-out carry guns are cool, and what red-blooded American gun-owning male doesn’t want to look like they hang out with Delta Force? However, if you’re a private citizen with that light on your concealed carry piece, the only way you can employ that light without violating one of the four basic gun safety rules (as well as a law or two, like brandishing or assault) is by lighting up a threat—a threat you apparently already identified before the light came on…? I’m not saying don’t put a light on your EDC, just figure out ahead of time how to employ it without breaking the law or Jeff Cooper’s heart.

The grip texturing doesn’t look like much in photos, but in use I found it to be moderately aggressive, not as rough as stippling, but rough enough that my hand didn’t slip while shooting. Springfield calls this their Adaptive Grip Texture. I wish it was more aggressive, but bear in mind the stippling and checkering on my carry guns chews up my shirts, so I like it a bit rough. That said, this is a chassis gun, and Springfield sells replacement grip modules for $64.99 that you can stipple yourself without worry of ruining your entire gun if you screw up. Springfield also, at the last NRA show, showed off large-grip modules for the full-size Echelon and ones with a more aggressive texture (which I really like) and told me they have plans for color options as well.

There is texturing on the front and underside of the trigger guard, which is squared off with a bit of an outward curve at the corner. If you look just above the front of the trigger guard you’ll see there, on both sides, the polymer sports an outward curve on which you can rest the thumb of your support hand. In fact, the takedown lever is both curved and textured to match the profile of the polymer and give you more real estate for your support-hand thumb.

This pistol is supplied with three backstraps, with the medium installed at the factory. None of the backstraps alter the reach to the trigger, just the grip length front-to-back and the grip angle. With the large backstrap installed, the Echelon doesn’t quite have a Glock grip angle, but it’s close. Replacing the backstraps is pretty simple and doesn’t require tools. They click into the back of the grip module—with the slide locked back and the magazine out, reach inside the magazine well with a fingertip and find the square at the back of the well, about halfway up. Push that in, toward the backstrap, and on the outside push/pull down on the backstrap. It will slide right off.

The full-size Echelon shipped with a size medium grip module, and I assumed the same would be true of this Compact. Forgetting, of course, what happens when you assume. But I loved the full-size Echelon so much I bought it, so I had it on hand to compare the two and discovered that this Compact shipped with a size small grip module in place—and that’s the plan, which makes sense for a smaller gun intended for concealed carry. Sometimes, I feel like manufacturers hide Easter eggs in their new pistol introductions just to see if reviewers are paying attention.

If you’re curious about the difference, it’s in the width of the grip and the reach to the trigger. On the size medium grip, from just under the trigger guard to the closest point at the rear of the frame is 1.88", and on the compact’s size small grip that is 1.76". On the size medium grip, the grip at its widest is 2.19", and on the Small grip module it is 2.12" (all according to my calipers). Those differences aren’t huge, but you can feel them in your hand. If you’re curious what you have, the grip module’s size is marked at the bottom rear, underneath the backstrap. This pistol was marked C 9/40 S.

The magazine well sports a moderate bevel. There are relief cuts out the outside of the magazine well that mate with angled textured spots on the sides of the magazine base pads to allow you to more easily strip stuck magazines from the gun. There is also texturing on the front and sides of the magazine basepad, which is a nice extra detail that shows some attention was paid to this pistol by people who know a few things. The magazines have numbered index holes in the rear. The extended 18-round magazine has a grip extension, but you likely won’t need it—even if you have huge hands, I can’t imagine more than a sliver of your pinkie will stick past the bottom of the frame. Springfield ships a spare magazine extension with the gun.

The Echelon has bilateral controls—there is a slide release and magazine release on both the left and right side of the pistol. The slide stop/release is a steel lever that is small and juts out ninety degrees from the side of the gun. For as small as it is, it seems to work very well as a slide release, something you can’t say about the Glock piece. Springfield Armory calls the trigger group the COG—Central Operating Group. It is the serialized part in the Echelon, and when it’s in the gun you can see the serial number through a narrow window at the top right side of the grip module, forward of the slide stop. There is a matching cutout on the left side of the grip, but there you’ll see SI (Springfield Inc.) Geneseo, IL.

The COG chassis is stainless steel, and it pulls out of the grip module without tools. Once you remove the magazine and take off the slide assembly (no trigger pull required), you’ll need to remove the takedown lever. This involves spinning it in various ways, as you’ll be working against a spring-loaded lever. Once you’ve got that out, you can remove the COG by lifting on the slide stops, pulling the COG forward, and working the trigger a bit so the safety lever on it clears the grip module. Once you figure the process out, it takes only a few seconds, but I recommend finding and watching Springfield’s three-minute How-To video on this, as the process is…quirky. The recoil spring guide rod is polymer and full length. The recoil spring is flat wire, and captured.

There’s no official trigger pull spec for the Echelon, but my contact there has said to expect 4.5- to 5.0-pound pulls. Every Echelon I’ve tested has been right in there, and this one was no different—trigger pull on this sample measured 5.0 pounds, relatively crisp for a striker-fired gun, with a short reset. Significantly better than a Glock factory trigger, and in my opinion a bit better than the standard S&W M&P trigger pull.

At the range, the Compact was completely reliable, and the prominent sights and great trigger and relatively low bore made it easy to shoot. I got the slide too hot to touch, and still it ran along, unconcerned. I hammered pepper poppers, ran plate racks, and using IDPA targets practiced snap shots at ten yards, bringing the pistol up to eye level and firing as soon as I found the front sight…and that’s really easy when you have such a bold front sight. Just follow the bouncing ball—just like with a red dot, only without having to worry about your battery dying, electronics breaking, screws snapping or coming loose…. And that front sight never leaves the window, it stays in view during the entire recoil cycle. But, iron sights are boring, and red dots are cool and modern, and I’m old, so what do I know?

I brought along my full-size Echelon, because I wanted to compare the two. The Echelon Compact did have slightly more recoil than the full-size gun, but it was surprisingly minimal. There’s no more muzzle rise, it just comes back into your hand with just a bit more snap. If you’re looking for a carry gun this Compact is clearly a more sensible choice than the full-size Echelon. It’s not a pocket gun, but that means you can run it hard and fast and actually hit what you’re aiming at. It is designed to compete directly with the Glock 19 and other pistols that size. For decades, the G19 was the carry gun against which all others were judged, and the Echelon has objectively better features.

Because the Echelon is a newer pistol, it’s only real handicap is a thin list of available holsters, but that keeps growing. For the past four or five years, I’ve been running my carry gun in a Safariland 5198, which is an outside-the-waistband belt holster, but they have yet to offer it for the Echelon. However, Safariland is now offering their very popular Incog X AIWB holster for the Echelon Compact, and Springfield sent one of them along—check it out in the photos. It is an adjustable Boltaron holster with a gray suede-wrapped exterior, and comes with an optional magazine caddy. I don’t carry appendix, and don’t recommend it as you’re pointing that pistol at irreplaceable real estate, but crotch carry is currently hugely popular as there is no easier way to conceal carry a medium or large pistol along your waistline.

The Echelon is still a new pistol, but as more and more people get their hands on them I expect to see their popularity continue to grow, as it is a solid design that delivers reliability, modularity, and performance.

SPRINGFIELD ARMORY’S ECHELON COMPACT PISTOL SPECS

• Type: Striker-fired semi-auto
• Caliber: 9mm
• Capacity: 15
• Barrel: 4.0 in. (4.7 in. threaded barrel available)
• Length: 7.25 in.
• Height: 5.2 in. (with flush magazine inserted)
• Width: 1.2 in.
• Weight: 24.0 oz. (w/Unloaded Magazine)
• Slide: Steel
• Finish: Melonite
• Grip/Frame: Polymer with 3 interchangeable back-straps, stainless steel trigger module
• Sights: Day/night front, white outline rear (3-dot tritium available)
• Trigger Pull: 4.5–5.0 pounds (5.0 lbs. as tested)
• Safety: Trigger lever, striker drop safety
• Price: $679
• Accessories: 15-round magazine, 18-round magazine, mag loader 3 backstraps, optic adapters, cable lock, soft case
• Contact: (800) 680-6866, Springfield-Armory.com

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