Wilson Combat EDC X9 2.0: One Amazing Compact 1911

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There are times when I wonder what is in the water in the corner of Texas abutting Arkansas. Bill Wilson just keeps coming up with superb rifles, pistols, and shotguns, and one of these days my credit card is simply going to burst into flames. The latest? The EDC X9 2.0, where Wilson combat makes the EDC X9 even better.

The “Two-point-Oh” is the latest improvement on the already excellent EDC X9 that saw the light of day back in 2016, but just “good enough” isn’t, for Bill. Okay, the base pistol, before we give you the design and engineering changes for the 2.0. The EDC X9 is a double-stack magazine 1911, which is like saying a BMW M4 is a quick car with two doors. The X9 starts with a T6-7075 alloy aluminum frame and a steel slide that are machined in-house at WC, then mated and precisely fitted. Inside goes an integrally ramped barrel in 9mm complete with fluted chamber and cone lockup.

Now, the slide is not just fitted to the frame, but the edges of it have been beveled so there are no sharp edges to cut your hands, gear, or clothing. The slide has front and rear cocking serrations in the WC X-TAC pattern, which leave small diamonds in the center to really provide a solid grip. The ejection port is, of course, generously sized so there is no chance an empty (or an ejected live round) will fail to clear the opening on its exit.

I must point out here that the internals and the small parts, are made by Wilson Combat. When he was starting out as an IPSC competitor, Bill had a chance to build pistols with all the parts that could be found back then. Seeing which ones failed, and how, lead him to design and make his own Bullet Proof®  parts, and that’s what he builds his pistols with. When I’m building up a pistol, if I see the parts coming out of a bag with the blue (well, blue in the old days) labeling, I have no worries.

The slide gets an external extractor, not because external is better than internal, but it is a lot easier to produce, and the resulting extractor works pretty much forever. “Never needs tuning” is a big plus in my book, and clearly Bill thought so too. The slide gets a tri-top profile, with the top flat serrated to reduce glare for those who are still using iron sights as the primary aiming method. The X9 has taller-than- usual sights not to clear a suppressor, but to still co-witness with a red-dot optic on board. Red dots are the newest, and in a lot of situations, best thing, and the EDC X9 and X9 2.0 are given sights to clear the dot, and a slide machined to accept a dot.

The barrel is machined with a cone lockup, so no bushing in the slide, and it is extensively fluted, both to reduce weight and to look good. The feed ramp is integral to the barrel, so no two-step shuffle in feeding, as in the classic 1911. Not that the original is bad, when set up properly, but an integral ramp also offers greater case support, and if you are using a 9mm as an every-day carry pistol, you are likely considering +P ammunition. The extra case support is a good thing to have, then. The muzzle of the barrel is flush with the front face of the slide, and given a deep counter-bore, a reverse crown, to protect it from daily wear and accidental bumps.

Good to Have Options

Being a Wilson Combat custom pistol, you get choices. One of those choices is to have a light rail or not on your aluminum frame. The rail is an integral part of the frame, machined out of the aluminum when the rest of the frame is also machined. It is not a bolt-on, that wouldn’t be right. So, you have to pick one. Some of your other choices are the length of barrel and slide you desire. Your options range from the full-sized five-inch, the mid-sized four-inch, and the sub-compact 3.25-inch.

The choices don’t stop there. You can select from the array of Armor-Tuff colors; you get to select the color of your grips, you can have, or not, an ambidextrous thumb safety, and the color fiber optic tube in the sights, the length of the trigger, and if you want the optional magazine well funnel. The option of choices does not extend to a non-slip grip. The Wilson Combat X-TAC pattern that you see on the slide is also on the frontstrap, and there it practically welds your hand to the frame.

The funnel brings me to another option. If you stick with the standard frame base mag opening, then your 15-round magazines will fit just fine. If you want to use the higher-capacity 18-round magazines, they will protrude some. If you opt for the extra mag funnel, your 15-round magazines will disappear up into the funnel, and your reloads might not be as fast as you’d like. This is one of those embarrassment-of-riches conundrums: do you accept the extra bulk of the mag funnel (not much, but it is some) to gain the extra capacity. Or, do you forego it and risk that your reloads might not be lightning-quick? This is not a question I can answer for you, you’ll have to do that for yourself.

As an evolution of the 1911, the EDC X9 2.0 of course has an excellent trigger. It is a 1911 after all, and coming out of the Wilson Combat shop you’d expect nothing but a nice trigger. Clean, crisp, with minimal overtravel and (for those who care) an audible reset, Wilson combat specs the trigger pull as being between 3.5 and 4.5 pounds in weight, and this one? Three pounds, five ounces, so just a smidge under the spec weight range, which is fine by me.

The EDC X9 series use magazines that Bill Wilson did not design, but magazines he researched. Rather than try to come up with new magazines from scratch, he looked into what magazine tubes would best-suit the pistol he had in mind, what became the EDC X9. He then had that manufacturer modify the original design to the length he needed for the X9, and “viola,” we have fifteen-round base magazines and 18-round extended ones. I’d like to be able to tell you I can tell just by looking who makes them, but I can’t. What I can tell you is this: they are as good as any hi-cap mags out there, and better than most. I have my suspicions, but I’ll just say this: they have been 100% reliable, and they pass the Size-14 boot test.

So, all that is good, really good, but what did Bill and the crew do to make the X9 better? Simple, he changed the multi-piece frame design to a solid frame one. The earlier design used the frame assembly to keep the grips on, and it did away with the grip screws, something that has been on the 1911 pistol since day one. Clever, but not something really needed. So, the crew schemed and tested, and came up with the 2.0, which uses a different frame design (but only in the grip area) and the grips are now held on with screws.

There’s a bit advantage here in that the frame is now slightly smaller. Not that the 1.0 was exactly portly, but the 2.0 now feels almost like a single-stack 1911 with fat grips on it. You can swap grips if you want, or even experiment on the existing ones, and replace them with new ones if your experiments get out of hand. By using grip screws, Wilson makes swapping grips a whole lot easier. On the 1.0 you had to disassemble the frame (at least partly) to swap grips. Now, just a properly fitting screwdriver gets the job done.

Range Report

And speaking of getting the job done, the EDC X9 2.0 does. I did the usual testing, first doing chrono work, then accuracy, and then just having fun whacking down plates racks and practicing on bowling pin arrays. Say, did you know that Wilson combat also offers a wide array of 
9mm ammunition? Yes, they do, and it is all good. I took this opportunity to see how the X9 2.0 would stack up to the accuracy spec Wilson Combat lists, of one inch at 25 yards.

Okay, an admission: I can’t shoot one-inch groups at 25 yards. I can really wring out the accuracy of a handgun, but I can’t reliably and on demand drill one-inch groups, even if the pistol can. I can come close some days, and this day I did, but this pistol can do better. I suspect this one can all the time (as well as all the rest of the 2.0s) because it really tried to. And more to the point, it did not shoot anything even as poorly as average, let alone badly.

The base four-inch pistol, as it sits ready to be shipped from Wilson Combat, lists for $3,210. You can get it in three barrel/slide lengths, with or without a host of features including a light rail or not for that or a bit more. Even accounting for inflation, that’s a bunch of money. And yet, it isn’t. Running the inflation calculator backwards, the EDC X9 2.0 in 2024 dollars, is equal to $990 spent in 1982.

I have to tell you that if anyone had been offering a pistol of this quality for just under a grand back then, IPSC competitors would have fallen all over themselves to buy it. Heck, I spent a lot more than that before I was done, and it was for my first single-stack .45, one that wasn’t as well-built as this one is. No, the EDC X9 2.0 is a lifetime tool, an investment that your heirs will argue over (make it clear in your will who gets it) and will run with absolute reliability until you don’t need it anymore. In other words: the best.

WILSON COMBAT EDC X9 2.0 PISTOL SPECS

• Type: Hammer-fired semi-automatic
• Caliber: 9mm
• Capacity: 15 rounds
• Barrel: 4 in.
• Overall Length: 7.4 in.
• Weight: 30 oz.
• Finish: Armor-tuff (your choice of colors)
• Grips: Wilson Combat Starburst G10
• Sights: Adjustable rear, fiber optic front
• Trigger: 3 lbs. 5 oz.
• MSRP: $3,210 (4 in. model, others vary)
• Contact: WilsonCombat.com, (800) 955-4856

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