The answer is … it depends. The perfect pistol silencer doesn’t currently exist to be honest. This is because there are many different jobs that a good pistol silencer would have to do well and there is no such thing as a one size fits all…
The closest thing we can think of though, is the Centurion pistol silencer. With this comes some positives as well as some negatives, but the positives are overwhelmingly more common.
We will start with weight. The Centurion pistol silencer is built to handle submachine gun use therefore the durability and weight have to compliment each other, make it too light and it will fail on PCC (pistol caliber carbines) make it too heavy and it will not work well on handguns due to recoil dampening. So we struck a balance where it can withstand a great deal of sub gun use and is still light enough for pistols too. The weight came out to 7.9 ounces with the 17-4PH stainless steel core and titanium tube. The weight goes up a little when you add a booster, but not a great deal. Booster installed weight is 12.5 ounces as our booster has a stainless steel body for long life as well…
The net thing you will notice is how small it is for what a pistol silencer like this can do. It is a mere 6.5″ overall length and just a paltry 5.3″ without the booster installed, like when you run it on that PCC…
We also wanted to look at some other options though for a perfect pistol silencer, so we grabbed the Infiniti X and the Cosmic as well to see how they could stack up against this can. Albiet longer by a full 3 inches, the Infiniti X using the titanium core is 7.7 ounces!!! Literally .2 ounces lighter! Now that is amazing for a pistol silencer! The magic comes in when you hear it though, it is insanely quiet with 9mm subsonic ammunition. This suppressor has to be heard in person to understand how good it sounds, it is next level. So comparing the Infiniti X to the Centurion on sound suppression would not really be fair, the Infiniti X will win that contest every time. But you have to remember that if you plan to make this a night stand rig, you probably want it to be smaller so the Centurion will be the better choice for this fact alone. A pistol silencer needs to be quiet enough to preserve your hearing during intense events, but a few decibels one way or the other wont make a huge difference here.
Now up to this point, there has only been 9mm cans in the race, so what happens when you bring in a 45 ACP silencer like the Cosmic? We get more caliber versatility of course, so now we can include the capability of a 10mm suppressor and a 45 ACP suppressor to the mix. Neither of the previous suppressors can do this at all. The Cosmic pistol silencer will be noisier than the others on 9mm calibers too since the bore is so much larger, but this is offset by the expanded caliber list it can use. Since the Cosmic also has a stainless steel core, it weighs in at 9.5ounces so it is somewhat heavier than it’s siblings here, but not by a significant amount. It is still 3″ longer than the Centurion and this might be your determining factor over caliber versatility. These are some of the considerations when choosing a pistol silencer for personal or range use. So now that you all this to chew on go on over to the website to see more about all of these suppressors and to pick one for yourself!
Until next time, keep your powder dry!