Anderson Kiger 9C 9mm Handgun Review

Full Transcript:

JOHN FARHNER

Hey, Curt!

CURT STAUBACH
Yeah, buddy?

JOHN FARHNER

There’s a new pony in town.

CURT STAUBACH

There’s definitely a new pony in town.

JOHN FARHNER

The Anderson Kiger. I believe that’s it’s pronounced. It is a racing horse, if anybody’s wondering what that’s named after, it’s a mustang. Takes Glock mags. And as you can tell, it is a Glock 19 style gun, gen3. So, new pony in town!

Anderson, has added a new pony to its stable and it’s based off one of the most popular platforms that have ever been designed.

CURT STAUBACH

Absolutely.

JOHN FARHNER

So, it is a Glock 19 Gen3 platform, but they’ve added some features that make it more modern.

CURT STAUBACH

Absolutely. And guys, you know, there’s been a number of different companies who’ve built similar handguns out there. I mean, again, you can look at the PSA dagger. You’ve even got kind of the Arex Delta. Is it? It kind of falls in that camp a little bit.

JOHN FARHNER

I agree to disagree on that one.

CURT STAUBACH

It’s similar, right, again. But they’re building off a very tried and true platform with a lot of the same parts, you know, so you gain a lot of things from that. But like you mentioned, Anderson really kind of came to the table and they built off of that and they made some really unique improvements.

JOHN FARHNER

Well, first improvement, first and foremost, the improvement on there is it’s using a Gen five slide geometry and using a Gen five crowned barrel. So, it’s taking what Glock kind of improved on and has stepped it up into that very popular Gen three platform.

CURT STAUBACH

Absolutely. The other thing you gain from that is they’ve done a really interesting combination where you do get compatibility between the two.

JOHN FARHNER

Well, let’s not get too ahead of ourselves on that one. So let’s talk about slide barrel. Slide is 4/16 stainless steel, barrel is 4/16 stainless steel. And Anderson is known for their quality in their steel and how strong it is. So, you’ve got good heat, good steel quality there. So this thing is meant to run and be abused.

CURT STAUBACH

So one of the unique features you’ll find in that barrel is the fact that Anderson did go with the polygonal rifling like Glock does. A lot of aftermarket barrels you’ll see are just going to be standard button rifling, right.

JOHN FARHNER

And they are going back. So they’re doing a gen five geometry and everything like that on the barrel, but they’re going back to the polygonal rifling that Glock has done away with. So it’s kind of cool to get the best of both worlds because then gen five is a barrel that everybody likes, especially with the recess crowning.

And now they’ve gone to that polygonal rifling that everybody liked from the older Glocks. Now there is some ammo incompatibility. As you know, lead cast bullets cannot be fired through polygonal rifling, it does cause leading. So that could be deemed a negative point. But you do see the increased accuracy and durability from standard rifling.

CURT STAUBACH

And that being said, I mean, I think we all know that in terms of 9mm, FMJ is pretty much the standard. It’s almost hard to find just, you know, soft tip lead nose bullets are 9mm. Yes, they’re out there. But again, it’s not the standard and it’s certainly not difficult to find FMJ.

JOHN FARHNER

Now, the other thing they improved on is the frame. At first, we weren’t a big fan of the frame because it’s very feels very blocky. Yeah, the texturing is just in every right place. And when it gets in your hand, it doesn’t want to move.

CURT STAUBACH

So here’s my thing is when we were handling it, you know, in the office and kind of first initial impressions, I’ll be honest, I did not like it at all. I really didn’t. It felt really, really blocky to a degree that it was honestly uncomfortable. And then we shot it and it… just… works.

JOHN FARHNER

Well, there’s the texturing is right in the right place. And so the slide or the frame itself has the grip panels, the kind of sandpaper on the sides, the rear in the front of the frame will have these slits that are going horizontal, but then they’ve got memory pads where both your thumbs should go, which is really nice because I don’t remember a pistol lately that we’ve shot that’s had the memory pad, and I know that most of them have the memory pad in the front.

Not many have it in the rear.

CURT STAUBACH

I noticed that too.

JOHN FARHNER

It’s one or the other, and with both of them there, the gun just feels great and it’s a good spot to put your thumbs when you’re doing that forward thumb shooting position. Not only that, but they’ve got front and rear slide serrations and they are Glock style sides. So they can be replaced with a whole bunch of other different sights that are on the market.

CURT STAUBACH

And that is, I think, a really big piece to this gun is the fact that you do have so much compatibility.

This gun just runs. It just runs.

I mean, there’s obviously a huge market for aftermarket Glock parts and everything is pretty much interchangeable with this.

I have yet to overrun it. I’m trying and she’s keeping up, man. This is this is a really, really cool setup. I really appreciate what they’re doing with this thing.

JOHN FARHNER

Now, the other thing they did, they did DLC coating on the side, so it’s going to be a durable coating on it, and they’ve done some like… lightning cuts. I want to… it’s hard to say. They just cut out the top of this like just enough. It’s weird because it looks like there should be an RMR cut on there or an optics cut, but they didn’t go with that.

CURT STAUBACH

We were talking about that quite a bit. And the fact that in in today’s day and age, when you look at a lot of pistols, pretty much that’s sort of becoming the standard is to have an optics cut. And the fact that it doesn’t, it kind of stood out from the get go for us, I think, a little bit.

That being said, they are really trying to hit a price point here and it is very aggressive for the package that they’re offering.

JOHN FARHNER

Now that you said that there’s a price point, and there’s kind of two ways you can, you know, get the price down. You can either de-feature the design or, you know, use less expensive parts. And they really didn’t do either, right, they just cut where they could cut to be a pistol for launch.

So it’s their first attempt at this and a lot of companies on their first attempt on a new product, especially a handgun, will not do it sidecut for an optic right away just to see and test the water because you don’t want to put all that out because again, that cost from Curt and I’s background in the machining side, you’re adding another $50 to $60 where the cost easily got to pass that cost on to the consumer and you got to pay your guy.

So that’s you’re looking at least $120, $250 bucks added on top of that.

CURT STAUBACH

And it’s one of those things that it doesn’t seem like it should cost that much, but it really does. I mean, you’ve got the machining time of the slide and then you’ve also got to make the plate cover as well. And it doesn’t, again, it doesn’t seem like that should take a whole lot of time, but it really does.

You’ve also then got to deal with, you know, the machining for the screw holes and then the bosses, you know, to hold the optic on. And then you’ve got to do the engineering to say, all right, you know what, optics are we going to be compatible with? How do we handle that? Are we doing a plate system?

There’s a lot that goes into it. And so, the fact that they didn’t include that on the first gen is… it makes sense.

JOHN FARHNER

It does make sense for we go any further, let’s go ahead and throw it over to specs for those of you who like to deep dive.

So Curt we mentioned it’s a gen three.

CURT STAUBACH

Yep.

JOHN FARHNER

So what do we do? We guccied one!

CURT STAUBACH

One. We definitely guccied one.

JOHN FARHNER

So, we got in contact with our friends over at True Precision and Night Vision, so they got us a slide, barrel, night sight. And then our friends over at Swamp Fox threw over a Kraken for us to try out. So we’ve taken this Glock and guccied it out. So now you’ve got your standard and your Gucci and that’s a big thing with this pistol because it’s got aftermarket support built in, right?

We were able to do something really cool with it.

CURT STAUBACH

And I think that’s the biggest selling point, honestly, for this gun and what I appreciate about this. And you can find other, you know, you can find similar pistols out there. The price point that they’re coming in at allows you to put that money into other things. And so the fact that it doesn’t have an optics cut, that’s really not that much of a negative for me because it is, there’s so many aftermarket slides out there.

There’s so many aftermarket barrels. I’ve tricked out a number of Glocks myself, and I priced out the last one I did. All told, there was about $2800. Now I’m fortunate enough that I can, you know, get industry discounts, so I didn’t pay that because… I can’t pay that. But I mean, that’s really what it comes down to.

And somebody is like, why would you spend that much on a Glock? Right, you know, why don’t you just get something out of the gate? Well, what I appreciate about it is, again, you don’t have to do that all at once. You know, you can do it over time and you can upgrade it as you go. So if you decide, hey, I want a new aftermarket slide, you can do that and then continue on.

If you want to replace the barrel, you can do that. Same with the trigger, same with optics. There’s so many options. And again, it’s something that, hey, if you have the means to do it all at once, go for it. If you do it over a year, that’s fine too.

As we shot it and we broke it in a little bit, it got better. Here’s the other thing I’ll say, again, when I first got it in my hand to be 100% honest, I was kind of underwhelmed. I’m just going to be honest, right? Then I shot it.

Recoil and impulse is really nice. It’s a low recoil impulse. It feels a lot like a G19. The Kiger shoots is flat is my comped 19 and I will stand by that.

CURT STAUBACH

Reset is very very similar as well. You’ve got that crisp reset comes right back on target it’s really flat There’s a big difference between kind of handling a gun you know, in the store or whatever or dry firing and actually shooting it. And once we actually shot this thing, dude, this pony runs.

JOHN FARHNER

Yes, it does. He runs and it wants to run fast. And that’s why, you know, for those of you we’re asking, what does Kiger mean? Kiger is a mustang. It’s a type of Mustang. So it runs like a mustang, fast, powerful, just go boom, boom, boom, boom. And you can see that from the range footage. We just could just kept driving it and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Just kept shooting sharp, shooting faster, faster. It does not want to be shot slow. You can get quick follow up shot. It’s great.

CURT STAUBACH

So, John, we took both of these out to the range. We shot them both extensively. We’ve got our stock version and then we’ve got our one that’s really tricked out. So which one did you actually prefer?

JOHN FARHNER

At the end of the day, I actually preferred the stock version and it had nothing to do with the way either of them shot. I felt like there was a little bit more felt recoil in the true precision slide set up. I don’t think that it had anything to do with the gun itself. I think it was all perceived in my head and that’s what it really is, because then I would swap back and forth.

And while we were out there, I was like, no, I really like the Gucci one now. I really like the stock one. And that’s the best part about this. I could trick it out if I want to and I can leave it stock if I want to.

CURT STAUBACH

For me honestly, not as a cop out answer, but I like them both and I like them both for different reason. I like kind of the purity of the stock, the stock setup, mostly because Anderson honestly did an amazing job of this, because it is, it’s such an easy gun to shoot. Now, I do lean toward the tricked out one just because, again, I like to build them up.

I like to do those things, right. Is there some more tuning that I think we can do on this? Absolutely. And I think that’s really where, you know, a setup like this could really shine. So, I like them both for different reasons, just in terms of, you know, overall shooting and how well I could basically run either of them.

They’re pretty similar, honestly.

JOHN FARHNER

Now, the other question is, did we have any malfunctions while we were out there? Because, you know, these are Glock. They came with P-Mags, they come factory with P-Mags.

CURT STAUBACH

Yeah, just a note. They do each come with one P-Mag.

JOHN FARHNER

One P Mag and a soft case in a cardboard box. So it’s very standard, you know, generic stuff on that. But we ran it with a number of different Glock mags. We ran it with an ETS 33 round mag that we blasted through because we could and it was fun.

CURT STAUBACH

‘Merica!

JOHN FARHNER

‘Merica, for sure. But, we had one failure and the one failure was user error. So I went to go rack the slide back on the tricked out one. At first, we thought it was, you know, parts wearing in, parts compatibility. No, I smacked the optic with the back of my hand while I was racking it and I kept it from going in the battery, just a little tap to the back and boom, we’re back off to the races.

So it wasn’t anything malfunction wise, everything it ran through. We ran a lot of SAR 124 grain through it, Magtech 115 and some PMC.

CURT STAUBACH

Again, everything ran flawlessly. We didn’t have any issues at all whatsoever and I think that really does it for Anderson to really come out of the gate. And this is, you know, for all intents and purposes, their first handgun.

JOHN FARHNER

Yeah.

CURT STAUBACH

I couldn’t honestly ask for more with a great price point of where they’re at and really a solid platform and a solid design. I’ve got nothing but good things to say about this.

JOHN FARHNER

Well, speaking of good things to say, Curt, we’ve got two of these in front of.

CURT STAUBACH

Yes, that we do.

JOHN FARHNER

What are we going to do with these?

CURT STAUBACH

We’re going to give them away!

JOHN FARHNER
We’re going to give them away! Right. So there’s two prize packs for this one. First prize pack is going to be the stock Kiger 9C with 350 rounds of 9mm. The second package is a little bit more value. So you are going to be getting the True Precision slide, True Precision barrel, Night Vision night sight, Swamp Fox Kraken, as well as the whole pistol and 350 rounds for that too.

So these two sitting on the table are the actual ones we’re giving away. These are the ones that we test fired for the review, which is great for you guys to actually get ones that have had rounds run through them. So these are tried and true through from there. Now, we want to thank Anderson for the opportunity for that.

We also want to thank our friends over a True Precision for the slide and barrel. We want to take our friends at Night Vision for the night sight, and Swamp Fox for the optic. So to enter you just go to our website. There’ll be a pop up. You can also check out our social feeds and like always, there’s a secret code for this one.

JOHN FARHNER

Secret code will give you 20 extra entries and that secret code is a 9MMPONY. Again 9MMPONY.

CURT STAUBACH

Guys, get in there, get entered and win one of these awesome pistols.

So if I’m entirely honest, when we got these in, I was a bit concerned again with that boxy frame and not having an optics cut. I really wasn’t sure. And again, you’ve seen and you can purchase a lot of set ups like this from a number of different companies.

You know, this is a very competitive field.

I’ve shot all of them. I honestly, seriously shoot this one the best. So am I a buyer? I really am. And I’m going to get one of these and I’m going to trick this thing out and it’s going to be awesome.

JOHN FARHNER

Well, you gotta enter to get this one.

CURT STAUBACH

I’ll get my own…

JOHN FARHNER

You know, for me, when I first got it, I was had the same feeling. It felt a little boxy. I wasn’t 100% sure about it, but now that I think about it more, I would say I’m a buyer because I can trick this out. I can make a Gucci Glock, my first Gucci Glock, because I made a Gucci MNP first because and these are cool and I like it.

I like them a bit better. Sorry, I’m not the biggest fan of the Glock platform, but the Glock platform is one of the best platforms out there. So, I really do like what they did with this, and why I’m a buyer is because they took an existing design and turn it in basically a gen 3.5. It’s got the best of Gen five and it’s got the best of Gen three and it combined it.

So now you’ve got the most for aftermarket parts, but you also have the ruggedness and the reliability of and the accuracy of that Gen five.

CURT STAUBACH

So guys, thanks so much for tuning in. We really appreciate it. And let us know which one do you like better? Do you like the stock one? Do you like the tricked out one? How would you trick it out? What would you do? What parts would you use? We’d love to know.

JOHN FARHNER

And make sure to like sure and subscribe. Hit the little bell for notifications. Again, we have that contest going on, so make sure to go down into the description, find the link, it’ll be there and also be the pin link in the comments. So make sure to enter it’s got that code is 9MMPONY.

Thanks again for watching and have a great rest of your day!