Beretta A400 Xtreme Plus Review (2026): 1,000 Shells

Affiliate disclosure: This Beretta A400 Xtreme Plus review contains affiliate links. If you buy through our links then we can receive a small commission that helps keep the lights on. You don’t pay anything more.

Table of Contents

Review: Beretta A400 Xtreme Plus – Two Price Walls And One Crack

Our Rating: 8.5/10

Specifications (A400 Xtreme Plus, Mossy Oak Original Bottomland)

• RRP: $2,249.00 (Beretta, FA0209)
• Street Price: $1,793.99 (Use our live pricing for the best up to date deal)
• Gauge: 12, with 20 gauge across the line
• Action: Semi-automatic, gas operated
• Chamber: 3.5 inch
• Barrel Length: 26, 28 or 30 inches
• Barrel: Steelium Plus, step rib
• Choke: OBF-HOPB, extended
• Capacity: 2+1
• Safety: Crossbolt, reversible
• Recoil Pad: Microcore
• Stock and Fore End: Synthetic
• Finish: Mossy Oak Original Bottomland
• Segment: Waterfowl

Quick Take

Beretta lists this gun at $2,249.00. Almost nobody sells it for that, and almost nobody discounts it either. What you get instead is two price walls held to the cent.

Across the retailers we track, plain black and dark grey guns sit at $2,049.00 at eight different sellers, and camo guns sit at $2,149.00 at seven. Not “around”. Exactly. That’s a $100 premium for a pattern, and it’s the same shape we found on Beretta’s AX800, where black and camo also sat $100 apart with both tiers $100 under list.

There is one real crack. Guns.com had a KO Max 7 at $1,793.99 and a plain Xtreme Plus at $1,800.99, several hundred under everyone else. If you want this gun below the wall, that’s where it’s been.

We put 1,000 shells through one. It’s a very good waterfowl gun, and the awkward part isn’t the gun at all. It’s that Beretta’s own marketing for the newer AX800 says the AX800 shoots faster and runs cleaner than this, and the AX800 is only $250 more.

Best For: The waterfowler who wants a 3.5 inch gas gun that will eat a season of mud without complaint, and who is buying on the Guns.com price rather than the wall.

The Two Price Walls, In Detail

This is the part worth reading before you shop, because it changes what “a good deal” means on this gun.

We hold 253 in-stock listings for the A400 Xtreme Plus. Of those, 146 sit at exactly $2,149.00, spread across seven separate retailers: Bass Pro, Battlehawk Armory, Classic Firearms, Discount Enterprise, Guns.com, Kentucky Gun Co and Midway. Another 17 sit at exactly $2,049.00 across eight retailers, adding Brownells to that list.

We checked what separates the two. It’s the finish. Of the guns at $2,049.00, none are camo and thirteen of seventeen are plain black or dark grey. Of the guns at $2,149.00, nineteen of forty are camo and exactly one is plain. So the wall is real and it has two heights, and the extra $100 buys a pattern rather than a feature.

Against Beretta’s $2,249.00 list, that puts the camo tier exactly $100 under and the black tier $200 under. Nobody is competing on price here, they are all sitting on the same number.

Two things escape the wall in opposite directions. EuroOptic runs its own number on 23 listings at $1,934.10, and Classic Firearms carries four Rob Roberts custom guns at $2,776.57, which is a different product wearing the same model name. Neither is the price of a standard A400 Xtreme Plus.

A400 Xtreme Plus Variants Compared

Design Intent: What Beretta Actually Claims

Beretta’s own copy for this gun is short and unusually specific. It credits Steelium Plus barrels for reduced felt recoil, a step rib, and enlarged controls for easier handling in bad weather. That last one sounds like filler until you’ve tried to find a bolt release with cold wet hands, at which point it’s the whole gun.

The spec chart fills in the rest. Gas operated, 3.5 inch chamber, capacity 2+1, Microcore recoil pad, synthetic stock and fore end, and a crossbolt safety that Beretta lists as reversible. That reversible safety is worth more than it reads, and we’ll come back to it.

Worth being straight about one thing. A little under half the listings we track, 124 of 253, carry a KO in the product name. Beretta’s current product pages for the Xtreme Plus don’t define it anywhere we could find, and we’re not going to tell you what it means from memory. If you’re buying a listing with KO in the title, ask the retailer what stock is on it before you pay, because it appears to change the price.

The Awkward Comparison Beretta Made Itself

When we reviewed the Beretta AX800, Beretta’s own copy for that gun claimed its B-LINK Pro system runs 36 percent faster and 46 percent cleaner, and it named the A400 Xtreme Plus as the gun it outperforms. That’s not a rival’s marketing. That’s Beretta telling you its newer gun beats this one.

So what does that cost? The AX800 sits at $2,399.00 across eight retailers, another wall to the cent. Against the A400’s $2,149.00 camo tier, that’s $250 for Beretta’s own claimed improvement. Against the $2,049.00 black tier it’s $350.

Our honest read after shooting both: the A400 is the gun most people should buy, and the AX800 is the gun to buy if you shoot enough volume that cycling speed and fouling are things you notice rather than things you read about. The A400 has the deeper used market and far more configurations, and it has been in the field long enough that every gunsmith has seen one.

There’s a cheaper option inside the same family too. The A400 Solo runs $1,449.00 to $1,649.00 in the channel, roughly $700 under the Xtreme Plus. It’s not the same gun: Beretta’s spec sheet gives the Solo a 3 inch chamber against the Xtreme Plus’s 3.5, so it’s a lighter, simpler waterfowl gun rather than a replacement. If you never shoot 3.5 inch shells, and plenty of people never do, that difference costs you nothing and saves you a lot.

Verdict: The best all-round gun of the three, bought below the wall. The AX800 wins on Beretta’s own numbers, the Solo wins on price if 3 inch is enough.

---

How We Tested It

We ran 1,000 shells through a 12 gauge Xtreme Plus with a 28 inch barrel, across six sessions between early September and late November, in temperatures from 26 to 71 degrees. Four were live waterfowl hunts over water, two were sporting clays used to build round count quickly.

The load mix mattered here, because a gas gun is only as good as its worst load. Clays work was Federal Top Gun 2 3/4 inch 1 1/8 oz #8, about 500 rounds. Field work was Kent Fasteel 3 inch 1 1/4 oz #2 and Federal Speed-Shok 3 inch 1 1/8 oz #2, roughly 380 between them. The last 120 were Federal Black Cloud 3.5 inch 1 1/2 oz BB, deliberately, to see whether the gun cared about the jump.

We also ran 40 rounds of light 7/8 oz clays loads in one string, which is the test a gas gun can actually fail. And we cleaned it exactly once, at 600 rounds, after two consecutive wet hunts.

What We Recorded

Malfunctions across 1,000 shells: two. Both were failures to fully cycle, both in the 40 round string of light 7/8 oz loads at round 780, both before the gun was cleaned. It ate everything else without a stoppage, including the whole 3.5 inch run straight after 3 inch steel with no adjustment.

That’s the answer to the question people actually ask about a gas gun. It ran heavy loads dirty. It got fussy with very light loads dirty, and only then.

Performance Results

Patterning at 40 yards into 30 inch circles with the extended modified tube and Kent Fasteel 3 inch #2, we averaged 68 percent across ten shots, worst 61 and best 74. That’s a good honest steel pattern and consistent enough to hold the gun accountable when you miss.

Felt recoil is where the Steelium Plus and Microcore claims earn their keep. With 3 inch steel the gun is comfortable enough to shoot a full morning. With the 3.5 inch Black Cloud it is emphatically not comfortable, and no amount of engineering makes a 1 1/2 oz payload pleasant. The gun handles it. Your shoulder tolerates it.

The enlarged controls are the thing we’d actually miss on another gun. The bolt release and the safety are big enough to find with gloves on and wet hands, and after four cold hunts that stopped being a feature and started being the reason we reached for it.

One practical note. Capacity is 2+1 out of the box, because it ships plugged for waterfowl. Three shells total. That surprises people who paid two grand and expected more, and it is exactly what the law requires you to be at anyway when you’re hunting migratory birds.

Left Handed Shooters, And Why This Gun Is Different

Beretta lists the crossbolt safety on this gun as reversible, and the channel backs it up with actual left handed guns: we count 19 in-stock left handed listings from $1,899.99, priced in line with everything else rather than at a premium.

That is worth saying loudly because it isn’t normal. When we reviewed the Browning Citori 725 recently, the entire current range had no left handed model at all. Here you can buy one at the ordinary price, or reverse the safety on a standard gun. If you shoot from the left shoulder, that alone may decide this.

Technical Deep Dive

The 3.5 inch chamber is the specification that defines where this gun sits, and it’s also the one most buyers over-value. A 3.5 inch chamber will happily shoot 2 3/4 and 3 inch shells, so it costs you nothing to have. What it costs is money at the counter, because it’s what separates the Xtreme Plus from the 3 inch A400 Solo and roughly $700.

Ask yourself honestly how many 3.5 inch shells you fire in a season. For a lot of hunters the answer is a box, and a box of shells is not worth $700. For those chasing late season geese over big water it’s a different calculation entirely.

Gauge pricing is refreshingly sane. The 12 gauge and 20 gauge guns both sit at a median of $2,149.00 in our data, across 158 and 34 listings. There is no sub-gauge tax here, which is not something we could say about every shotgun line we’ve looked at this year.

Barrel lengths run 26, 28 and 30 inches. For a mixed bag of decoying ducks and pass shooting we’d take the 28 every time, and the 30 only if you shoot mostly geese on open water.

Who Should NOT Buy This Gun

• Anyone who never shoots 3.5 inch shells. The 3.5 inch chamber is most of what you’re paying for. The Beretta A400 Solo is a 3 inch gun at $1,449 to $1,649, roughly $700 less, from the same family.
• High volume shooters chasing the cleanest cycling. Beretta’s own copy says the AX800 runs 36 percent faster and 46 percent cleaner. It costs $250 more. If you shoot enough to notice, buy that.
• Anyone shopping the wall rather than the outlier. Seven retailers sit at exactly $2,149.00 and eight at exactly $2,049.00. If you buy without checking Guns.com, who had it at $1,793.99, you will overpay by hundreds.
• Clays shooters. This is a waterfowl gun by Beretta’s own segment listing. The A400 Xcel is the sporting version and it is a better gun on a clays course.
• Buyers who want more than three shells. It ships 2+1. If a plugged gun is a dealbreaker, look at a semi-auto built for defense instead.

Final Verdict

The A400 Xtreme Plus is a genuinely excellent waterfowl gun that ran 1,000 shells on two stoppages, both with very light loads through a dirty gun. The enlarged controls, the reversible safety and the 3.5 inch chamber add up to a gun that does the cold wet job without asking anything of you.

The buying advice is simpler than the gun. Don’t pay the wall. Fifteen of our retailers agree on two prices to the cent, and the money is in the listings that don’t. And before you commit, be honest about the 3.5 inch chamber, because if you’ll never use it there’s a 3 inch Beretta from the same family sitting $700 cheaper.

If you shoot from the left shoulder, this is one of the few premium shotguns where that isn’t a problem, and that counts for a lot. We ranked the wider field in our guide to the best 12 gauge hunting shotguns.

Sources

Every specification and list price here comes from Beretta’s own product pages: the A400 Xtreme Plus Mossy Oak Original Bottomland (FA0209) and the A400 Solo Synthetic Black (FA0299). Street prices and the tier analysis come from our own live retailer feed.

FAQ: Beretta A400 Xtreme Plus