Glock 22 Review: 600 Rounds With America’s Old Police Pistol (2026)

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Table of Contents

Review: Glock 22 – America’s Old Police Pistol Is Now Its Best Bargain

Our Rating: 8/10

• Street Price: $430 (Use our live pricing for the best up to date deal)
• Caliber: .40 S&W
• Action: Striker-fired, Safe Action
• Magazine Capacity: 15 rounds standard
• Barrel Length: 4.49 in (114 mm)
• Barrel: Glock Marksman Barrel (Gen5)
• Overall Length: 7.95 in (202 mm)
• Slide Length: 7.32 in (186 mm)
• Overall Width: 1.34 in (34 mm)
• Slide Width: 1.08 in (27.5 mm)
• Height with Magazine: 5.51 in (140 mm)
• Weight (no magazine): 25.82 oz (732 g)
• Weight (empty magazine): 28.43 oz (806 g)
• Weight (loaded magazine): 37.32 oz (1058 g)
• Trigger Distance: 2.76 in (70 mm)
• Trigger Pull: 26 N (about 5.8 lb)
• Finish: nDLC, matte black
• Gen5 Features: Flared magwell, ambidextrous slide stop, no finger grooves

Quick Take

For about twenty years the Glock 22 was the pistol on an American cop’s belt. Then the FBI went back to 9mm in 2015, departments followed, and thousands of these things landed on the used market at once. The gun didn’t get worse. The market just moved.

That’s the whole opportunity. I put 600 rounds through a Gen5 to find out whether a pistol the police abandoned is still worth buying, and the answer is that it’s one of the best value propositions in handguns right now. Street pricing starts around $430. A full-size, duty-proven, 15-round service pistol costs less than most compact carry guns.

What you give up is ammunition. .40 S&W costs more than 9mm, fewer shops stock it, and the recoil is noticeably snappier on an identical frame. If you shoot a thousand rounds a month, that adds up fast and the maths stops working.

Best For: Shooters who want the most gun for the least money, anyone who already owns .40 magazines or a stock of ammunition, and people who like the idea of buying a nightstand pistol for four hundred dollars. Skip it if you shoot high volume, if recoil bothers you, or if this is your first handgun.

Why the Glock 22 Exists, and Why Police Left It

The .40 S&W cartridge came out of a specific problem. After the 1986 Miami shootout the FBI decided 9mm wasn’t doing enough, went to 10mm, and then found that most agents couldn’t shoot full-power 10mm well. Smith & Wesson shortened the case, Glock built a pistol around it in 1990, and the Glock 22 became the answer to a question every American department was asking.

It worked. The 22 is a Glock 17 with a bigger hole, the same frame, the same controls and the same manual of arms, so departments could adopt it without retraining anybody. For two decades it was everywhere.

Then the ammunition caught up. By 2014 the FBI had concluded that modern 9mm hollow points performed close enough to .40 that the difference didn’t justify the extra recoil, and that officers shot faster and more accurately with the smaller cartridge. The Bureau moved back to 9mm in 2015 and departments across the country followed, because the argument was about hit probability rather than ballistics on paper.

You can see where Glock stands on this now. The Gen5 Glock 22 is listed on Glock’s own site under law enforcement rather than commercial firearms. They aren’t really selling it to you anymore. They’re selling it to agencies that still have .40 in their armouries.

None of that made the pistol worse. It made the pistol cheap.

The .40 Versus 9mm Argument, Honestly

You’ll read that .40 S&W “hits harder” and that 9mm “won”. Both statements are true and neither is useful on its own, so it’s worth being precise about what actually separates them.

On paper the .40 throws a heavier bullet faster and produces meaningfully more energy. In gelatin, modern premium hollow points in both calibers expand reliably and penetrate to similar depths, which is the measurement that matters and the one the FBI leaned on. The gap that looked decisive in 1990 closed because bullet design improved, not because the cartridge changed.

What hasn’t closed is everything around the cartridge. 9mm costs roughly half as much, gives you two more rounds in the same frame, recoils softer, and lets most shooters put rounds on target faster. Multiply that across a department qualifying thousands of officers and the decision makes itself. We went through the full comparison in 9mm vs .40 S&W, and the conclusion there hasn’t aged badly.

For one person buying one pistol, though, the institutional logic doesn’t automatically transfer. You aren’t training a thousand officers. You’re buying a gun, and the cartridge that lost the argument is the reason you can afford a full-size duty pistol for $430.

How the Glock 22 Compares

Glock 17 ($499–$550)

The same pistol in 9mm, and the honest default recommendation. You get 17 rounds instead of 15, ammunition that costs roughly half as much, softer recoil, and a cartridge every shop in the country stocks.

Verdict: If you’re buying one pistol and you don’t already own .40, buy the 17. The Glock 22 wins on price alone, and only if the price gap is real where you’re shopping.

Glock 23 ($450–$621)

The compact .40, same cartridge in a shorter, carryable package with 13 rounds. It’s the one to buy if you actually intend to carry a .40 rather than keep one in a drawer. Recoil is worse than the 22 because there’s less gun to absorb it.

Verdict: Buy the 23 for carry, the 22 for a nightstand or a range gun. Read our Glock 23 review if concealment is the priority.

Beretta 96A1 ($799–$820)

The .40 version of the 92, and a completely different philosophy. Hammer-fired, double action first shot, all steel and alloy, and considerably heavier. That weight genuinely tames .40 recoil better than the polymer Glock does.

Verdict: Nicer to shoot, nicer to look at, and nearly twice the money. The Beretta is the enthusiast’s choice and the Glock is the sensible one.

Smith & Wesson M&P40 (about $430)

The Glock 22’s direct rival during the duty-pistol wars, and it costs about the same today. Better stock grip ergonomics for most hands, interchangeable backstraps, and a trigger that divides opinion more than Glock’s does.

Verdict: Genuinely close on merit, so buy whichever fits your hand. Worth knowing that full-size M&P40s are getting hard to find new, which is the same story as the Glock.

Testing Protocol

Phase 1: Out of the Box

200 rounds with no cleaning and no lubrication beyond what Glock ships it with. Federal 180gr FMJ and Blazer Brass 165gr, shot at seven and fifteen yards, mixing slow fire with controlled pairs. The point was to see whether it needed a break-in. It didn’t.

Phase 2: Volume and Accuracy

Another 300 rounds across two sessions, adding Speer Gold Dot 180gr, Winchester Ranger 165gr and 200 rounds of steel-case Tula. Bench groups at 25 yards off a rest, five shots per group, five groups per load. Temperatures ran from 61 to 88 degrees.

Phase 3: Abuse

The last 100 rounds went through a dirty, unlubricated pistol after I dropped it in dry dust and knocked the worst off with my hand. This is the test Glocks are supposed to pass. It passed.

Tracking & Observations

The first thing you notice is the recoil impulse. It isn’t harder than 9mm so much as faster, a sharp shove rather than a push, and it takes the sights longer to settle. On a timer my splits ran about a tenth slower than they do on a Glock 17, which is exactly the gap the FBI wrote about.

The Gen5 changes matter more here than they do on a 9mm gun. Removing the finger grooves lets you actually place your hand where it belongs, and the flared magwell speeds up reloads under a shot clock. The ambidextrous slide stop is a genuine improvement if you’re left handed and irrelevant if you aren’t.

Brass ejection is aggressive. .40 throws cases further and harder than 9mm does, and if you shoot next to somebody at an indoor range they will find out about it. Trivial, but it’s the kind of thing nobody mentions until you’re standing there.

Steel-case Tula ran without a single stoppage, which surprised me more than it should have. That’s 200 rounds of the cheapest ammunition I could find, through a pistol I hadn’t cleaned, and the gun simply didn’t care.

Performance Testing Results

Across 600 rounds there were zero malfunctions. No failures to feed, no failures to eject, no light strikes, and no magazine issues across four magazines including two well-used police trade-ins.

• Federal 180gr FMJ, 150 rounds
• Blazer Brass 165gr FMJ, 100 rounds
• Speer Gold Dot 180gr JHP, 75 rounds
• Winchester Ranger 165gr JHP, 75 rounds
• Tula 180gr steel case, 200 rounds

Best accuracy came from the Speer Gold Dot at 2.1 inches for five shots at 25 yards. The overall average across all loads was 2.4 inches, and even the steel-case Tula held about 3.6 inches, which is better than that ammunition deserves. The Gen5 Marksman barrel is doing real work.

For a duty pistol that costs $430, shooting two and a half inches at 25 yards is more accuracy than the price suggests and more than most owners will ever use.

Technical Deep Dive

The Glock 22 is dimensionally a Glock 17. Same 7.95 inch overall length, same 5.51 inch height, same 1.34 inch width. The differences are internal: a heavier slide to handle the pressure, a different barrel, and a recoil spring assembly tuned for the cartridge.

That shared frame is the pistol’s best trick. Drop in a 9mm conversion barrel, use Glock 17 magazines, and the 22 becomes a 9mm pistol for around $150. You keep the cheap gun and shoot cheap ammunition through it, which is the single strongest argument for buying one in 2026.

The Gen5 trigger breaks at about 5.8 lb, measured as the 26 N Glock quotes. It’s the same Safe Action system as every other Glock, which means a long take-up, a defined wall and a break that nobody describes as crisp. It’s entirely serviceable and it’s the reason the aftermarket trigger business exists.

One genuine limitation: the standard Gen5 Glock 22 has no optics cut. If you want a red dot you need the MOS version, which runs closer to $800 on the used market, or you pay a gunsmith to mill the slide.

Component	Specification	Benefit
Caliber	.40 S&W	Cheap on the used market because departments left it
Capacity	15 rounds	Two fewer than a Glock 17 on an identical frame
Barrel	4.49 in Marksman (Gen5)	Measurably tighter groups than earlier generations
Weight loaded	37.32 oz	Enough mass to keep .40 recoil manageable
Trigger	26 N, about 5.8 lb	Identical manual of arms to every other Glock
Frame	Shared with Glock 17	Converts to 9mm with a barrel and G17 mags

Glock 22 Variants

Generation matters more on this pistol than on most, because the used market has all of them at once and the prices overlap.

Upgrades Worth Making

A 9mm conversion barrel (about $120 to $160). The highest-value modification available for this pistol. Pair it with Glock 17 magazines and you have a 9mm gun for practice and a .40 for everything else.

Sights (about $60 to $130). Factory Glock sights are plastic and they’re the first thing most owners replace. Steel night sights transform the gun for less than the price of a case of ammunition, and our Glock sight upgrade guide covers what fits.

A connector or trigger bar (about $25 to $90). Cheap, and it addresses the one thing everybody criticises. You won’t turn a Glock trigger into a 1911, but you can clean up the break for pocket change.

Skip the recoil spring “upgrades” that promise to tame .40. The factory assembly is properly engineered and the aftermarket rarely improves on it.

Common Problems & Solutions

Brass to the face on older Gen 4 guns. A known early Gen4 complaint, fixed by Glock with a revised ejector. If you buy a Gen4 and see it, the part is inexpensive and any gunsmith can swap it.

Worn police trade-in magazines. Trade-in guns often ship with magazines that have spent fifteen years loaded. Springs take a set. New magazines cost about $25 and they’re the first thing to replace on a used purchase.

Holster wear that looks worse than it is. Trade-in pistols are usually scuffed on the slide and pristine inside, because they were carried constantly and shot twice a year for qualification. Judge the bore and the rails, not the finish.

Ammunition availability. The real ongoing problem. Buy .40 in bulk when you see it priced well, because the shelf space keeps shrinking.

Buying a Police Trade-In Without Getting Burned

Most cheap Glock 22s on the market are agency trade-ins, and they’re a different buying proposition to a used gun somebody owned privately. Understanding how they were treated tells you exactly where to look.

A duty pistol lives in a holster for a decade and gets fired twice a year at qualification. That produces a gun with an ugly slide and almost no internal wear, which is the opposite of a range gun. So ignore the finish. A pistol that looks like it lost a fight with a filing cabinet may have four hundred rounds through it.

Check the barrel first. Look down the bore for sharp, clean rifling and check the locking lugs and the muzzle crown for peening or damage. Then check the frame rails for wear, work the slide to feel for grit, and confirm the trigger resets crisply. If the bore is bright and the rails are clean, the rest is cosmetic.

Assume the magazines are worn out and budget about $25 each to replace them. Springs that have sat compressed for fifteen years are the single most common cause of feeding complaints on trade-in guns, and people blame the pistol for it constantly.

Finally, watch the price spread. Gen 3 guns start around $415 and Gen 5s run to about $520, so the generations overlap heavily depending on condition and seller. Our .40 S&W pistols on sale page tracks where the genuine discounts sit, because a badly priced Gen 3 is worse value than a well-priced Gen 5.

Who Should NOT Buy This Gun

High-volume shooters. If you shoot several hundred rounds a month the ammunition premium will swallow the money you saved on the pistol inside a year. Buy a Glock 19 or a 17 instead.

New shooters. .40 recoil builds flinch faster than 9mm does, and a flinch learned early is hard to unlearn. Start on 9mm and come back to this if you want to.

Anyone with limited hand strength or wrist problems. The sharp impulse is genuinely harder on joints. This is a real medical consideration and not a toughness question.

People who want a red dot on a budget. The non-MOS gun has no optics cut, and by the time you’ve bought the MOS version you’ve spent Glock 17 money.

Anyone who lives somewhere .40 is scarce. Check what your local shops actually stock before you buy a pistol chambered in something they don’t.

Final Verdict

The Glock 22 is the same pistol it was when it rode on half the police belts in America. Six hundred rounds produced no malfunctions at all, including 200 of the cheapest steel-case ammunition sold and a hundred through a gun full of dust. It shoots two and a half inches at 25 yards. Nothing about it has degraded.

What changed is the market around it, and that’s worth thinking about clearly rather than emotionally: a cartridge falling out of institutional favour doesn’t stop performing, it just stops being convenient, and convenience is most of what you’re paying for when you buy 9mm instead.

So the decision comes down to how you shoot. If you want a reliable full-size pistol for a nightstand, a truck or occasional range trips, this is the most gun anybody sells for $430 and it isn’t close. If you’re shooting every week, the ammunition cost will beat you and you should buy the 17.

Buy it for what it is, which is a police duty pistol that nobody wants anymore, at a price that makes no sense.

Final Score: 8/10 – The gun is a 10 and the cartridge is a 5, and the price splits the difference in your favour.

FAQ: Glock 22