Canik TP9 Elite Combat Review: Watch That Trigger!

I bought this gun about a year ago, and when I first got it I was enthralled: I thought it was maybe the best gun I'd ever fired. A year later I still think it's an absolutely phenomenal gun and underrated on today's market. It's a polymer striker-fired pistol from Canik's TP9 line, done as a partnership with Salient Arms, the barrel is even marked from the collab. You get a threaded barrel and fiber optic sights, which I loved shooting before I ever put glass on it.

The trigger is the reason I bought it and the reason you should pay attention. Flat-faced with a trigger safety, a break that sits right at 90 degrees, and then (this is the wild part) there is literally almost no reset at all. Anybody who's fired one will tell you it's one of the fastest shooters out there, fastest on the take-up and fastest on the reset. The flip side: when I first started shooting it I had accidental double-taps, and even now, thousands of rounds later, I still doubled up twice on camera. If you keep a little back pressure as that reset comes forward, boom boom: it fires twice. It's on the border of almost too damn light. Practice your trigger discipline with this gun. Seriously.

Ergonomics are loaded with smart touches: an enhanced mag release that's thick enough to hit fast during reloads (I wasn't sure about it at first, man I love it now) a functional mag well, removable backstraps in multiple sizes, a loaded chamber indicator, ambidextrous slide release, and my favorite detail, the deep finger indents on both sides of the frame. Takedown is basically Glock-style: pull the levers, slide comes forward. Mine came with three magazines, including a +3 baseplate that takes the 15-rounder to 18.

For optics, the plate system sits way down in the slide (better than the Glock MOS setup), so your optic sits partially inset below slide level. I'm running a Holosun 507C X2 on the RMR plate, and after having a Swampfox Liberty on there before, I definitely prefer the 507C's circle dot. The slide serrations are great from the back or underneath, though the top-side front serrations kind of slide away on you, and I'd personally take slightly more aggressive side stippling.

Reliability talk: these are made in Turkey, Canik triggers are famous in the US for a reason, and they're run as duty guns around the world, and now Century Arms has opened a location down in South Florida near me, which should only grow their footprint here. I own five or six Caniks and I have yet to have a single weapon-caused malfunction across any of them, including two or three thousand rounds through this gun.

The value is stupid. I paid about $400 for mine used at Arsenal Arms down in Homestead; they retail around $799. It's got roughly a Glock 19 footprint, so you could conceal it without it being too bulky, run it as a range toy, or keep it as a duty-style gun. Whatever the job, it's fantastic, just respect that trigger.