Springfield Armory Echelon Pistol Wins NRA Award

If you are looking for a high-quality, full-size 9mm pistol, you may want to consider the new Springfield Armory Echelon, introduced last year. This full-frame 9mm handgun recently earned the 2024 Golden Bullseye Handgun of the Year award from the NRA’s Shooting Illustrated magazine. That’s impressive. Users report that the Echelon is accurate with a very good trigger and excellent sights.

At first glance the New Echelon sort of looks like a Glock mated with a Walther, with a good, ergonomic grip (definitely better than a Glock grip). The striker-fired Echelon pistol boasts multiple patent-pending features designed to make the Echelon modular and highly adaptable.

Inside the Echelon is a patent-pending Central Operating Group (see above). Employing cutting-edge manufacturing techniques, this is an entirely self-contained and serialized stainless steel chassis. This design allows all the key operating units of the pistol to be easily moved between available grip modules in seconds. The pistol comes standard with the medium grip module and three interchangeable backstraps. Small and large grips can be purchased separately. All controls of the pistol are fully ambidextrous.

For mounting optics, the Echelon boasts self-locking pins to ensure consistent point of aim/point of impact with mounted optics. Notably, the pins can be positioned to fit a wide variety of optics.

The Echelon is offered with a choice of U-Dot™ tritium/luminescent or traditional three-dot tritium sights. The standard barrel is 4.5″, while a longer 5.28″ threaded barrel is also available. The pistol ships with two magazines with a capacity of 17+1 in flush fit configuration and 20+1 with extended basepad.

CLICK HERE for more information on the Echelon, including multiple videos. NOTE about ISSUES: Some testers have had issues with factory magazines, but it appears this could be caused by the user’s grip contacting the slide release. Reports of Echelon magazine base plate issues appear to be from improper mag reassembly by owners.