50 Round Review, Springfield SA-35

The SA-35 is Springfield’s attempt at modernizing the Venerable Browning High Power. While they did make some improvements to the trigger, safety and mag release they missed the obvious opportunity to improve the beaver tail. So how does it shoot?

Out of the box the gun shot terrible at 10 yards. We struggled to get a group together and were forced to drift the sights well past center to accommodate for a significant left shooting bias. We confirmed that we aren’t totally nuts. The next gun is the serial order had the same issue.

After getting the sights in the ballpark we attempted some controlled pairs and recoil drills. One of our reviewers has a lot of experience with high powers and was able to get some consistent shots on target still biasing left I am afraid. The rest of us struggled a little with freezing out the slide. Once we adjusted our grip the gun started cycling correctly.

We really wanted to love the SA-35 from Springfield Armory. Sadly, we didn’t. We do like the updates from Springfield it just occurs like they have some teething to do to get this gun where it needs to be. Our Springfield Armory SA-35 had some issues but was still a steal at $699 MSRP.