Full Review: Springfield Armory's New 1911 DS Prodigy Compact

Building an ultrashort model 1911 that is fully reliable and accurate too is no easy task, but Springfield has done it with the new 1911 DS Prodigy Compact.

April 22, 2025 By Joel J. Hutchcroft

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Springfield’s new-for-2025 1911 DS Prodigy Compact is chambered for 9mm Luger, and it will be offered in two barrel lengths: 4.25 inches and 3.50 inches. We asked for the 3.5-inch version and got it right away. I have to admit it’s a short but sweet double-stack Model 1911.

Some longtime readers of Shooting Times may recall that back in 2012, we ran an article on ultrashort Model 1911s. The late Dick Metcalf wrote that report, and if I do say so myself, he did an excellent job of detailing just how difficult it is to make a short-barreled Model 1911 function reliably and shoot accurately. I won’t go into his report in much depth here; suffice it to say the major reasons short-barreled Model 1911s are so difficult to build include the shortened barrel has a more acute angle when it tilts down during the cycle; the barrel’s feedramp surface angle is more abrupt when feeding a round from the magazine; the reduced mass in the shorter, lighter slide requires a stronger recoil spring setup, which makes finding the right balance in spring weight a real job; and the magazine follower spring needs to be really strong in order to avoid ride-over misfeeds and bolt-over-base misfeeds. Obviously, making a 3.5-inch-barreled Model 1911 is not as simple as just cutting off an inch and a half of a standard 5.0-inch-barreled Model 1911’s barrel and slide.

ejection port view — The Prodigy Compact with 3.5-inch barrel is 7.0 inches long and 5.1 inches tall. The wide-body grip frame allows the use of double-stack magazines that hold 15 rounds of 9mm ammunition. (Photo Provided by Author)

My shooting of the 3.5-inch-barreled Prodigy Compact with 15 different 9mm factory loads reveals that Springfield Armory has succeeded. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s first take a look at the features of the new pistol, and then we’ll get to my shooting results.

Features

The 3.5-inch Prodigy Compact weighs 25.5 ounces. It is 7.0 inches long overall and 5.1 inches tall. It measures 1.50 inches thick at the ambidextrous thumb safety, and its grip circumference is 5.63 inches just below and across from the trigger guard, with the grip safety depressed.

The pistol’s 3.5-inch-long, cone-shaped, match-grade barrel is made of stainless steel and has a reverse muzzle crown. There is no barrel bushing. It has an integral feedramp and a fully supported chamber. It uses a “captured” guide rod.

Crowned barrel on DS Prodigy Compact — The muzzle of the 3.5-inch Prodigy Compact’s barrel is flush with the end of the shortened slide when the pistol is in battery. It has a recessed muzzle crown. (Photo Provided by Author)

The forged carbon-steel slide has wide, square-bottom grasping grooves up front and at the rear. The rear of the slide has been cut for installing a red-dot sight (utilizing the Agency Optic Sysrem), and the pistol comes with a rounded slide-cut cover plate that matches the rounded top contour of the slide.

The all-black rear sight is dovetailed into the slide-cut cover plate, and it has a U-shaped notch and horizontal grooves on its face. The front sight is dovetailed into the top of the front of the slide, and it features a tritium dot surrounded by a white ring. The rear sight notch is 0.139 inch wide, and the front sight’s post is 0.144 inch thick, according to my old Hornady digital calipers. The sight radius is 5.0 inches.

Trigger on 1911 DS Compact — The single-action trigger has a curved, grooved, and ventilated fingerpiece. Our sample’s trigger pull averaged 5.43 pounds. Note the extended magazine release button. (Photo Provided by Author)

The hammer is skeletonized, and it has been recontoured for better concealed carry. The trigger is ventilated and has an overtravel adjustment screw and vertical grooves on the face of the fingerpiece. The magazine release is extended and grooved, and the ambidextrous thumb safety has extended levers that are grooved on top. The slide stop is countersunk on the offside of the frame. The grip safety is a smooth beavertail type with a memory bump, and its beavertail has been shortened, again for better concealed carry. And the mainspring housing is flat and textured.

Our review sample gun’s trigger pull averaged 5 pounds, 6.8 ounces over a series of five measurements with an RCBS trigger pull gauge. There is the usual slight amount of take-up, which is normal with all Model 1911 triggers, and letoff is clean and crisp.

The frame is billet 7075-T6 aluminum, and the grip module is polymer with textured gripping areas and a flared magazine well. The dustcover has an integral accessory rail with two cross-slots. The trigger guard is squared, and the front of it has the same texturing as the grip and the mainspring housing.

Rear Sight on Prodigy Compact — The pistol’s ledge-type rear sight has a U-shaped notch, and it is dove-tailed into the slide-cut cover plate and held in place by a setscrew. (Photo Provided by Author)

Our Prodigy Compact pistol came with two steel magazines that hold 15 rounds of 9mm ammo each. The all-black magazines have removable polymer baseplates, numbered witness holes, and black polymer followers.

All Prodigy pistols, including this new Compact version, are finished in matte black Cerakote. The barrel of our sample Compact has a black DLC finish. It came with the Allen wrenches necessary for swapping out the slide-cut cover plate for an RDS, an optic-mounting plate for the Hex Dragonfly footprint (other optic-specific mounting plates are available for purchase on Springfield’s website), a cable/padlock-style gun lock, and a zippered soft gun case with one inside pocket.

Rangetime

Before I put any rounds through the Prodigy Compact, I checked its trigger pull, which I commented about earlier, and I also checked the slide-frame fit and barrel lock-up. This pistol is tight, with virtually no side-to-side movement of the slide and no movement of the barrel when I pushed down on its hood. And it was essentially just as tight after firing all the review rounds.

1911 DS Prodigy ambi safety — The controls are pure Model 1911 and include an ambidextrous thumb safety and a beavertail grip safety. Note the integral, two-slot accessory rail on the frame’s dustcover. (Photo Provided by Author)

Speaking of firing the pistol, it turned in some excellent accuracy results in spite of my not-so-good eyesight. I deliberately decided not to install an RDS on the new gun, preferring to test it in its most compact form. I know using an RDS is all the rage these days, and many seasoned shooters have come to prefer one on their personal-defense handgun, but I’m old-school. (My wife says I’m behind the times in other ways, too!)

Anyway, overall average accuracy for three, five-shot groups with each of the 15 factory loads was 3.31 inches. That’s at a distance of 25 yards and fired from a sandbag benchrest, and it’s pretty darn good. The pistol’s favorite loading was the Browning 147-grain BXP, which averaged 2.00 inches. That load’s velocity averaged 963 fps, with an extreme spread of 44 fps and a standard deviation of 20 fps. Note that the velocities are averages of five rounds measured 12 feet from the gun’s muzzle with a Competition Electronics ProChrono Digital chronograph.

I want to call out one other load because this is the first time I have used any of it in a gun review. I’m talking about the Winchester USA Ready Defense Hex-Vent 124-grain JHP +P loading. It’s shown in the introductory photograph for this article. This ammunition features a 124-grain JHP bullet with a rigid insert. The insert is called Hex-Vent, and it is designed to shield the bullet’s hollowpoint from obstruction while channeling material flow for positive bullet expansion. This ammunition is loaded with match-grade primers and is built to exacting specifications. Its factory-rated muzzle velocity is 1,200 fps. Of course, the velocity I achieved with it was less than that, which is to be expected since the pistol has the short, 3.5-inch barrel and I always place my chronograph 12 feet from the muzzle. The extreme spread and standard deviation that I recorded were very good, which is an indication that this ammo is well made. It turned out to be nicely accurate, too.

Accuracy data chart — (Data Provided by Author)

Since this pistol is obviously intended for personal protection, after shooting from the bench at 25 yards, which is Shooting Times protocol, I did a bit of offhand shooting with the Prodigy Compact at a distance of 25 feet. The gun consistently tore big, ragged holes in the man-size silhouette targets with each magazineful. I fired two full magazines with each of the 15 loads, and they shot to my point of aim at that short distance very consistently. Oh, and after all that shooting was done, I shot the Prodigy Compact right-side up, left-side up, and upside down, and it chugged along without a hitch. In fact, I didn’t have a single failure to feed, failure to fire, or failure to eject during the entire shootout. Like I said earlier, Springfield has succeeded with this ultrashort double-stack Model 1911, which is no easy task.