SCCY CPX1 Review

The SCCY CPX1 is a budget polymer frame, double action only, 9mm pistol. SCCY designed the CPX1 to meet a budget price point, and the company itself is known for its budget firearms. We’re going to do a SCCY CPX1 Review.

One thing I like about SCCY is they don’t market their firearm as being one of the best guns in the world. They marketed it as being one of the most affordable. They understand the downsides of the product. SCCY is not a company to over-hype its product. And for that, I respect them for understanding their lane and staying in it.

Role

The role of the SCCY CPX1 is clearly a self-defense firearm. It’s not large enough for duty use, shooting on the range, or competition shooting. It can definitely be used for range use, but it’s not the most fun gun to shoot. We’ll cover that later.

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It is small enough for concealed carry or something like a truck gun.

If you are a very small individual, you might have a problem concealing the SCCY CPX1 just based on size.

Most people will find this gun somewhat concealable. As long as they’re using the right holster.

If you’re carrying it the three to five o’clock, you’re going to want a holster with a decent amount of cant. While if you’re carrying at the appendix position, you’ll want to make sure that you have a good holster.

A Holster with a claw and potentially a wedge to provide both comfort and concealment for the SCCY CPX1.

Features

You can fit 10 rounds of ammunition in your SCCY’s double-stack magazines. The magazines themselves do not seem very high quality.

In fact, the follower doesn’t seem to have enough pressure on it. In my shooting experience, the magazines have run reliably.

That said, I’m not sure how they’ll do sitting in storage over time loaded or over thousands of rounds.

That said, this gun is designed to be a budget firearm. The people buying this firearm are not likely to spend hundreds of dollars buying ammunition for it.

This is a gun that we’ll likely see less than 250 rounds in its lifetime.

Grip/Ergonomics

The economics of the SCCY handgun is not great, but they’re not horrible either.

The SCCY CPX1 has a decent grip. It has finger grooves that work really well for me. But anybody who has slightly smaller or larger hands may not have a positive experience.

There are no modular features to this grip. What you get is what you get. Considering the price point that’s what you’d expect.

The texturing on the grip itself is completely lacking.

This gun is slick, and it’s also a very lightweight gun, which we’ll get to later. But being a slick, lightweight gun, it doesn’t handle under recoil as well as I would like.

General Feel SCCY CPX1 Review

The general feel of the SCCY is just lacking.

The biggest issues I have are the lack of texturing and the really large finger grooves.

The finger grooves work for me, but I don’t think they’ll work for most people. The texturing is just a complete fail on SCCY’s part.

Other than that, if you can get over those things, the grip actually feels decent in the hand and gives you good control over the front and backstraps. Providing you the leverage you need to keep the gun still under recoil.

Sights

The SCCY CPX1 comes with either iron sights or a milled Crimson Trace Red Dot Sight. T

he Crimson Trace Red Dot Sight is an upgrade that we’ll cover later.  Surprisingly the iron sights on the SCCY CPX1 are actually pretty good.

They’re a set of steel sights with a decent sight picture. They’re not going to win any prizes, but considering the price point, they seem durable, and I don’t have any complaints.

Crimson Trace Red Dot

Now talking about the SCCY CPX1 RDS, the Dot itself, I don’t think is ready for prime time. I have a CPX2 variant with the Red Dot and that version of the gun just isn’t durable enough.

I’ve had issues with the Dot flickering on and off. That’s just when dry firing! 

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The battery connection is held in place by the housing of the Red Dot itself. And that housing is plastic, and I feel like it’s going to break every time I try to tighten it down enough to hold the battery tight enough to give a constant connection.

I plan on sending the gun back to SCCY to see if they’ll replace it, but the overall feel and quality of the SCCY CPX2 Dot just don’t meet my requirements.

If you’re buying this gun, I would suggest going with the iron sights for durability. Hopefully, in a couple of years, Red Dot technology will improve and get cheaper, but until then, iron sights seem to be the way to go.

Controls

Safeties

The SCCY CPX1 features an ambidextrous thumb safety that is actually fairly well-positioned. It’s easy to take off and a little bit harder to put on.

My issue with the safety comes with the design of the nubs placed underneath it.

When SCCY initially introduced this pistol, they had a lot of trouble with people gripping the gun underneath the safety itself.

Under recoil, their thumbs would fly up. Putting the safety back on. So people would get a dead trigger while they were shooting a firearm.

To fix this, SCCY installed nubs into the frame. The problem with their fix is the fix makes the gun incredibly uncomfortable to shoot. This is a very lightweight gun. It has a lot of recoils.

While the safety nubs feel okay when feeling them in the store. When I actually took the gun out to shoot, it was painful to shoot.

The gun pushes back in your hand just enough that you feel every bit of the plastic nubs.

They dig into the bones around the web of your hand.

If you’re looking at a SCCY pistol, I would definitely suggest going with the SCCY CPX1. As it is most certainly the more ergonomic option.

This is a double-action-only pistol with a very heavy trigger. So I don’t see the purpose in thumb safety.

Magazine Release

The magazine release on the SCCY CPX1 is acceptable.

It’s fine. It works.

If you’re a right-handed shooter, you obviously won’t have any issues with it. If you’re a left-hand shooter, you’re going to have to access it using your middle finger, your trigger finger, or some other method.

With my medium to large-sized hands, I can easily press it without breaking my grip, but anybody with smaller hands than mine will likely need to break their grip to drop the magazine free.

Slide Stop

The slide stop on the SCCY CPX1 is actually really well designed.

It is center sheet metal, but it has plastic overmolding over it. And as a right-handed shooter, it’s easy to reach even over the thumb safety with my primary hand thumb. And I can also reach it when I come up to insert a fresh magazine reload using my support hand thumb.

Really impressed with how SCCY designed that, and it’s probably one of my most respected features on the gun itself.

Overall Ergonomics

Overall, the ergonomics in the SCCY aren’t bad if you take out the nubs on the gun itself. Those nubs completely take away any ergonomics point that this gun would get.

So if you’re talking about the SCCY CPX2, then it’s not that bad.

The SCCY CPX1 is a complete fail in ergonomics.

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Now I will mention the slide which has a pretty nice serration at the rear.

The serrations on the SCCY CPX1 are more aggressive than guns that often cost two to three times the price. I’m actually really impressed with what SCCY did there.

Trigger SCCY CPX1 Review

The trigger on the SCCY CPX1 is very heavy, and it’s a double-action-only trigger pull. But it’s also extremely smooth which is surprising.

I think if you’re used to other double-action, single-action style guns you’ll be pretty impressed with the feel of the trigger for the price point. Is it going to win any awards?

No, but considering the price point of this pistol, it’s a pretty good trigger.

The downside of this trigger is it’s going to be incredibly hard for inexperienced shooters to use effectively.

As a more experienced shooter, I’m able to work okay. But if somebody doesn’t have more experience, they’re going to find the gun incredibly difficult to shoot well.

Aftermarket

There really is no aftermarket for the SCCY CPX1. There’s one company that’s making aftermarket fiber optic sights, and that’s all I’ve really seen for this gun.

So don’t expect much if you want to upgrade your SCCY CPX1 or 2.

SCCY CPX1 Review Maintenance

Maintaining and cleaning the SCCY CPX1 is quite easy. You want to make sure the gun is unloaded, drop the magazine, and then lock the slide back to the rear.

Then you’ll use a screwdriver to disassemble the gun by pulling out a little take-down lever on the left-hand side of the firearm.

It’s not the same as most guns you’re probably used to, but it works quite well, and it’s quite quick. My one complaint is it does require a flat-head screwdriver, so it is not a tool-less operation.

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Once the slide is off the gun, it breaks down like any other pistol, and you can easily take out the recoil spring assembly and the barrel.

Aesthetics

The aesthetics of the SCCY CPX1 aren’t that great.

The grip looks really fat, and the polymer looks like crap. It looks like really cheap polymer, like something you’d expect on a kid’s gun that you’d buy at the toy store.

Now the slide itself actually looks pretty good and decently high quality for what it is. I’m really impressed with the slides and the way they’ve done it on these guns.

It really is their saving grace.

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SCCY does sell the gun with a bunch of different colors of the frames, and the frames are also modular, so you can switch them out, buying grip modules on the site.

That said, there is no modularity in the grips beyond color. So take that for what you will.

Shooting SCCY CPX1 Review

The SCCY CPX1 is a complete failure in the shooting department. As I mentioned before, due to the little nubs built into the grip to protect that thumb safety. It’s just really painful to shoot. This gun weighs right at 16 ounces unloaded.

So it is a handful in 9mm.

Considering recoil and then trying to manipulate the double-action trigger which is quite heavy, this gun is just a chore to shoot. It is not a good option for new or inexperienced shooters.

If you’re a more experienced shooter, you likely got that experience. Without having to pay for ammo that well exceeds the cost of this gun.

It’s really hard to justify this gun concern how many rounds it would take to really get good with it.

You could likely get into a higher-quality firearm and shoot fewer rounds. But actually gaining a higher level of skill. This is very difficult to shoot a firearm.

That said if you’re looking for something that’s just going to be able to defend you within five yards. Getting hits on a human-sized target, this gun will likely do.

It might be three yards for you. I would definitely go to the range and verify your skill level and what you feel comfortable with. this gun can definitely work for up close and personal tasks.

Checkout some other similar articles we have covered:

• Sccy CPX1 vs CPX2
• Sccy CPX2 Review
• Taurus G2C vs SCCY CPX2
• Sig P365 XL Holster
• CZ 75 Review