I spent much of the ’22-23 winter carrying a SIG P365-XMacro instead of the original P365 that I’ve been carrying as my EDC since early-ish 2018. The additional capacity was great, sure, but it was the optics cut and flatter-shooting, compensated slide that got me to switch.
But…the longer grip is harder to conceal. In preparation for warmer weather and lighter clothing, I connected with ShaloTek and built myself a hybrid gun.
Optics cut and integrally compensated, I chose a Sentinel EDC slide.
ShaloTek offers multiple optics cuts and I went with the Shield footprint that works with the Shield RMS series and quite a few other optics like the extremely popular Holosun 407 and 507 series.
One reason I went with this particular slide is that it’s compatible with all the factory guts, including the factory barrel. Well, it would have been had I gone with ShaloTek’s P365XC slide. In my case I decided to be weird and use a SIG P365XL barrel instead of the shorter, original P365 barrel, which meant using the ST P365XXLC slide. Long slide, short frame. Big time hybrid style.
At $290 the XXLC slide isn’t cheap (though it’s very well-priced in the aftermarket slide market), but the ability to re-use most of the parts I already owned is nice.
You can just see the muzzle of the factory P365XL barrel glinting inside the top port there in the photo above. ShaloTek creates a compensator by extending the slide just slightly past the barrel and machining in a few gas ports and a bit of a “baffle” at the business end to help capture and redirect gasses.
Venting high-pressure gas upwards pushes the muzzle downwards.
For over two months now (would have been sooner, but I’ve been on a custom Cerakote kick on my personal guns and that process took a while) this has been my EDC, almost always with the flush-fitting, factory 10-round magazine inserted rather than the extended one seen in some of these photos.
Obviously I’ve become a big fan of carry optics. While it’s a wash for me inside of 15-or-so yards, it absolutely increases my accuracy capability and confidence beyond that.
Before committing the new hybrid gun to my holster I spent a couple range sessions familiarizing myself with it and ensuring its reliability and accuracy. No issues.
The fit and function of the ShaloTek slide were flawless right out of the gate. No apparent change in accuracy vs. the factory slide (I’m the usual amount better with it due to the red dot), and the fit of the barrel in the slide and the feel when cycling it, etc., is identical enough to that of the factory slide that I can’t perceive a difference.
What I can feel, however, is a difference in muzzle rise / flip and my palm dyno suggests slightly lessened felt recoil. The original P365 was generally considered “snappy” by most shooters, and it likely still is here but it has certainly been muted a little.
It’s hard for me to compare directly against the SIG X-Macro’s factory ported slide, as that gun has a full-length grip. I want to say that the skinnier, dual-port design on the top of that slide may be slightly more effective at producing a vertical jet of gas pressure than the ShaloTek’s single, thicker gas port on the top, but I think ShaloTek has done a very good job adding minimal slide length while integrating compensation and a tapered muzzle shape for easy holstering (something I’d appreciate on the X-Macro, which shaves Kydex as it enters and exits most holsters).
I did the extended-length slide partially for looks and partially to get a little more weight out over the nose to further help the gun shoot extra flat, fast, and soft. Watch this space, though, as I think I’m going to pick up an XC slide (the one that uses the original, 3.1-inch P365 barrel rather than the 3.7-inch XL barrel seen in this article) to see how it shoots and carries compared to this XXLC one. They’ll be easy to swap back-and-forth while on the range, and if they perform equivalently I may just switch to the shorter one to save whatever small amount of weight and length it’s worth.
Overall I’ve been very pleased with the ShaloTek slide! Fit and finish were absolutely flawless and it has run like a top for me. It allowed me to mount up an optic — something I’ve always itched for on my P365 — and my carry gun now shoots flatter and faster than ever.
There are tons of options to choose from on the ShaloTek website, and it looks like they’ve now branched out from slides into SIG pistol frames and more. Thankfully they make it very clear in the description of each slide precisely which factory components (barrels and recoil springs, primarily) are compatible with which slide length, making it easy to create a hybrid franken-gun like mine.
