I’m a fan of the 5.7x28mm round. Civilian loads aren’t quite as much fun as the military/LE loads but its still a flat-shooting, long-range (for a handgun) round. The FN Five-seveN is a fantastic gun but it’s price point puts it put of a lot of folks reach. Tisas USA’s new offering, the PX-57 changes all of that.

The PX-57 is a polymer-frame, striker-fired pistol with a Glock compatible fiber optic front sight and adjustable rear. An optics-ready version is forthcoming. Magazine capacity is a generous 20 rounds, and it ships with two magazines. It has a 4.8-inch barrel and  QPQ/Tenifer finish on the slide. Best of all is a very reasonable MSRP of $460 and they’ll be shipping in February 2024. The PX-57 isn’t even on Tisas USA’s website yet, but you can see some info on the main Tisas page.

I had a brief chance to shoot the PX-57 this week and was impressed, especially for the price. It’s a well-built pistol with clean, modern lines and felt good in the hand. I confirmed the 20-round capacity because honestly it felt thin in my hand. Not in a bad way, but in a “I’m surprised it’s a double stack” way. Controls were easy to reach, and the trigger was very good. Accuracy at the pistol ranges we were shooting was also seemed very good, although we weren’t doing any serious testing there. It’s mostly familiarization fire. I’d have loved to try dinging steel silhouettes at 100 yards with it.

The 5.7 is a fun round and the more pistols we see on the market for it the more ammunition support we get from the industry, making availability better and ammo prices come down. The Tisas PX-57 has a great price point and set of features and should help putting 5.7s into the hands of more people to further that movement.

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35 COMMENTS

    • Beat me to it. Haz predicts the 5.7×28 craze will thin out a decade from now once people tire of shooting an expensive boutique cartridge that’s already outclassed by other existing ones.

  3. “Affordable” is not a word I would use to describe the ammunition it eats… 🙁

      • It’s actually a good comparison. If you shop the 5.7 you can get it for .50 a round. These days, .223/5.56 is 50 cent each or more. So the cost really isn’t that bad until you compare other handgun calibers. But in this world full of crazy these days ammo prices have been on the upswing. More people buying guns and ammo and Biden trying to cut our supply.
        I personally own the PSA Rock 5.7 as well as the S&W M&P 5.7. I bought the Rock on sale from PSA on a daily blast for $299. While this is my opinion, it seems about half of people who own Rocks agree and the other half totally disagree. And that is that the trigger sucks. It sucks bad. Like near 10 lb pull. There are tons of people saying you need to dry fire it several hundred times then put a few hundred rounds through it to loosen it up. I dry fired that thing probably 1000 times or more. I put 500 rounds through it. Disassembled and cleaned and lubricated it. The pull gauge read about 9 pounds. I couldn’t stand that as most of my carry weapons I usually have a 3 lb or less pull. (Semiautomatics). The M&P 5.7 however is a different story. Price wise, it can be found for about $575. At least one of my local stores has it for $575 cash price. Add 3% for credit card buys. (Side note here: always if possible use cash to buy firearms and ammo. Visa Mastercard and Discover jumped on the bandwagon fast to specifically code purchases so that they know when guns and ammo are purchased. Its implementation was delayed at one point. But it’s just another form of tracking you can avoid). The out of the box trigger is 3-3.5 lbs. Superior in all ways to the rock trigger. I’m also about to get ar AR57 upper to match my truck gun to my carry gun caliber.
        5.7 is not the end all be all round, but it does create a niche for those who like pistol caliber high performance.

  4. Yeah, you might be able to afford the ‘gun’ but not the ammo. Hell, I can’t afford to feed anything I have beyond .22 atm, and most especially can’t restock my Garand ammo or 5.56, or even 9mm.

    Cause you know, feeding my kids costs 2-3x what it used to, so the toys have to stay in the safe.

  5. Looks better than all the other 5.7 pistol options.
    LE/Military gets better ammo? That makes no sense.

    • I don’t like this gun. 5.7 is stupid and outside of Stargate SG-1 LARPing there is no reason for any gun to use it.

      • 100%. For the form factor you could carry a Glock 17 or any other similar model and have 18-20 rounds of 9mm on tap, with none of the drawbacks of buying and shooting 5.7.

      • Well, if use of body armor by violent criminals were more commonplace, I’d see more of a point to the 5.7. But, at least in the US, the typical individual robbing liquor stores and doing random muggings and carjackings is a drug addict with a room temperature IQ. Body armor is hot, heavy, uncomfortable, and costs money that he could spend on little white rocks to smoke in his little glass pipe instead. People who have the forethought to consider that people might shoot him during the home invasion generally have the foresight to choose a career path less likely to get them shot.

        Also, on a completely unrelated note, it seems like, overall, in the aggregate, 5.7mm is not a very effective cartridge when it comes to destroying soft tissue, as opposed to punching through modern soft body armor. It is similar to .380 and .38 Special in that due to lack of kinetic energy, its performance in soft tissue is mediocre and most commercially available loads can’t expand the bullet meaningfully and reach the minimum of 12″ of penetration in calibrated 10% ballistic gelatin, not simultaneously, anyway. As far as I know, Lehigh Defense doesn’t make their Xreme Cavitator or Xtreme Defense in .224 diameter. Maybe they should. Theoretically these bullets create temporary cavitation to a higher degree than would normally be expected due to their shape, and they are non-deforming. It is claimed that at pistol velocities they create temporary cavitation that causes permanent damage to soft tissue but I’m not sure I believe it. Maybe one of these bullets in .224 diameter, maybe around 30 grains. At 2100 or so feet per second from a pistol barrel, it should be able to get even more cavitation from the fluted shape, though I suppose it’s also possible a fluted solid copper bullet would deform at those velocities and fail to reach 12″. Otherwise, if we lived in a world where the “cop killer bullet” laws were not a problem, I’d say SS190 steel-core is the least bad answer. SS190 doesn’t deform, it doesn’t always yaw before the last few inches of travel, it makes a permanent cavity that looks like something made with a very narrow, very sharp awl, but it gets to 13″-15″ consistently in calibrated 10% gelatin and usually does 12″ or so after body armor. With under 300 foot-pounds of energy to work with it’s lucky to do that well and the laws of physics might not permit anything much better, not even with depleted uranium.

        Which is another reason why the cartridge isn’t very interesting to me, though if, for example, PTR, were to start selling MP5 clones in 5.7mm, I’d be really amused. I still wouldn’t buy one but the juxtaposition would amuse me, and I suppose 5.7mm is one of those cartridges whose performance is much better if you can deliver a lot of them in quick succession.

  7. Where yall getting your 5.7 ammo? I see it for 39 to 50 cents a round, close if not same as 223/556.

  9. Good price, decent sounding firearm, yada, yada. Outside of .22, 9mm, 10mm, .223, .308, 25-06, 00buck it starves.

    • .38sp is cheap and easy to reload
      Still, I mainly shoot .22, 9mm, .223, .308, 7.62*39, and 12 gauge.

  11. The price of ammo is just like the price of gas. Things fluctuate too much in both directions to use this in the decision to buy any particular firearm. 5.7 costs what it does for a reason. For me it’s more about the brand than chambering. Tisas is the same as Canik. These are names I will not be investing in.

    • … maybe when they bring out the 6th try at perfectly perfecting perfection, they’re still on the 5th marketing generation.
      Maybe the round won’t work through their dumb grip angle.

  13. The FN Five-seveN, for civilian use, seems to be a solution in search of a problem. I own one – it’s a fine gun in its own right – but I don’t shoot it for fun and I don’t carry it. Civilian ammunition can’t defeat body armor – so what’s the point?

    In my case, it’s a safe queen.

  15. To many dismiss this caliber. I own a M&P 5.7 as well as the PSA Rock 5.7 handgun. I have an AR57 upper ordered for one of my ARs so I can match my edc with my truck gun. I did the same with .357 and .44mag. I also have the new S&W FPC in 9mm to match my Glock 19. The 5.7 pistol is a blast. Recoil is so minimal it’s almost negligible. And you carry 23 rounds without a mag extension. It may not be for everyone….but neither was 30 super and today those guns retain a very high value.

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