Springfield sent me not one but two of the XDms to test. As the all-business all-black one suited Handguns well, I spent some time thrashing it. One of the first things I discovered was that Springfield had performed some sort of trickery besides stuffing 16 rounds into a magazine.

The XDm shoots softer than the XD--and softer than other .40 polymer guns as well. At first I thought I was just a bit off, due to having spent entirely too much time shooting a bunch of handguns .44 Magnum and larger. No, comparing it side by side with others showed me that I was not mistaken.

I had a chance to talk to Robbie Leatham at an industry gathering after I'd fired the XDm, and I mentioned the softness of recoil. He agreed. I said, "Yes, even with the Cor-Bon 135-grain rockets, it was soft to shoot." He winced when I mentioned that load. "Those things hurt," he said.

Well, not with the XDm they don't. Don't be mistaken; you will know you've touched off a hot load when you drop the striker on a Cor-Bon 135, but it won't be like you caught a hot line drive wrong in your mitt.

The XDm barrel is marked "match," and while it isn't a Bianchi Cup gun, it certainly delivers the goods. The worst groups of the various sessions was four inches, and even those were few and far between. Most of the time the groups hovered between two and three inches, so much so that it became boring. "Oh, another 21⁄2-inch group."

Every firearm shows preferences. Some are more marked than others, and if you have a handgun that shows a strong preference for one load over another you'd better pay attention to it. This particular XDm likes everything.

If there is something it doesn't shoot well, I wasn't able to find it. However, what it likes the most is the Magtech 180-grain Guardian Gold, which provided one two-inch group after another if I did my part.

And accuracy was not just an at-25-yards sort of thing. Plinking at the club's 100-yard gong, I could count on a "clink" from downrange as my reward every time if my mechanics were right. Were we still doing the 100-yard "shoot for sound" matches I could be making a good bit of money shooting against other club members.

Are there drawbacks to the changes? Yes, but not many. A holster that holds an XD will also hold an XDm, although some might be a bit loose on the XDm. If the holster has a tensioning device, you can probably tighten it up.

ACCURACY RESULTS: SPRINGFIELD XDM
.40 S&W	BULLET WEIGHT (gr.)	AVG. VELOCITY (fps)	AVG GROUP (in.)
Speer Frangible	125	1,259	4.0
Black Hills Blue FMJ	180	972	3.5
Black Hills Red JHP	165	1,129	3.0
Blazer PHP	180	1,028	3.0
Corbon JHP	135	1,390	3.0
Magtech Guardian Gold	180	967	2.0
Magtech SCHP	130	1,159	3.0
Speer Gold Dot HP	155	1,188	3.0
Hornady XTP HP	155	1,137	3.0
Hornady TAP-FPD	180	964	2.0
Extreme Shock EHP	50	1,358	4.0
Notes: Chronographed with two-foot screen spacing, centered 15 feet from the muzzle. Accuracy results are from three five-shot groups at 25 yards from sandbagged rest. Abbreviations: FMJ, full metal jacket; JHP, jacketed hollowpoint; SCHP, solid copper hollowpoint; HP, hollowpoint; plated hollowpoint; EHP, enhanced penetration

The mag holders for your XDm will be too big for any XD mags you might have, and the XD holder will be too tight for XDm mags. The XDm magazine tubes are .050 inch wider than the XD mags but the same length, more or less.

Will your XD mags work in an XDm? Not a chance. First, they are smaller and would rattle, even if you were to cut a new mag catch slot in your old mags. But why would you? I mean, for the cost of modifying old magazines that have less capacity, and maybe getting less than spectacular reliability, you could just buy new magazines.

Where does the XDm fit? As a carry gun, if you want the 16 rounds you have to put up with a full-size gun. Okay, no problem there, as a good holster makes a full-size gun a doable thing.

For competition, the XDm suddenly becomes a big deal. In IDPA it is no different than the XD, since you're limited to 10-shot magazine capacity anyway. But if someone wanted to shoot in USPSA Limited, you now have a big-mag Springfield to use. Extending the mag with a hollow aluminum baseplate can get a couple more shots, and that's as much as many have in their current Limited guns.

If you wanted to shoot it in Production, you'd have to download your .40 ammo to match 9mm recoil, but that is an easy thing. The XDm is already soft with full-power .40 ammo; downloaded you'd have a really soft-shooting pistol that makes bigger holes than 9mms do. Hmmm.