IZH-35m

My CZ75 P07 Duty Review - Part 1. Background: This is my first CZ pistol. About myself, I shoot mostly bullseye with a little bit of IDPA. I also own the following pistols: Ruger MKIII with VQ internals, IZH-35M, Pardini SP, S&W 5906, STI Spartan, Les Baer PII, Pardini GT45.

The gun has a polymer frame with a steel slide, which is a departure from the all-steel other CZ models. The frame exhibits a rather toy-like mold line/ridge running around the entire perimeter of the frame, easily showing the show halves of the mold used to create the frame.

The gun is at least imported in the USA at CZ's factory in Kansas. I am not sure where it is actually made.

The extractor is of an external design. I have no problem with this, however I found I was able to easily depress the rear of the extractor arm with my finger. This was strange to me as the extractor spring on my 5906 is much much stronger.

The magazine release is very clear and elevated/extended, but yet was unobtrusive when shooting. Magazines released very positively; they shot out of the gun. There was a complaint about the early P07's that they would not fully drop magazines, but I had no such problem at all on my gun.

Sights are the now-commonplace white rear U notch and front white dot. They were easily visible both indoors in low light and outdoors on the range.

The trigger has what feel like four distinct stages. Here is my finger on the trigger with no pressure.

This is the trigger after I take up the slack in the disconnector.

Here is the trigger with the hammer back to the half-cock notch.

Somewhere past the half-cock notch, the trigger finally breaks, with a small amount of over-travel. The break point is not defined. Each stage of the trigger is progressively stronger, so the trigger exhibits 'stacking' in DA mode. The DA pull came out to 10lbs on my pull gauge while the SA trigger broke at 3.2lbs. The DA trigger was literally 'squeeking' when I dry-fired the gun.

There is a nice bright safety dot hidden below the decocker. The decocker can be converted to a conventional safety for cocked-and-locked carry, but I prefer the decocker mode. Unlike my 5906, where the decocker is also a safety that covers the firing pin, the P07 decocker drops the hammer to the half-cock notch. This is of note when one is practice dry-firing in DA mode because to accurately simulate the trigger pull one would first feel, one must first put the hammer to half-cock by either partially pulling the trigger to raise the hammer to half-cock, or manually cocking and then decocking the gun. This is in contrast to the 5906 where dry-firing continuously in DA mode is an actual simulation of how the gun really feels.

Here is the hammer at half-cock.

Here is the hammer after dry-firing.

Take-down is fairly straight-forward. You unload the gun, making sure to remove the magazine and clear the chamber. Then you retract the slide about a half inch, lining up two marks; one on the frame and one on the slide. Once these marks are aligned, the slide-stop can be pushed out with a punch (supplied with the gun). Once the slide stop is removed, the slide glides forward and off the frame. Looking the the underside of the slide, one can see that the recoil spring is of flat-wound design which is interesting. The guide rod is full-length.

Near the back of the slide, there is a hole that runs entirely through the slide. I have no idea why this hole is there and could find no mention of it in the manual. Strange...

Here you can see the fire control group.

Another view of the hammer, sear, disconnector, and ejector. Just holding the frame portion of the gun is kind of funny; it feels like a toy it's so light. The frame itself has aggressive serrations on the front and back-strap that while gripping my hand well, also felt sore after a shooting session.

Something strange is that the mainspring/hammer-spring is not fully enclosed. Instead it is exposed inside the magwell. There is also a lanyard loop at the bottom of the mainspring housing that I find annoying when slapping a new magazine into place.

Looking up into the magwell. Again, the mainspring is exposed.

Fifteen shots from an improvised rest at 20 yards. Not bad accuracy using standard Winchester white box 115gr loads. Certainly good enough for IDPA or defensive purposes.

Two-handed sighted fire at a moderate pace, several mags. As you can see, the gun shot fairly well in my hands at 20 yards, good enough for defense.

Rapid-fire at 20 yards, several mags. Virtually all of the shots were on target, which again is good enough for defensive purposes. So how did it shoot? Actually pretty good. After first taking the gun home and dry-firing it, I was pretty disappointed with the DA trigger. It was creepy and 'stacked' quite a bit. The SA trigger was light but the break-point was not well-defined. In shooting, the SA reset point was easy to find as it exhibited a loud 'click' when the disconnector would reset. The amount of pretravel in the trigger is annoying and shows a lack of quality fit between the disconnector and sear and the trigger and frame. The squeaky trigger was also annoying and probably will go away with some lube, but I wanted to review the gun as it came to me. My conclusions: Overall I think the P07 is a decent gun for the price-point and gets the job done. Hopefully the trigger smooths out, but I have heard from other CZ75b owners that their DA triggers took 1000-2000 rounds to smooth out.