when fulfilling LE ammunition orders (and a lot of other experience, professionally and personally), the go-to is Gold Dots followed closely by HST designs (older variations like Hydra-Shok and Black Talon fell out of favor, but are still out there in the wild). due to a combination of reliable feeding and a combination of sufficient penetration from most duty pistols at common engagement distances. today, and in years prior, Golden Sabers were the go-to and the bonded design is still extremely desirable if you have an older S&W automatic, a revolver, or a 1911 Series 70 or older. some modernish designs still try to follow the older pattern like PDX or Ranger-T (and Ranger-T is still quite popular especially if you have a mix of pistols and SMGs and need to settle on one type of issued ammunition for budget/logistics).
while there are many others, Critical Defense being kind of niche for some off duty use, SIG's V-Crown, through partnership with Sierra, has bridged the gap where the HST doesn't work very well through doors, drywall, windows, et c due to the "flying ashtray" easily filling with debris and unlike soft debris that can still expand, hard debris like glass will simply plug the cavity and act as an FMJ. going back to the older Black Talon was seen as a step backwards, and so Federal experimented with varying the design a bunch. Sierra had offered a variation on their Sports Master bullet with an updated core and jacket design, but Federal didn't want it. SIG picked up the offer and modified it into V-Crown, and now has a reliable light barrier JHP that is good enough to compete directly against the HST and GD. about the only downside is that the V-Crown brings back the issue that Hydra-Shoks had in feeding issues in some compact handguns (rarely).
Chris from the Lucky Gunner team puts Sig Sauer ammo to the test with a chronograph and ballistic gelatin to see how it fares compares to other loads.
www.luckygunner.com
in the end, you're served by what shoots reliably and consistently in your gun and allows you to have confidence in your ability to land threat-stopping hits without second guessing. not to mention, ammo you can afford to train with regularly beats even the best ammo you only got one mag of.
if it's worth anything, i sell an order of magnitude more generic label JHP (Winchester, Remington/UMC, CBC/Magtech, PCC/PMC et c) than the duty/defense labelled stuff and haven't had any complaints and 500 of the dirty Winchester white box JHP fed and shot fine through a test SMG not even last summer. it's a bit inconsistent and not very accurate, but it also didn't have any stoppages and made basketball-sized hits reliably out to 25 meters, which is all i'm going to ask from a pistol round. of the popular defense/duty labelled stuff, it's a toss up between Speer and Federal products with Speer getting the thumb on the scale depending on the price. Winchester and Remington beat both of those out in rifle calibers by orders of magnitude.
