Kel-Tec P15: The Smallest, Lightest Doublestack 9mm

Kel-Tec's a favorite brand of mine. It's Patriarch George Kellgren, maybe one of the greatest living minds in the gun industry. The inventor of the infamous Tech-9 and the groundbreaking Kel-Tec P3AT, Kellgren's designs are just as innovative as they are affordable. But as we know, affordability tends to come by way of compromise. When I interviewed Mr. Kellgren himself, he told me that he pulls all these wonderful gun ideas seemingly out of thin air because they're guns that he personally wants to have for himself and he wants everyone else to be able to afford them too. How do you come up with these ideas? Like, how does it happen? Are you having breakfast? Are you going for a walk? And you think, how do you do what you do? A lot of time, it's a gun I would like to have myself. And I think that would be a neat thing to have, those features and that size and so on, use that type of ammunition. And then I go from there. So very seldom I'm involved with the marketing of it, but it's usually a thing I would enjoy myself. Not government contracts, not to turn a huge profit, but because he thinks that's something that's pretty cool and I want it. It's hard to be upset at him for that, a man living his dream and at the same time, inviting all of us into it, rich or poor. The last time I saw Mr. Kellgren in person, he talked to me about a few of his upcoming concepts, but the one that was the closest to fruition, this is probably over a year ago, was a gun he was personally carrying on himself as his own concealed carry gun. He showed me a functioning prototype of this, the Kel-Tec P15. The Kel-Tec P15 is a 15 round, nine millimeter striker fired handgun that Kel-Tec says is the smallest and lightest double stack nine millimeter on the market, and I think they're right. With a 15 round magazine inserted, it weighs just 16.3 ounces. The P365 by SIG has a 10 round capacity, but weighs 18 ounces. Some people may see this as Kel-Tec's first entry into what's now called the micro compact market, that is ultra compact double stack handguns with a capacity of generally 10 rounds or more and an overall height of generally four inches and being generally about one inch wide. Many of you may not remember that this isn't Kel-Tec's first foray into the micro compact market. Indeed, Kel-Tec started the concept before anyone else did. In 1995, decades before the SIG P365 or the Springfield Hellcat, Kel-Tec introduced this, the Kel-Tec P11. The P11 is, even by today's standards, one of the smallest double stack nine millimeter handguns around. At about one inch thick and weighing only 16.9 ounces, the P11 was truly the first double stack micro compact pistol that I know of. So why then was the P11 discontinued and why didn't it take the same foothold that new micro compacts did? The rudimentary sights on this thing and the so-so ergonomics didn't really help, but the main perpetrator is the criminally bad double action only trigger pull. Oh God, oh it's so bad, it's so bad. The P11 was quietly put out to pasture in 2019, years ago, and I'm not sure anyone thinks about the poor old P11, except for maybe me sometimes when I'm alone, like when I'm driving to work or when I'm watching a rom-com with my wife. With the P15, it's almost like Kel-Tec sat down, went across the board with the criticisms of this P11 and individually addressed every single one of them. Unlike the P11, the P15 actually has functional buttons. It's got a pretty decent low profile slide release lever, as well as a larger and more streamlined magazine release. In lieu of shitty, almost invisible water gun sights that are on top of the P11, the P15 comes with rear tritium night sights and a front tritium fiber optic sight, about as good as it gets. It's also got deep, easy to grip front and rear slide serrations, unlike the slippery P11 slide. But most importantly, Kel-Tec added a serviceable trigger. I mean, not even serviceable, I would say it's actually quite good within this class of compact carry pistols. It's about four pounds. There's a little take up, you can see here, before you hit a slightly mushy wall that gives about four pounds of resistance. Reset is a little bit longer than I'd like, but again, for guns in this class, I'm not sure anyone will complain too much about this trigger, except to perhaps say it's too light. While something in the four pound range might be a little light for concealed carry, Kel-Tec has integrated a grip safety that may console those of you who are concerned about popping a P15 in your pants, or if you're one of those, this is my safety guys, which is fine, you can just deactivate the grip or magazine safeties via a switch inside the gun. Instructions are provided in the owner's manual. Regardless, the trigger's a far cry from the 10 pound dog shit trigger that the P11 had, and speaking of which, compare the dimensions between these two guns, the P11 and the P15. Somehow, someway, the P15 is thinner and lighter than the P11. The P11's about an inch thick all the way around, while the P15 has about the same thickness in the grip, but a slimmer .9 inch slide. More amazing still, the P15 has an inch longer barrel than the P11, but it's still lighter weight. And as you can see without mags inserted, the butt height is about the same. That's because they use the same magazine pattern. If you've been watching closely, perhaps you've noticed the P15 isn't quite a P15 at all. Really, it's like a P12. It uses a 15 round magazine for sure, but really these are just 12 round magazines with a three round extension. The P15 is properly a 12 round gun with a flush fit P11 magazine. However, that's not necessarily a bad thing, and I'm not gonna hold it against Kel-Tec at all. Many concealed handgun carriers, myself included, have coveted guns in what I call the negative X format. It's the inverse of guns like the Glock 19X or the Sig P365X, which are both pistols that have frames borrowed from the gun the next size up with a slide borrowed from the gun the next size down. That's backwards. You have a lighter weight gun, but a shorter barrel with not as good performance and a bigger butt that's going to print more. Cultured concealed handgun enjoyers like you and I instead have realized that it should be done the other way around. The longer slides, easier to conceal down your pants than a bigger butt, and a longer slide and barrel give you better ballistic performance and therefore greater expansion with hollow point projectiles. Sure, capacity's less if you abbreviate the butt, but who says that you have to pigeonhole yourself with a flush fit magazine? Just do what Kel-Tec did. Offer options with flush fit capacity or extended capacity butt plates, and the end user can decide if he wants smaller or more capacity. The P15 has a Glock 19 size barrel and the lightest double stack nine in the game, and it even has a slot of pick rail under the dust cover. Texture on the grip panels, front strap and back strap might evoke differing opinions aesthetically speaking, but the checkering and even the material of the frame itself were quite grippy. Kel-Tec calls this checkering pattern gator grip, which is an appropriate homage to Kel-Tec's residence in the greatest state in the whole world. All of this and MSRP is going to be just $450. So with that all said, how did it shoot at the range? Importantly, we had no failures in our initial review, but we only shot maybe six or seven boxes. I just got this thing two days ago. I may follow up with a longer form review. I didn't clean or lube the gun before I took it to the range. Periodically, I do see people complain about Kel-Tec reliability, but that's often just like complaining about high point reliability. They're reliable guns. If the gun's unreliable, it's a QC issue, not a design issue. Every nine mil or 380 Kel-Tec pistol I've ever shot has been dependable, even my little 380s that are like 15 years old. They also don't cut corners with magazines. Kel-Tec P11 mags are made by the Italian firm of Metgar, the same company that's made Beretta and SIG magazines. Mags are a cheap way to save a few dollars and ruin a gun. Also, I've heard that Smith & Wesson 59 and 69 pattern magazines will work in the P15. I didn't try this at the range, but I can confirm that this, a Smith & Wesson 6906 magazine, will seat without issues and will activate the slide stop on an empty chamber, so it seems like they probably would work. With a new trigger, we could actually burn it down with this gun, even easily hitting a Caldwell man-sized steel silhouette target at 25 yards rapid fire. The mag release did take some getting used to, but we picked it up quickly, like 30 minutes. Also, the P15's very easy to inertia charge. That is, you get the slide to drop when you forcefully slam a loaded mag home on an open slide. The only issue we had in the range, and it's kind of a doozy, is that our sights would drift left every 100 rounds or so, even if we corrected it. I don't even know where these are going now. Let me aim straight at it. Very low left. Is that what it is? Yeah. And now, once again, you can see it's drifted all the way over to the left, even though I just adjusted it about five minutes ago. This is probably caused by the fact that the rear portion of the slide here, there's this block that's polymer. Related to that, this version's not optics ready, but there's a lot of room to speculate here, because not only is the rear of the slide removable, indicating that you could probably put an optic on there later, but the P15 uses a serialized internal chassis instead of a serialized frame, meaning that there's going to be the possibility, at least, to maybe swap into different grip modules. I'd characterize the walking sights as kind of a big deal, but fixable. I'd either contact Kel-Tec about it to get it fixed, or I'd simply Loctite the windage screw in place and call it a day. I think Kel-Tec should just be setting these in right in the middle of the slide, setting them for zero and leaving them at that. I don't need my windage. I'm not shooting at 200 meters in an open match in the Alps. You know, dude, I've got this because I want to not get stabbed by a crack hobo. That's what I have this for. If red dot compatibility comes along later, pick up a Holosun with the rear sight milled into the optic to be double sure if you want. I should mention that the manual doesn't mention whether or not this gun will run with plus P ammo. It probably will. The manual does say that the gun uses semi-spec nine millimeter ammo. Plus P is technically semi-spec, and many of you are going to bemoan Kel-Tec's typical construction. It ain't pretty. I know it. It's made out of common, low-cost materials. The finish is so-so, and it's got more screws in the frame than Madonna's got in her replacement hip, but by God, it works. Side note, I've always regarded Kel-Tec's bluing finish as less than optimal. The parkerizing actually does seem to hold up pretty well. If you get a blued slide version, and you're lucky enough to live in the South, I recommend picking up a can of Brownells Alumihide to coat it, or even a plain old Rust-Oleum rattle can finish will work just fine. Trust me, I've done it before. In summary, this is the smallest, lightest, double-stack nine millimeter handgun on the market, I think, and it has a Glock 19-length four-inch barrel, and it holds 16 total rounds of nine millimeter, and the trigger's not bad, and it's probably going to street for under 400 bucks. That makes it not only the smallest and lightest double-stack micro-compact, but probably the cheapest too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Kel-Tec's guns might not win any beauty contests, I get it, because the P-15 has more of the same money-saving manufacturing procedures Kel-Tec's known for, but it seems like a solid gun, and I bet Kel-Tec is going to sell an absolute shit-ton of the P-15. It's got a couple flaws I discussed, but if you break out the Loctite in a can of Krylon, you're probably going to have no complaints. And I have no complaints about you guys, most of the time. Look, do you like the channel? Think about supporting us, guys. We didn't take any money from Kel-Tec. This gun isn't even mine. I got to send this son of a bitch back, unless I buy it, which I may. But we do this all because you guys support us on Patreon, Utreon, and Subscribestar. We need you, I'm begging you, please get on there. The money doesn't go in my pocket. It goes to support TFB TV, and to pay my salary, and to pay Hop, and so on and so forth, pay for our expenses, so do us a favor. Please support us, Patreon, Utreon, Subscribestar. If you're on Utreon or Subscribestar, you can win one of four free guns every single month from Top Gun Supply, your online shooting sports superstore, and thank God we've got Ventura Munitions giving us free ammo, that's it. No money, just free ammo that we use to review these pistols, guys. Thanks as usual, take care.