Have any of you had a recent, first hand experience with Remington's re-introduced R51? Remington claims they have fixed all the problems with the older R51 and made some improvements as well. And that their engineering team worked tirelessly for months and months to make sure they got it right. Did they? Inquiring minds want to know.

I hope Remington engineers didn't learn from the same school as the Samsung Note 7 engineers

I was all over this concept gun the first time but man oh man what a botched launch and re-launch

Of course you can't believe the gun mag or online paid reviews because they said the first MK1 versions were great...

I too would like to hear first hand user reports...

I hear you, Pig_Popper! Trying to sift through the marketing hype to get to the truth is a real challenge. That's why I was hoping to hear from a THFer who'd actually laid hands on one of them and who has not been bought and paid for by Remington or a gun magazine!

I was going to buy a Gen 1, but they turned out to be POS. I sincerely hope Remington has got their stuff together these days, but I just can't bring myself to trust them again. Maybe in the future. I don't know where you go to get reliable gun reviews these days. Magazines and popular youtubers are all bought and paid for by the manufacturers and forums are often full of mall ninjas, fan boys, and know-it-alls.

I'd trust a Moderator of this site to tell it like it is...

I looked at a Gen 1, it had excellent point ability, but poor build quality. I passed on it, but the feel was intriguing, few guns point like it for me.

Meh.


Too many other excellent options out there.


Pass.

Share with us what your other excellent options would be. Inquiring minds would like to know!! This is a very competitive market segment and the more we can learn from first hand experiences, the better our chances of not making a bad decision based on marketing hype!

I wouldn't roll the dice. Remington's quality control is terrible.

I handled one (R51) a friend got ahold of when the new models first came out (early 2014) before the recall. For me, the pistol felt wonky (for lack of a better technical term.) The magazine was weird, being flush with the bottom of the grip frame. Strange. I never shot it but watched him shoot it. He got slide bit twice through the first few magazines trying to figure out the grip, then it started having failure to feed issues with 115 and 124 grain ball ammunition. Like every third shot or so. He also didn't like the long trigger reset. He ended up sending it back to Remington on recall. Like was mentioned previously, Remington QC isn't all that great anymore. Hopefully they got it right with the new release, but like many others I'm done with Remington. There's just too many other manufacturers out there with better products that get it right the first time.

I used to not like Glock until I started shooting them more. They just WORK, every time. Same with the Springfield XD and XDm series, I have a few of them as well. Great grip angle on them, for me they feel great. Love my H&K USP 9 and 40 too. S&W M&P series are solid firearms also. I wouldn't hesitate to protect my life or my loved ones with any that I've mentioned (and there are many others out there). I don't think I can say that about the R51. YMMV.

Watch the entire video. It describes the differences between the "Gen 1" and "Gen 2" models and the issues they have. There are other video reviews out there, just using this one as an example.

No way I would recommend buying this pistol.

Well, that's not very encouraging! After watching this guy's experience with the R51 on this video, I can't help but wonder what Remington's engineers were doing during those 2 years of intensive re-work. And the fact that it appears to be tricky, if not downright difficult to field strip and reassemble, I don't see anything that would tempt me to buy one of them. Maybe Big Green ought to stick with making shotguns; they've done pretty well with them over the years.

A few more videos have leaked out over the last week(s) -

RyeonHam (youtuber) shows the spent brass from a Gen2 R51 and it is obviously bulged and has protruding primers!



MAC (youtuber) also makes a valid point with the hardened steel against aluminum towards the end of his field stripping exercise in the video above.

Hot Mess = R51

I was always a Remington fan but this is comparable to having a car that dies on the way to work several times a week. Such a shame the brand has come to this.