Are aftermarket barrels worth it?

[alan]

When you think back, would you swap out a factory barrel for an aftermarket one on the same platform again? What’s your reasoning behind that?

 

[Saudade]

I bought an aftermarket barrel from my P320 (Brownell's Victory) and my M&P (Storm Lake). The 320 barrel was for my fullsize xchange kit. It was actually pretty cheap as barrels go (around $90). Got it to keep the factory barrel at a very low round count. The Victory barrel felt a bit tighter in my slide but shot about the same as the factory barrel (given my level of skill, or lack). Brownell's discontinued the product shortly afterwards.

My M&P sports the 5" ported CORE kit. The Storm Lake is a 5" non ported model. It too was on closeout so it was way under a $100, I wanted to see what the difference would be between ported and non ported. Spoiler: Not much with 115gr. Noticeable but not magic with 124g NATO. Still the front sight and top of slide remains clean with the SL barrel. The SL also has a 1:16 twist rate. Again didn't notice any difference from the 1:10 OEM at 10 yards. (Again, given my level or lack)

I have spare barrels for other handguns but they are all OEM.

 

[Javbike]

I still on the look out for a ruger lcp2 barrel