Our Review on the KCI Magazines made for Glocks.  Click the READ MORE below to read our article

KCI Magazines for Glock

by Jessie Indracusin

Great Deal or Waste of Money?

Many of you own the most popular handgun on the market (or at least a variant of it).  Specifically I am talking about the Glock 17.  I am seeing these magazines popping up at an alarming rate at gun shows and shooting ranges.  So the bottom line, does the KCI do the job for cheaper or is this another piece of crap aftermarket magazine that has no business in a handgun?

The KCI magazine is made in South Korea.  It is offered up to a 1/3 of the price of a Glock factory magazine.  I picked up this 17 shot 9mm magazine at a gun show for $10.00.  I have such horrible luck with aftermarket magazines, I would have been reluctant to even try if the price tag wasn’t so low.  I keep hearing good things from dealers at the gun shows (who are routinely known for being one step below a used car salesman on the trust level).  At the end of the day, when you are at a gun show and the first thing a dealer does is size up how much money you have and what is the maximum amount of money they think they can get from you, in general, they are not the most reliable source of information.

Anyways, so out of curiousity and a benefit to my users, I purchased the KCI Magazine and wanted to do some tests against the Glock, trying to see how this magazine stacks up to the factory.

To be totally honest with you, designing a magazine, which is pretty much a magazine body, spring, floor plate and follower, sounds very straight forward.  So when confronted with these being produced in Asia for slave labor wages, I thought how hard would it be to really copy the most popular magazine (outside of an AR15 magazine) being produced for the American Consumer?

When you compare the magazines side by side, everything looks like an absolute copy.  I was taking some very careful measurements of each of the components and only noticed the following anomolies between the two.  The KCI Magazine has the follower stick up further than the factory Glock Magazines and has more of the follower exposed in the rear of the magazine.  So the real question for me was, how would it hold up firing rounds?  Would it create feeding problems? Will the magazines fit well in the gun? Can you load up the magazine to a full 17 rounds and fire reliably?  These were all sorts of questions I had.

Playing around with the magazines in the studio, I noticed no issue at first.  I was loading the magazines, practicing slide release and sling shotting the slides, it all seemed to work properly in the studio.  My question was how would it survive the range?

 So off the range I go.  I had some shoot tests I needed to do and determined that bringing the KCI magazine along would be a good option.  So I start loading up the gun with standard 115 grain Winchester 9mm Range Ammo.  The 100 round box ammunition you can sometimes get at Walmart for just under $20.00.

Everything seems to be looking good.  I start firing various rounds, no issues, very clean.  I have this strange look of disbelief in my face.  Have I finally found an aftermarket magazine that is both cheap and reliable?  Maybe how fast I shoot the gun will cause problems?  Maybe the magazine would start screwing up after a few hundred rounds? My mind was starting to wonder what type of torture tests could I do?  Then all of a sudden, critical show stopper.

I push the eject button on my Glock 17 and nothing happens?  Curious, I pull the magazine out of the bottom of the gun and stick the empty magazine back in again.  Push the magazine release, nothing.  I put a Glock factory magazine in the gun, push the button, magazine drops cleanly and hits the floor perfectly.  Surely KCI would not create a magazine that wouldn’t even survive a basic empty magazine drop test.  Wrong.  I even started to violently shake the gun, trying to force the magazine to drop out of the bottom.  Nothing.  This magazine was stuck in this gun as tight as Donald Trump’s toupe on his head.

So at that point, all further tests ended.  Any magazine that does not drop free from a gun is a dangerous magazine.  Everyone needs to train with speed loading there guns.  When a gun goes dry, the fastest way to reload is letting the empty magazine hit the ground and slapping a fresh magazine in.  Having to pull the magazine from the bottom of the gun is a complete show stopper.  This is a definite DO NOT BUY magazine (unless you are doing a shooting competition and want to screw up your rival by carefully mixing these magazines in with his.

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