CZ Shadow 2 Carry—The perfect EDC pistol?
As one of the more interesting and most-hyped releases of late 2023/early 2024, it’s an understatement to say the CZ Shadow 2 Compact caused a bit of a stir on release. Competition DNA in a more compact form factor had me on board to snag one even before I knew where to look.
Allocations were hard to come by in the early days and examples were going for north of two grand on the auction sites (MSRP was closer to $1,300 at the time). More than one online influencer/GunTuber had already posed the question: Is this the perfect concealed-carry pistol?
CZ seems to have finally answered the question with its latest release, the Shadow 2 Carry, freshly launched as of this writing at NRA Atlanta. The Carry is essentially a new iteration of the Compact enhanced specifically for… carry. That isn’t to say the Compact wouldn’t suffice as a great CC, but a few added features enhance the new release specifically for that purpose. We were lucky enough to get our hands on an early example to try it out.
After a year of consuming Shadow 2 Compact internet content, we found the biggest criticism was its lack of a decocker and firing-pin block (FPB), and that is the biggest change here. The Shadow 2 Carry features a decocking lever in place of the Compact’s manual safety. It is ambidextrous as the Compact’s safety lever is, with controls on either side of the pistol. There’s also an FPB that stays the firing pin in the absence of trigger pull, and the hammer, as with the Compact’s hammer, features a safety notch that catches it about two-thirds of the way back home when the trigger is reset.
With the Compact, there were two ways to “safely” carry with a chambered cartridge. You could chamber a round, set the safety, and go “cocked and locked” as they say, 1911 style.
Or you could chamber a round and manually reset the hammer, which required a pull of the trigger. So you had to keep your wits about you, an eye on what you were doing and a thumb on the hammer until you were sure it was safely set to at least the safety notch.
The decocking lever on the Carry model takes any guesswork or peril out of the process and allows you to safely decock the gun without worry of sending an errant bullet into the ceiling or your shoe. The tradeoff is that the presence of the decocking lever supplants the manual safety altogether.
Like the Compact and (most) full-size Shadow 2s before it, the Shadow 2 Carry is a double-action/single-action (DA/SA) pistol. With the hammer resting at home or in its safety notch, the trigger, in double-action trim, is set to a fairly long pull within the trigger well.
Once your first DA shot is off and the slide cycles, subsequent or follow-up shots will all be single-action with a much shorter pull, until your magazine is empty or until you decock the hammer again. The long DA first pull serves as an added layer of safety if you’re carrying. Compared to single-action, the DA pull is quite deliberate and you’d really have to be trying for an ND if you found yourself drawing quickly or under duress.
Regardless of whether you’re pulling it from DA or SA mode, the trigger feel and operation (as well as the pistol’s overall ergonomics, which we’ll get to a little further on) are what make this gun a true member of the Shadow 2 lineage. The pull is smooth, the break crisp and the reset predictable. DA pull is quoted by CZ at 11.9 lbs, SA at 4.7.
A couple of other notable features set the Shadow 2 Carry apart from the Shadow 2 Compact. First are the sights: The Carry uses fixed analog sights with three luminescent green dots, one fore, two aft, whereas the Compact uses a bright red fiber optic up front and a blacked-out, checkered rear that’s adjustable for elevation.
To be honest, I think I prefer the fixed dots on the Carry. While the fiber optic is definitely easiest to acquire, I find the ability to triangulate the three dots makes me an overall straighter shot. And the ability to adjust the rear sight has been, in all honesty, more hindrance than help for me, since I’m often too quick to make an adjustment rather than admitting I just suck and to work harder on my basics.
The Carry features milled “Duralumin” grip panels like other Shadow 2s, but these ones are black in contrast to the Compact’s silver, so the Shadow 2 Carry is a sleek, all-black pistol as any good carry piece should be. The trigger bow is also black compared to the brighter, shinier bow on the Compact.
Like the Shadow 2 Compact, the Shadow 2 Carry is built out from a 7075 aluminum frame. A three-notch Picatinny-style accessory rail resides up front. The slide features an optics-ready interface that will accommodate anything with a Shield RMSc or Holosun K footprint without the need for an adapter plate. The magazine release button, while it’s just plain old black without a Duralumin cap like the Shadow 2 Compact’s, is switchable from side to side depending on your preference.
The barrel is a CZ signature cold hammer forged unit guaranteed against defects and to retain its accuracy even over many thousands of rounds.
The frame and the slide-in-frame design are what originally sold me on CZ pistols, and the compact Shadow 2s in particular. The ergonomics are just top-notch and fit me like a glove, to borrow a favorite phrase from CZ. Both the Shadow 2 Compact and Shadow 2 Carry are extremely comfortable to shoot.
The generous beavertail allows you to comfortably grip high, letting the web of your hand envelope the frame and placing the bore axis close in line with your wrist and forearm. The added weight of all that metal, in contrast to a “hollow-feeling” polymer frame, serves to anchor the pistol in space as you shoot, and the artfully machined contours around the grip and grip panels bite into your hands in the most appealing sort of way.
In an abstract sense, I never imagined myself describing a hunk of metal as something comfortable to hold, especially when it’s bucking in your grip whilst sending supersonic projectiles downrange, but a CZ Shadow 2 is exactly that, and it just feels at home in your hands.
Circling back to the question of finding the perfect carry, weight is certainly a factor to consider. The Shadow 2 Carry tips the scale at 30.4 ounces empty, just a hair over the Compact’s even 30, according to CZ’s numbers. A comparably sized Glock 19 weighs about 23 and a half ounces with an empty mag, a SIG P365-XMacro 22 ounces—both polymer-frame pistols and ostensibly the dueling kings of the CC space.
From a strict shooting standpoint, I just prefer an all-metal gun. There’s no “snappy” or “poppy” sort of feeling that I get from shooting a polymer frame, no pain from the trigger guard bouncing off my middle finger. Those few extra ounces go a long way toward canceling out recoil bounce, making the pistol extremely controllable and easy to keep on target.
From a purely tactile—possibly sort of snobbish—standpoint, I also just prefer the feel. The added heft feels, simply, more substantial in-hand even when you aren’t shooting. It plays on your subconscious; you intuitively know you’re holding a well-calibrated, artisanal instrument without ever really thinking about it.
The final comparison to make would be that of the Shadow 2 Carry to CZ’s own P-01, the other compact, metal-frame option, and a perennial favorite of CZ enthusiasts. While as I stab at my keyboard we have yet to learn MSRP on the Carry, current MSRP on the Shadow 2 Compact is $1,449 according to the CZ-USA website, but it is available for closer to $1,300 at the dealers we surveyed. We’d expect the Carry to fall in a similar range.
So at a little over half the cost, the P-01 is a presence to be considered. What do your extra dollars get you by going the Shadow C route? We’d point to the optics-ready slide cut, which you’d have to pay someone to add to a P-01; the full accessory rail up front; and a competition-bred trigger. Also, as part of the flagship Shadow lineup, the Shadow 2 Carry is just a beautiful thing to behold, and like its brothers the final fit and finish reflect a flagship status.
Ultimately, when searching for the “ultimate carry” pistol, the final verdict must be delivered by you. I for one am sold on the Shadow 2 Carry. Rest assured there will be more to come on this gun on the UN12 platform, so stay tuned.
CZ-USA
Shadow 2 Carry
URL: cz-usa.com
