Review: Magnum Research Desert Eagle Mark XIX .357 Magnum Pistol
Major Pandemic 10.21.14
Those who do have a Desert Eagle likely will have it chambered in .44 Magnum and not .50 AE, and fewer own the .357 Magnum versions, and even fewer a premium finish model. Some folks may even have the optional 8″ or 10″ barrels. Owning this pistol makes the same statement as a $10,000 watch with an oversized 2” bezel just to see what time it is, signing your grocery receipt with a $2,000 limited edition Montblanc fountain pen, or owning a $125K Porsche so you have something to get back and forth to golf. The Desert Eagle makes the simultaneous statement that I am sophisticated enough to appreciate the art of design and style while still being a rich Gangsta.
I ordered mine in a very showy Titanium Gold in my favorite caliber of .357 Magnum before the 2013 Shot Show. Even living the life of privilege as an industry writer with a decent amount of street credibility editorially, I still waited about two years for my order to be filled for this polished Titanium Gold .357 Magnum Desert Eagle model simply because they were that backordered. It had been so long that I had actually given up that I would ever actually get one, but then came the SMS from my FFL dealer
Even as someone who has not yet taken possession of the “iconic” Desert Eagle XIX, you still take a lot of crap. My FFL dealer/friend texted me and said:
FFL Dealer – “Your giant gold plated substitution of a penis had arrived.”
Me – “I didn’t know they had to transfer it via FFL, must be a Magnum Caliber from Magnum Research.”
I literally dropped everything I was doing and was at his store in under 15 minutes.
Stunningly, I had no idea that the gun had shipped. After dropping a gun porn picture of my new Desert Eagle XIX .357 in Titanium Gold on social media, comments rained into my email: “Really…really?” “Did Adrian Peterson have a sale?” “Ahh.. did you beat up a drug kingpin… again?” “Which setting will you use for home defense, Safe or Vaporize?” “New CCW gun?” and in a recent discussion with a few industry gun writers while visiting Timney, one noted that “he had lost all respect for me,” and another said “…and yet you are the guy who loathes 300 Blackout”.
Every comment was followed by a “When are we going to go shoot it?” You do make friends fast simply because everyone wants to shoot a Desert Eagle–everyone. Even my overly skeptical wife said the gun was insanely badass and can’t wait to shoot it. She did get a little annoyed when I joked that I had bought a matched set.
Although the Desert Eagle XIX is a playboy’s fun gun, it has all the capabilities to put rounds on target with accuracy most handguns lust for and with truly unique levels of Magnum firepower. There are more than a few serious handgun hunters using scoped Desert Eagles to take some really big game. I am thinking mine needs either a red dot or reflex sight mounted up on that Picatinny rail.
For those with chiropractic fetishes, the Desert Eagle can be carried as a CCW gun, but not in the same ways as a Typical handgun. Crossbreed holsters does offer a CCW Super Tuck Deluxe, but it was offered originally as a joke. Insiders say they have sold more than a few.
The pistol fits perfectly in my CCW 511 Moab Rush and Drago Ipad Sentry packs as a legit CCW carry gun. Yeah it weighs 5 lbs loaded, but you can actually get some use out of the gun if you really feel the need. My luck will be that the one time I will need a defensive handgun, I will be on national news because I defended myself with a 5lb golden auto-loading .357 Magnum handgun. So I guess we can add the inconveniences of owning a Desert Eagle XIX is that it also not the easiest gun to carry without the use of luggage.
Fit, Finish, Feel, and Features
The price may scare some, but the reality is that the Desert Eagle is essentially a custom pistol. On top of the required manufacturing sophistication, the premium finishes and stainless models are literally only made when there enough orders in the system to justify the batch plating and finishing process.
With all the variations of calibers, finishes, and barrel lengths, there are not 10s of thousands of each individual configuration out there in the market–probably more like 500-1,000. From my perspective the pistol is legitimately a semi-custom museum piece for my collection that I can still shoot.
The fit and finish is stunning premium grade. Each gun and barrel’s gas system is hand tuned and test fired before it leaves Magnum Research. My only significant complaint is that after spending $2,100 on a pistol, it really should come with more than one magazine. I mean, come on. How am I supposed to work on my speed loads with a 5lb gun that is too big for my hands and that I can’t even reach the mag release without using my support hand.
It is a big gun, but the ergonomics are a little too supersized for my hands. I can barely reach the not particularly light to switch safety with my thumb, but that safety disengagement maneuver is not what I would consider tactically sound. The magazine release is basically the same situation–impossible for me to reach unless I jog my primary hand halfway around the grip. That said, I really don’t care. This is a gun that puts smiles on faces at the range or on the hunt where all the above maneuvers are not particularly time critical.
Feature wise, the Desert Eagle is one of the most unique pistols on the planet with more going on than what most people know about. Most know that the Desert Eagle has a brutally tough rotating bolt lug design nearly identical to the AR-15 platform, but there is so much more. Though it’s a Diva, it’s a complex Diva.
Did you know it is the first production gas powered pistol driven pistol? Yep, once a round is fired a gas port at the start of the rifling blows gas pressure down to the muzzle end of the frame where the barrel attached piston is blown back to cycle the action.
Are you surprised to learn that the Desert Eagle XIX features the fastest barrel changing system on the market? The Desert Eagle XIX is designed to allow the shooter to swap optional barrels nearly instantly from a 6″ to an 8″ to a 10′ and back again. Have a gun fashion crisis that requires all gold pistol be toned down with a black barrel or that deer just trotted out of your 6″ barrel’s effective iron sight range and need your 10″ barrel with the scope? No problem. Hit the takedown button on the left side of the frame, flip down the barrel release switch, lift off the barrel, and drop in the other barrel, flip the switch, charge, and shoot. Of all the non-ergonomic attributes of this pistol aside, this barrel swap feature is slick as hell and crazy fast. A caliber change from .44 Magnum to .50 AE is just a barrel and mag swap away in a few seconds.
Caliber Interchangeability is also a feature of the Desert Eagle. The 50AE cartridge features the same rim dimensions as the .44 Magnum model, so it can be converted to shoot .44 Magnum with just a barrel and magazine swap. If you have a .357 Magnum model and want to go up to the .44 Magnum/50 AE interchangeability, it requires a few extra minutes to swap out the bolt swap in addition to the the magazine and barrel. Buy one Desert Eagle XIX and you have the ability to convert and shoot any of the three offered calibers. A barrel and magazine runs around $550-$650, depending on barrel options, and an extra bolt for the .357 to .44 Mag rim size swap is $200.
All these hidden features are far cooler aspects of the pistol than its looks. It was these features unique to the Desert Eagle design that forced the rather unorthodox ergonomics and size. Even the trigger was designed to deliver a match-grade feel to enhance accuracy. Most would expect a gun this size to have a 100lb trigger pull, but in reality it is a exceptionally light 4lb trigger pull. Most of your match grade bench AR-15 target rifles have triggers the same weight.
Many of my friends have already asked why .357 Magnum versus the .44 Magnum or 50AE caliber. To be honest, I am at the age where I am not particularly interested in getting beat to death. The .357 Magnum version is a smooth shooting dream of a gun to shoot fast and accurately. Feeding this fun gun .357 Magnum rounds is about 30%-50% less expensive than .44 Magnum rounds and about 1/4 the cost of 50AE rounds. Simply put, I can financially justify the savings round by round and make the shooting experience a lot of fun. The beauty of the design is that I can always convert it to .44 Magnum to use in hunting. In fact that might be a great follow up article down the road.
Functions and Accuracy
The Desert Eagle does deliver a velocity advantage over revolvers with similar sized barrel chambered in the same .357 Magnum and .44 Magnum calibers simply because the Desert Eagle does not lose pressure like revolvers do at the cylinder gap. The velocity increase is not double, but it can be around 20%, which is not un-noticed.
Out of the factory, the Desert Eagle XIX is function tested with SAAMI spec .357 Magnum rounds to assure proper feeding and functioning, but being a long time .357 Magnum shooter, I can attest that there are is a wide spectrum of loads for the .357 Magnum rounds of which some may work and some may not.
If you start tinkering with the gas system, just note that if the gas adjustment is not set correctly, you can and will have feeding and functioning issues. If you tune the gun to run optimally with a heavier rounds, then you will likely have cycling problems with lighter rounds. The beauty of the Desert Eagle design is that the gas pressure can be tuned based on the shooter’s preference and the barrel being shot. Run the gas pressure wide open, and you get the opportunity to feel a little more recoil. Optimize and reduce the gas pressure to a minimum for your pet round, and felt recoil can be cut in half. It’s a compromise.
Notably, I have a few functioning issues with some of my lighter (under spec) hand loaded .357 Magnum rounds. Most of these issues were just short cycles, but I did have a few failure to feeds due to the short stroking with the under powered rounds. The Desert Eagle likes the rounds hot, so bring the heat. At some point, I will start tinkering with the gas setting to see how wide open I could run the gun to cycle the lighter .357 magnum loads.
Probably the most awesome part of of this amazing looking gun is that it allows the shooter to hit things very accurately. The Desert Eagles have a long and very established history of delivering 1″ 25-yard group with quality ammo, and I happily experienced bit better. Even 50 and 100 yard shots on 6″ steel was doable.
It would have been easier with a scope attached, which the Desert Eagle XIX is ready for with the integrated picatinny rail. One thing to note is that when a scope is mounted, it is mounted directly to the barrel, which greatly enhances shot-to-shot accuracy. And since the optic will travel with the barrel, it allows a perfect zero to be maintained no matter how many times you remove the barrel. The barrel does not reciprocate, just the slide, which gives the optic to less of a beating and allows much faster shooting with optics on the flat shooting .357 Magnum caliber.
The .357 Magnum is easy to shoot even with to extremely hot and heavy rounds. One of the reasons I did want the .357 Magnum round is that with just FMJ rounds, I can take rabbits and similar edible critters without turning a meal into a bloody smudge, then jump over to a soft tip round for deer. Likely I will never use this gun for personal defense, but it would send a really interesting message to an attacker.
Final Thoughts
Everyone asks, “Why?” The answer is, “Why not?” We as shooters need to loosen up and have some fun. I think we sometimes, or a lot, get all wrapped up in features that really do not mean a thing. I think it says a lot that you can take a grossly over priced, oversized, and overweight gun with questionable ergonomics and that demands a lot from the shooter just to use, and it is never set down for three hours at the range with a line of friends waiting for their turn.
This is probably the most fun I have had since buying a Henry Big Boy or my Ruger SASS Single Action Revolver set, of which neither of those guns have any real practical purpose either. My only regrets are not ordering three extra magazines with the gun and not going ahead and ordering the bolt, magazine, and barrel for the .44 Magnum conversion, because I am betting those are backordered.
Specs: Desert Eagle DE357TG
All models feature a full Weaver style accessory rail on the barrel from the end of the chamber to right behind the front sight and standard ambidextrous safeties.
- Model: .357 Magnum Models
- TypeGas-operated, rotating bolt semi automatic
- Caliber: .357 MAGNUM
- Barrel Length: 6”/152 mm
- Overall Length: 10.75”/27.3 cm
- Groove Diameter: .357”/9.1 mm
- Height: 6.25”/15.9 cm
- Slide Width: 1.25”/32 mm
- Construction: High quality carbon steel barrel, frame, and slide w/ full Weaver style accessory rail
- Finish: Black oxide and various custom finishes
- Trigger: Single action, approx. 4 lb. pull
- Trigger Reach: 2.75”/70 mm
- Sight Radius: 8.5”/215 mm
- Sights: Combat type, fixed
- Polygonal Rifling with Right Hand Twist, 6 lands and grooves 1 turn in 14”/355 mm
- Weight (Empty Magazine): 4 lbs. 8.4 oz.
- Magazine Capacity: 9 rounds
- MSRP: $ 2,070
