If handguns had tombstones, the Walther P99’s would be simple.
“1997 – 2023.”
That’s the lifespan of one of the most unique and forward-thinking semi-automatic pistols ever produced.
Walther recently pulled the plug a couple of years ago by sending it off with the “Final Edition”, which is a black slide and OD green frame. It was a quiet farewell to a pistol that deserved more applause than it ever got.
I don’t have a Final Edition, but I’ve owned multiple P99s over the years: a first-generation 9mm, a third-gen 9mm, and even the compact version.
At the top we have a full-size Walther P99 and a P99 Compact, both in 9mm, compared to the later PPQ model at the bottom. All three are great, but without the P99, the PPQ never would have existed.
Every single one reminded me that Walther was swinging for the fences in the late ’90s when they designed and released this gun.
Revolutionary is not an overstatement.
Cool Factor at First Sight
Let’s start with the obvious: the P99 looks cool.
Not just “kind of cool,” but futuristic, sleek, and distinct in a way most polymer pistols still can’t touch.
In my opinion, it remains one of the best-looking handguns ever made. Forget blocky bricks or melted-plastic blobs, the P99 had style. And it wasn’t just me who thought so…it ended up in the hands of James Bond, and if it’s good enough for 007, it’s good enough for the rest of us, right?
Compare that to the PPQ and PDP. Both are solid pistols, no doubt, but let’s be real…they’re honestly ugly as sin. They shoot excellently and they’re built to a very high standard, but they don’t have that futuristic and Euro-styled silhouette that made the P99 look like it came out of a science fiction movie.
The first gen Walther P99 was unquestionably one of the coolest looking pistols ever made.
If aesthetics matter even a little, the first-generation P99 still wins by a landslide.
A European Pistol Through and Through
Maybe that’s part of why it never really caught on in the United States. The P99 was always unapologetically European. Travel through Spain, the Netherlands, or Germany, and you’ll still still see them riding in police holsters.
Here in the U.S., it was always a rare bird.
Walther just never quite bridged the Atlantic with the P99. Features like the paddle-style magazine release were second nature to European shooters but threw Americans for a loop.
Later models like the PPQ and PDP swapped to a push-button release and added other “American-friendly” features like aggressive grip texturing and forward slide serrations. Those sold better here, but they lost some of the quirky charm that made the P99 unique like I was trying to hint at above.
Carrying the P99
I carried my P99 in a black leather Galco Summer Comfort IWB holster, and it carried like a dream. It’s only slightly larger than a Glock 19, so concealment was never an issue. Capacity was respectable too, as early models came with 16-round magazines, but Walther dropped it to 15 rounds starting in 2004 when they also rounded off the trigger guard for the second generation.
That change still bugs me. Why fix something that wasn’t broken? Sixteen rounds sounded cooler than fifteen, even if the difference was just one.
But oh well, I suppose Walther had their reasons.
The Compact Sidekick
In 2004, Walther introduced the P99 Compact. This little guy held 10 rounds, but the neat trick was that it could accept full-size magazines. That made it a perfect backup to the full-size P99. Carry it on your hip or in a bag, and if you ever needed more firepower, you could slap in a full-size mag and keep running.
The Walther P99 Compact holds 10+1 rounds, but it can accept the longer magazines of the full-size models too.
It was versatile, it was smart, and it fit the same design language as the big brother.
The Strangest, Most Brilliant Trigger System
The P99’s most defining feature wasn’t its looks.
It was its trigger system.
This was a striker-fired pistol with a double-action/single-action setup, plus a third “Anti-Stress” (AS) mode.
Sounds weird, right?
It was.
At first, it’s confusing. You rack the slide, and the trigger resets into AS mode, which gives you a long initial take-up but with a light break. Then you’ve got the DA mode for a heavy first pull, and SA mode for crisp follow-ups.
On paper, it sounds like a nightmare. But in practice, as I found, once you get the hang of it, it feels natural. The AS mode especially shines when you’re carrying, since it gives you peace of mind with a longer initial press and without punishing you with a heavy pull.
It was innovative, clever, and way ahead of its time.
But maybe it was too clever. Glock was busy eating the world’s lunch with its simple and consistent striker-fired design. Walther tried to blend the safety of DA/SA with the modern striker system, and while they nailed it, the learning curve may have been more than the average shooter wanted.
Ergonomics That Melt in Your Hand
If there’s one thing Walther consistently gets right, it’s ergonomics.
Not much larger than a Glock 19, the full-size Walther P99s were and are easy to conceal carry. Here the 1st generation model fits nicely into a black leather Galco Summer Comfort IWB holster.
The P99 grip just melts into your hand. It feels like it was sculpted for actual human beings, and not aliens with block-shaped palms. The P99 was one of the first pistols to come with interchangeable backstraps, which today seems standard, but back then it was groundbreaking.
That grip is probably one of the reasons I carried mine so much. It was just… right. No other way to put it. Granted, that’s just me, but I’ve known a lot of other people who share the same opinion.
Why the P99 Deserved More
The P99 should have been a bigger deal than it was. It was innovative, comfortable, stylish, and reliable all at the same time.
But timing and geography worked against it. Glock owned the U.S. market, and American shooters didn’t take to the European quirks. By the time Walther pivoted with the PPQ and PDP, the P99 was already becoming a footnote.
A notable footnote, perhaps, but still a footnote.
Now that it’s officially gone, save for what’s still floating around on the used market. And let me tell you, there are a lot of them. Police trade-ins from Europe still pop up, and if you’ve ever thought about owning one, now’s the time.
The prices won’t stay low forever, and not once people realize Walther has turned out the lights on production.
Farewell to a Legend
I really wish Walther had kept the P99 alive. It deserved a longer run, and it deserved more respect than it got due to its innovative features and the high-quality German engineering that went into it.
But I guess it’s fitting that the gun always felt like an underdog, as in it was loved by the few who owned it, and ignored by the masses who didn’t.
So here’s to the Walther P99: futuristic, clever, reliable, and cooler than almost anything else in its class.
It never beat Glock, it never conquered America, but it left its mark all the same.
1997 to 2023. Ultimately, maybe that’s not such a bad run for one of the most underappreciated service pistols ever made after all.
