To be totally honest, I’ve been waaaay too busy to shoot much lately. Between family commitments and other events to be revealed this year, I just haven’t had much time to get out there and get at it. I’m hoping that I’ll have this resolved by the end of the year, but for now, I’m suffering through a real shooting drought.

However, when the “back in stock” email for the Masada Slim Elite grip came floating through my inbox, I just knew I had a project to do. Now that it’s after Passover, I found time to do a quick grip swap with my Masada Slim. You’ll recall it from my review, where I found it to be a reliable micro-compact that took common mags and had somewhat mediocre iron sights.

Well, IWI released an “Elite” version that fixed a few problems with it, and nicely enough, the grip module is fully backwards-compatible with the original Slim’s FCU… time for an upgrade.

The Elite grip comes in a plastic bag with its necessary components (three backstraps and a couple roll pins). It’s not exactly an impressive presentation, but it works. Since the Masada Slim is an FCU-based gun, the grips are unserialized, uncontrolled items that can be mailed to your door.

In order to get the grip off the original Slim, you need to remove the slide, and then pop the two pins holding the FCU to the grip. Removing the slide is a simple field-strip process, albeit it took me a couple minutes to remember the nuances of the Slim’s mechanism for this. The pins took a surprising amount of effort to remove, as they seem to be lightly-captured ala the AR-15’s trigger pins. That said, a punch got them out without too much drama. The FCU lifts out at this point.

While I had both grips removed, I took a moment for comparison. There are four main points of difference between the original Slim and the Slim Elite grip:

1. The grip texture is much better on the Elite grip.
2. The Elite grip has an accessory rail.
3. The Elite grip has a much more dramatically flared magazine well.
4. The Elite grip has changeable backstraps (captured by a roll pin).

One interesting nuance is that the Elite grip does not come with a magazine release. For $60, I’d sort of expect this, but the good news is that changing the magazine release on the Slim is surprisingly easy once you know the trick (IWI has a good video showing how it’s done). You need to do it BEFORE you put the FCU back in; this is a difference from the P365 platform where there’s essentially no interaction between the magazine release and the FCU.

The new grip doesn’t make a dramatic difference, but I did notice that it seemed to fit my hand a bit tighter between the medium backstrap and the improved grip texture. If I were going to shoot this competitively (in IDPA CCP or similar), I’d certainly opt for the large backstrap, which felt almost ridiculously huge in my hands (a good thing when you’re gripping hard).

If you’re happy with your current Slim, you should probably save your $60 and keep using it as it is. If you feel like it’s missing something, or you really want a weapon light, the Elite grip is an easy way to improve it. This really feels like the gun the Masada Slim should have been out the gate.