The awards cover a broad spectrum of firearms in the magazine’s Best Guns of the Year issue, which tests and ranks over 100 handguns, rifles, and shotguns every year, setting the best apart from the rest.
“CZ’s Shadow 2 OR really turned out to be the full package in this year’s go-big-or-go-the-hell-home category,” says Nino Bosaz, editorial director of Ballistic magazine. “Besides the fact that, aesthetically, it’s a head-turner, this 19+1 fighter ran like a turbo-tuned, dead-accurate racing machine.”
The Ballistic’s Best winners are chosen in an unbiased method with category rankings determined by testing teams based on a nine-point criteria system that includes aesthetics, ergonomics, sights, trigger control, recoil control, reloading ease, accuracy, reliability and value/price. The magazine only uses the final tallies on the score sheets to crown the winners in each category. Objectivity is paramount for Ballistic, and its parent company, Athlon Outdoors.
“Our team pledges full honesty and transparency in our scoring process and editorial practices,” Bosaz writes in the issue. “There’s no pay-to-play funny business in this awards issue or any magazine issue we produce. It’s no wonder CZ-USA can barely keep up with consumer demand.”
The Shadow 2 OR beat out several state-of-the-art handguns in its category, including the Beretta 92X Performance, the Ruger 57, the Springfield Elite XD-M 5.25, the Smith & Wesson M&P 9 2.0 Pro Series CORE, the IWI Masada, the Zev Tech Z320 XCarry Octane, and the SAR9X Platinum pistol.
The Shadow 2 OR is an updated version of the original Shadow 2 with a milled slide to accept various red-dot sights. The original Shadow 2 came in second place in last year’s Ballistic’s Best awards.
“When the scoring was done, I can’t say it was a real surprise. CZ’s new Optics Ready Shadow 2 flipped the script this time around by pulling ahead of the Walther Q5’s little brother, the Q4 SF, and finishing in front by a nose,” says Garret Lucas, who ran the handgun tests in the category. “With aesthetics, accuracy, reliability, recoil control, and its trigger as its highest-scoring criteria, the CZ Shadow 2 OR had it all when it came to the most important aspects of a top-tier shooter.”
