This is highly dependent on your use case and sensitivity.

Top Recommendations:

• Guardian (Most Popular, hands really sink into this one but isn’t rough against skin.)
• Lava Rock (Flows nice, fairly gentle.)
• Micro Carry (Excellent for those that are particularity sensitive.)
• Micro Carry V2 (One of my own personal favorites, very grippy but not harsh.)

Expounding further on our Guardian stippling pattern. It is extremely popular and is one of our most aggressive patterns. When I say aggressive that doesn’t mean bite and tear, but rather due to it  being larger and deeper the pattern allows your hand to really sink down into it, but is not generally seen as especially rough against skin. Though it can be a bit harsh for some people’s hands due to the fact your hands can sink into it and really grab.

Personally, I’m a porting fan. It feels like a cheat code and is an excellent compliment to good shooting fundamentals.

Porting gets a lot of mixed reactions. Some people think it’s great, some will try to convince you it’s a detriment for reliability, velocity, etc.

Here’s the facts about it.

• Porting will usually result in 5 to 25 FPS loss on average depending on the type of porting, it’s negligible.
• Porting does not cause night blindness when firing in the dark. I’ve done it. I can’t tell the difference between a ported and non-ported gun. Both are bright, but not blinding.
• Porting can and does blow out hot gases, unburned powder, and potentially jacket from the bullet. Should this worry you? No, probably not. For close retention shooting it’s a concern, but I’ve been shooting close retention for years and all I do is slightly angle the gun away from me so anything blowing out of the ports is blowing away from me. It’s not a scary and dramatic thing.
• A pro from a close retention standpoint is weapon retention. If someone tries to grab your gun, even if it’s pointed at the ground, if you discharge that firearm you will shred their hand and anything covering the ports which can help you get someone off your weapon.

So yes, I do recommend ports. I run them on my carry guns and trust my life with them.

Which ports should you get? V8 and V10 are extremely flat and soft shooting. If that’s what’s most important to you, get those. They shoot beautifully and drop FPS by only about 20-30 FPS. Cerberus ports aren’t as soft shooting, but the pro to them is virtually no velocity loss, a less open slide (if that matters to you), tends to shoot a little cleaner, and they don’t dirty the front sight since the ports are in front of the sight. I have a carry gun with V8 ports and another with Cerberus ports. Both are excellent, both have pros and cons, and ultimately it’s hard to go wrong with either.