The hardest part was buying one
The worst thing I can tell you about this pistol happened before I owned it.
It was sold out everywhere for months. When one did turn up online it was going for two to three times the price on Gunbroker, and I was not willing to pay a giant premium to have it sooner. So I waited. The first place I found one in stock at retail was Bass Pro, and I bought it in person, which meant waiting in the parking lot on a Friday morning for the doors to open at 9:00.
The part that stings a little: the whole time, I could have walked into Academy and bought the TX22 without the optic cut. I wanted the TORO specifically, so I didn't. If you don't care about running a dot, that is the version I'd look at first, and you can probably skip the parking lot.
The other knock is Taurus's documentation, and I have told the long version of it in the Defender-CCW review. Short version: nothing from Taurus made it obvious which screws the TORO's optic cut takes. The ones I found recommended online came loose after three rounds. When the optic came off, my first thought was that I had stripped the screw holes in the slide of a brand new gun, and for about a minute that was a scary thing to believe. I hadn't. The right screws went in and it has not moved since. But that minute should never have happened, and a line in the manual would have prevented it.
That's it. That's the list.
Why I'd sworn off Taurus
I have owned Taurus pistols before this one. A couple of 9mm and .40 pistols that I inherited, so I didn't choose them, but I did shoot them. They were not reliable, and they did not inspire a lot of confidence. They convinced me I would never buy another Taurus.
Then the TX22 came along, with all the hype around it, and I went against my own rule. All of the hype holds up.
Why this one
I sold a Sig Mosquito I'd owned for years to "upgrade" to this, and I knew exactly what I wanted going in.
A threaded barrel was a must. I wanted a host for a .22 suppressor, and the Rugged Oculus22 was already mine before the pistol was.
The optic cut was the other half. I run a red dot on my carry gun and on my Sig P320 XFIVE Legion, and I wanted a .22 that would make cheap cross-training feel like the guns I actually depend on. A .22 with the same kind of sight picture is a lot of trigger time for the cost of a box of bulk ammo.
I looked at three others.
- –The Ruger Mark IV. A good pistol, but such a different style of gun that I didn't think it would do much for cross-training.
- –The Sig P322. I'd shot it several times at my indoor range, and it was a real contender. I just didn't like it as much.
- –The FN 502. It crossed my mind when it was in stock, but it was meaningfully more expensive, and my read from online reviews was that it could be picky about ammunition. I never shot one, so take that as what I read rather than what I know.
That last point mattered more than anything else on the list, and it's because of the Mosquito. That pistol averaged several failures to fire per magazine. By the time I was shopping I was hyper-focused on one question: will it eat whatever I put in it?
In hindsight, I got this right. No regrets.
What it eats, and what it won't
Compared to every other .22 pistol I've fired, this one is reliable. I'm not going to claim it has never failed, though. I've had a few failures to fire.
Every one of them was Winchester's white-box bulk .22, which has a reputation for exactly that. Everything else has run without a problem:
- –Remington Golden Bullet
- –Federal Champion Training
- –Aguila, the stuff the range sells
- –CCI standard velocity
- –CCI subsonic
So I put the failures on the ammunition, not the gun. And for what it's worth, those same Winchester rounds fail a lot less often in this pistol than they did in my Mosquito.
The number is about 1,800 rounds since early summer. If you've read the other reviews on this site, the 500 in the Oculus22 review and the 600 in the Defender-CCW review are windows on this same pistol, not separate guns.
What's on it
For about the first 45 days, nothing. Factory iron sights, no dot. It was still a blast and still accurate, and for a pistol at this price the factory sights work well. The optic is 100% optional. The gun stands on its own without one. The flexibility to add one was something I wanted, not something it needs.
Then the Vortex Defender-CCW green dot, straight into the optic cut, and that is the full story in its own review.
And the Oculus22, full length. Once I'd shot it suppressed I had no desire to go back. I'm not trying to conceal this gun. It's a range toy, and at the range I can't think of a reason not to run the can.
One thing to know if you run it suppressed. Somewhere around every 50 rounds, I check that the suppressor is still tight, because as it heats up and the round count climbs, it starts working loose. It has never come loose enough to fall off, or fly off, but it does move. I can't tell you whether that's the pistol's threads or the suppressor. It isn't a reason not to shoot it suppressed. It's something to be conscious of.
Suppressed with the green dot is what I shoot almost every time. If you want the one-word reason: FUN! Quick transitions between targets, whisper quiet with subsonic, and virtually no recoil to speak of.
The gun I hand to new shooters
This is the setup I reach for when someone is holding a gun for the first time.
It isn't intimidating. There's no meaningful bang, so there's nothing scary about it for someone who hasn't been around guns. And with almost no recoil, they don't start learning a giant flinch from anticipating it.
The dot helps here too, in a way I didn't plan for. Sight picture is something a new shooter should learn eventually. But with a dot they can skip it on day one and focus on grip, trigger control and stance first. One less thing to think about.
Living with it
Cleaning. It doesn't get any dirtier than the other .22s I've owned. Suppressed, my impression is that it gets dirty faster, but I haven't measured that. Takedown is easy, easier than the Mosquito was.
My routine is a Real Avid Bore Boss through the barrel a few times with a couple of squirts of Ballistol, then patches with Ballistol on them for the inside of the slide and the frame. Ballistol cleans and lubricates, so it replaced the two products I used to use, a separate cleaning solution and Rem Oil.
Magazines. Mine came with two, one 16-round and one 22-round. Both have run flawlessly. It also came with a loading tool. It's better than loading by hand, but it's nowhere near as quick as my Maglula UpLULA. I haven't tried the BabyUpLULA, the smaller one, but I may.
Wear. Nothing has worn, loosened or broken. The only problem I've had with the gun itself was the optic screws, and that wasn't the gun.
What annoys me every time. I spend more time loading magazines than shooting. It's so easy and so fun to shoot fast that the rounds just go. My average round count per range trip is higher with this than with any other gun I own. Good thing .22 is cheap, because if I shot my 9mm like this, my wallet would be in trouble.
The trigger, and how accurate it is
The trigger is fine. This is an affordable .22 pistol, and for what it is, the trigger works and I don't complain about it, ever. Could it be better? Yes. Is it something like an HK VP9's? No, and it would be unfair to expect that, because they're very different price points and calibers.
On accuracy, I don't have numbers. I don't measure my pistol groups with calipers or work out MOA for them. What I can tell you is that at around 15 yards you aim and the bullet goes where you want. It isn't an Olympic-style precision target pistol and it doesn't pretend to be. For putting rounds on a target at handgun distances, it's very capable.
What I didn't test
Carrying it. It isn't meant for concealed carry and I've never tried.
Past 25 yards. Everything above is 25 yards or closer, most of it around 15.
Measured groups. None. "Feels very accurate" is a feeling, and I've labeled it as one.
Other optics. The Defender-CCW is the only dot it's ever had.
A trigger swap or any other modification. Everything here is the gun as it came out of the box, plus a can and a dot.
Who should buy something else
If you'll never run a dot, look at the TX22 without the optic cut. When the TORO was sold out everywhere, that version was sitting on the shelf at Academy. If you want to suppress it, check that the one you're buying has a threaded barrel, because that's the reason I bought mine and I can't speak for every version.
If you want a precision target .22, the Ruger Mark IV is built for that and the TX22 isn't. I passed on it because it doesn't handle like the guns I cross-train for, which is my reason, not a knock on the Ruger.
And I'll be straight about the rest: I wouldn't try to talk anyone out of this pistol. If you already have a .22 you like that runs everything you feed it, keep it. If yours is like my Mosquito was, this is the fix.