I’m considering getting a dry-fire practice system.
If you follow the gun-tubers, you’ll have heard of Mantis. I tried to figure out what their system consists of. My concern was that I would have to attach something to the outside of my pistol, changing how it holsters and how I draw. I would rather not have a special holster for my dry fire system.
I read that they have a cartridge system, but what I read didn’t really help me understand how it fit into their system.
Strikeman is another system. It requires my phone to do the analysis, but that would be fine for indoor practice. Better than picking the safe corner for dry firing.
Google suggests Triumph Systems and CooFire Trainer.
Does anybody have any personal experiences with dry fire systems? If so, which system? What did you like about it? What did you dislike?
I have and use the IDryFire system. http://www.idryfire.com. Its a laser cartridge based system that uses their laser reactive targets, mobile phone, or computer and USB camera with timer program and photo recognition of shot placement.
Since its a laser cartridge, you dont need to change holsters and you cannot chamber live ammo. They periodically run sales.
JMO!! most of the dry fire systems require you to rack the slide to reset the trigger to me, this creates muscle memory of racking the slide after every shot…
what will you do in a REAL encounter??
go bang then rack the slide??
I “dry” fire with hammer down on my 1911, practice draw, pistol alignment and sight picture, squeeze trigger as if it cocked. its what I do. you do you
you will fight like you train and adding extra steps into training will cause issues later.
I realize that. So, what I do is practice draw to 1st shot; with the system I have I can set par time and review accurate shot placement.
For repeat shots, I may switch to a TDA semi-auto.
I use both the MantisX and the Mantis laser academy. MantisX can do both dry and live fire. Not all of their systems can.
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The laser academy is worth looking into for price alone. The app is free for a bunch of exercises, fee to unlock all, and you can print your own targets. You will need a laser cartridge but they are around $25ish.
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I highly recommend Mantis Laser Academy over Strikeman because of the large number of exercises only.
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Also, Mantis has an AR trainer the simulates trigger reset. It’s pricy, but worth it, per a friend. I’ve never tried it.
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The drawback of these systems is you have to manually reset the trigger, which could install bad muscle memory. Use a hammer fired pistol to avoid the rack the slide habit. Granted a cock the hammer habit is not good either.
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I do think you should try out Laser Academy if only because you can start at the price of a laser cartridge.
One of the more ‘confusing’ things about the Mantis line of products is they have several different products that could work together, but also stand alone. No you do not need a Mantis unit to use the Laser Academy software.
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They also provide two very different areas of training. The Mantis units watch your muzzle movement before, at, and after trigger pull. It helps you to eliminate muzzle wobble. It does nothing to ensure your aim is on target. The best place to have the Mantis unit is on the rail below your barrel, and from personal experience, butted up against the trigger guard. Too close to the muzzle also results in false positives when you rack the slide/cock the hammer.
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That means… no holstering with your current holster. However, Mantis does sell adapters that either mount to a magazine footplate or replaces it. I did not find that as useful as underbarrel mounting. It missed too many trigger pulls, and wobbled a bit more than when I mounted it on the barrel.
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The Laser Academy unit provides on-target training. Like Strikeman and others, it uses your phone/tablet to identify where on the target you are aiming. While it generally works fine, I have had problems with the laser registering on the phone. Lighting does play a factor, but if you place the targets in an area without direct lighting (especially no sunlight!) you get a solid registration 99.999999% of the time.
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And, I checked, the Laser Academy app is still a free download, and Mantis is selling laser cartridges for $40. Amazon has a lot of them for about $25. That is a very low entry price.
I have a DryFireMag with integrated Mantis. Unfortunately, I think that version is no longer available. I like the Mantis. It wirelessly connects to the app on my phone, which has a variety of drills and gives me useful feedback.
As another commenter posted, I don’t want to train myself to rack the slide after each shot. The DryFireMag interacts with the trigger bar to simulate a trigger press that automatically resets. However, it doesn’t feel *exactly* the same as the gun’s “real” trigger press, because it doesn’t drop the striker. It’s a compromise for dry fire.
I just started to using the P365 dryfire mag. But, before that I picked up a Taurus G2C for cheap (~$240) because it have very similar ergonomics to the P365 and it has second strike capability eliminating racking the slide between shots. It’s a dedicated dry-fire gun so I also leave a laser cartridge in it so I can visually see where the shot lands in addition to the Mantis info logged by the sensor which I mounted to the bottom of the magazine (allows drawing from a holster).
handgunhero.com is your friend if going the similar gun route.