Reviving this one as I picked up a new one a couple weeks ago: Beretta BU9 Nano. Sorry, no pics as I only got one day on the range for the last leave, and it was packed with running my gal through with her new S&W M&P 9C along with dialing in two new Annies.
Please don't take this as any type of review, simply a restatement of my limited experience with the new pistol completely from memory. This is my first experience with this type of pistol as I've mainly carried service pistols for the last couple decades. As a bit of background on myself, I mostly own Glocks, have a good bit of 1911 experience as well, and I am the kind of guy who doesn't badmouth the M9 as I've carried one in the Corps and private work for 20 years so I'm very used to it.
I tried a few different 9mm subcompact pistols at the local Gander Mountain, including the Sig P290, Kahr PM9, and S&W M&P Shield. The Sig 938 and Ruger LCR were out of consideration due to my not wanting an external manual safety. The Kahr and Sig triggers were not to my liking, very long and heavy pull. I do understand the purpose for that type of trigger in a "pocket pistol", but I won't pocket carry without a holster shrouding the trigger anyhow. Additionally with all three Kahr PM9s they had, each were difficult and gritty on the slide operation. The S&W Shield was a bit bigger than what I was looking for, otherwise very nice but I would opt for a G26 instead if I was going slightly larger. The Beretta didn't exactly "wow" me, but it had the best qualities of everything I was looking for - 9mm, good trigger, simple operation, and liked by my girlfriend as well.
The pistol came with a 6rd mag that leaves the pinky dangling below, and a 8rd with an extension. The width was nice and the pistol was fairly light in the hand without being uncomfortable. The pistol does have an interesting feature to it: there is no external slide lock, it is internal and cannot be manually operated. What this means is in order to lock the slide to the rear, you must insert an empty magazine. This goes against the cardinal rule of remove the magazine first when clearing, but it's not necessarily a service pistol anyhow. If you are clearing a loaded weapon on the firing line, particularly if it's one where all actions must be open when not in use, you first have to remove the loaded magazine, clear the chamber, insert an empty magazine and then lock the slide to the rear. Fortunately I had the range all to myself that day, so I wasn't making fellow shooters nervous with the mag dance.
My shooting experience with it was limited, about 100 rounds of ball ammo and two mags of Hornady Critical Defense to confirm functioning for carry. The pistol is very comfortable to shoot, and I had no sore spots after the limited session. My targets were a pair of 1/2 IPSC size steel targets at 15yds. I noticed I had to focus on the fundamentals more at this distance than with my typical carry (Glock 19). The smaller grip is very unforgiving on lax trigger control and I was coming up with misses when I was firing faster shot strings. I even picked the Glock back up and rang a continuous 15 shot string of hammer pairs between the two targets just to see if I could still shoot... Towards the end of the session, I was getting continuous hits in the center of the target, but was still holding a <6" impact zone at that distance. My gal really liked the way it shot, but preferred her S&W for obvious reasons. The Hornady carry loads ran very well, only a touch more recoil but I wish it was lower light to see the fireball I'm sure it was spitting out the front. There were zero functioning issues on the day.
Overall, I like the little guy and will likely pick up another. Close distance-highly concealable defensive use is where this pistol shines, and will fill a gap for me in the warmer months when the G19 isn't ideal for carry. There's a few online dealers that have them for under $370 shipped, and will go that route next time.