Searching for the Best Bulk 9mm Ammo

This month’s column started with a simple question that became a bigger endeavor than any of us planned, but I think you’re going to like it. The question was whether there was enough difference in quality or performance between bulk-packaged, budget-­priced 9mm ammunition to matter. Many of us just buy the lowest-priced box and head to the range, right?

Originally, I was going to take three similar pistols and three different brands of 9mm full metal jacket (FMJ), then test the ammunition’s accuracy and velocity. It didn’t take long for three brands of 9mm to expand to six. In addition to measuring accuracy and velocity, I was going to compare felt recoil and randomly sample each load’s overall length and actual — as opposed to advertised — bullet weight. I found more than a few surprises.

The Debutantes

First, the contestants. Brass-cased, 115-­grain FMJ ammunition is the most common, affordably priced 9mm load on the market. I gathered three 50-­round boxes of each contestant except for Winchester’s. (More on that in a bit.) In alphabetical order: Federal Champion, Fiocchi Range Dynamics, Magtech ($11), Remington Range ($25), SIG Sauer Elite ($23) and, finally, Winchester, the famed Winchester USA “white box” load ($53); I bought two 100-­round value packs.

To avoid accusations that this ammo was cherry-­picked, I bought the Federal, Magtech, Remington, and Winchester loads off the shelf from my local gun store, Patriots Ammo and Arms in Shelby Township, Michigan. The Fiocchi load came from Guns & Ammo’s T&E gun room. Only the SIG Sauer ammunition came direct from the manufacturer, due to time constraints for this issue’s deadline.

I used similar guns for testing, choosing three full-­size polymer-­framed striker-­fired pistols. One was the full-­size Springfield Armory Echelon with 4 1/2-­inch barrel. Another was an LTT-­customized HK VP9F with 4.43-­inch barrel. Third was a Shadow Systems DR920 with 4.4-­inch barrel. These guns are optic ready, and as optics provide more precision I did all of the accuracy testing with a red dot. To minimize variables, I did all of the ammo testing with the same optic, a Trijicon RMR Type 2 (RM06) with 3.25-­MOA dot.

This was not an evaluation of the pistols. Try and guess which of those guns was Test Gun 1, 2 or 3. (You’re probably wrong.)

The first task was to inspect the ammunition visually. Perhaps a waste of time to some, I’ve seen ammunition that shouldn’t have made it through quality control inspections; crushed cases, sideways primers, bullets stuffed into a smaller cartridge case, etc. With high-­volume SKUs, i.e., 115-­grain 9mm FMJ, there may be fewer samples inspected and less attention to details, thus there’s a higher chance of a bad round slipping into a cartridge tray.

First Look

Everything but the bulk-­boxed Winchester was loaded into trays. I scanned them while in the trays, looking at the primers first. Missing or damaged primers are easy to spot, but I also ran my fingertips over them to check for high primers. I then looked for cartridges that were noticeably longer or shorter than the others. In fact, this is something you should be doing with your ammo, either at home or at the range. Do it before you load ammo into your magazines. It’s worth your time. I actually poured the Winchester ammunition into my palm and examined this way.

Between the six brands, I had 950 rounds. That’s not a huge amount for testing, but I was pleasantly surprised not to find a problem. There were no split or wrinkled cases, or badly seated bullets; and no dents. A few of the SIG Sauer cases displayed mild discoloration, but I almost missed it. Five of the Remington cases had scratches on them, about where the base of the bullet was inside the case mouth; it was obviously caused by the loading process, but function wasn’t affected.

Next, I measured the cartridge overall length (COAL) and then used a kinetic bullet puller to extract and weigh the bullets to check consistency. There’s no “minimum” length for a loaded 9x19mm round, but the maximum overall length (OAL) per the Sporting Arms & Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute (SAAMI) is 1.169 inches. I chose five cartridges from each brand randomly, picking at least one from each box. I extracted and weighed the bullets on an RCBS digital scale. How close was the bullet weight to the advertised 115 grains? Check the table for the hard data, but what follows are a few takeaways and obvservations. 

SIG Sauer Elite Performance Ammunition was the clear winner, both in OAL and weight consistency. The OAL of the cartridges varied by a maximum .002 inch. That’s incredible. It was more consistent than I thought commercial loading machines were capable of. The pulled bullet weight differed by a maximum of .3 grains.

Second place surprised me even more. The budget-­friendly Magtech ammo had the second-­most consistent OAL. The maximum difference in OAL was just .003 inch between the five cartridges measured with a micrometer. 

Remington Range ammo had the second-­best weight consistency, with a maximum spread of just .5 grains between the bullets weighed. While Remington’s was the shortest cartridges and Winchester’s had the lightest bullets, all of the ammunition was impressively consistent within that brand’s lot. The difference between the longest and shortest cartridges and lightest and heaviest bullets across all brands was very small, too. You’d see a greater OAL difference comparing FMJs and jacketed hollowpoints (JHPs) given the flat meplat.

An observation: The Federal Champion box indicates that its ammunition features “FMJ” bullets, but they sure looked like plated bullets to me (and fully encapsulated), and not jacketed. If they are jacketed, I’m guessing they are very thin jackets. It didn’t affect velocity results, though. Federal’s load produced consistent speed despite not being as accurate as some of the other ammunition.

“What’s That Smell?”

If you’ve shot enough cheap ammunition, you’ll eventually find yourself using ammo with gunpowder that just stinks. 

In 2024, I shot surplus and commercially loaded ammunition that smelled like I was burning garbage. All of the ammo tested for this article smelled normal, and none of it generated inordinate amounts of smoke. When I pulled bullets to weigh them, I inspected the gunpowder inside the cases. While Magtech’s powder was a noticeably different color than the rest — a light gray instead of a dark gray — all of it smelled the same when shot.

To subjectively evaluate the recoil impulse of each load, I shot each firearm and load offhand. The Federal Champion ammunition demonstrated the lowest recoil impulse, followed closely by Magtech’s. The remaining four brands produced the same recoil, roughly, but the difference between all of them was so slight that I could barely discern it when shooting them side-­by-­side. (And I do this for a living.)

Performance

With regards to the accuracy and velocity tables, there’s a lot to unpack. Here are the highlights: 

Winchester’s white box showed the most consistent velocity across all three test guns. It averaged the lowest extreme spreads (ES), i.e., the difference between fastest and slowest round recorded. Several of the other loads were very close.

When it came to accuracy, certain brands were more accurate than others, and certain guns were more accurate than another. Gun #1 was the most accurate on average, printing the best groups with four out of the six brands — but note how it wasn’t the most accurate with every load. All guns tend to have preferences. Gun #1 was very accurate with the SIG Sauer ammo, for example. Gun #2 provided the worst group in these tests. However, the worst group wasn’t that bad, and I think that was the most significant takeaway that I discovered for myself in this evaluation. 

There was no “gotcha” moment. No ammo brand failed miserably. For this assignment, I tested the most common offering in the most popular caliber in America. Millions of 9mm 115-­grain FMJ rounds are loaded into primed and charged cases every month, and these were as inexpensive as brass-­cased 9mm gets. Ammo makers could get sloppy with their product at this price point and few would notice. 

OAL variances are measured in the ten-­thousandths of an inch. Bullet weight variances are consistently less than a grain. I was completely surprised by those results. Even inexpensive ammunition seems to be loaded with care and precision.

The only real place I see room for substantive improvement is with velocity. Proportionally, the variances in velocity were higher than they were for OAL and bullet weight. I wonder if that has to do with the powder, or if ignition variances in the primers factor in as well? At this point, I should probably shut up before these questions inspire more ideas for another in-depth column. 

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