The magazine release buttons are unique and ambidextrous. The result is very positive grip that’s not so rough that it catches on cover garments. The texturing is tastefully bordered by clean edges. The texturing is formed from irregular and unevenly raised ridges and dots that are arranged wherever the hands make contact. The Mako does have clean lines and excellent grip texture that includes the 11- and 13-round magazines’ basepads, which give the gun a high-end appearance. Instead, Kimber utilizes a removable serialized central-block insert. (Mark Fingar photo) Unlike recently introduced micro compacts, the R7 Mako does not have a one-piece chassis system. The striker assembly possesses a hollow core that accepts a spring and plunger guide, which also secures the backplate. To facilitate an optic, the slide was deeply machined for Shield Sights’ RMSc-pattern mount. As alluded, every R7 Mako is optics ready, however, a standard model is available without an optic attached while the upgraded R7 Mako (OI) model includes a Crimson Trace CTS-1500 3-MOA red dot installed. Depressing this also allows the shooter to disassemble the slide. The striker spring fits into the hollow body of the striker and is anchored on the back end by a plunger that fits into the rear plate of the pistol. Internally, the slide contains a drop-safety plunger, the striker and the striker spring assemblies. The front of the slide and the top edge of each side is tastefully beveled, too, and the entire stainless steel slide is finished with ferritic nitrocarburizing (FNC) for a clean, matte-black appearance. It has attractive and useful serrations at the front and rear. (Mark Fingar photo)ĭifferences aside, the slide is expertly machined. I actually don’t doubt its effectiveness or durability, but the fact that Kimber went with an internal extractor is unusual enough that it deserves mentioning. The extractor is a beefy claw, however, located in a sub-assembly that is held in place by a roll-pin. (Mark Fingar photo)Īnother deviation from the norm is the use of an internal extractor, a part that’s more akin to an M1911. Though finished black, the barrel is made of stainless steel. As the slide reciprocates, the unlocked barrel tilts up at the muzzle. I’m not sure how many open-top slides are failing out there, but I’m also not a materials engineer time will tell if this was a worthy trade-off. Kimber was concerned that by removing material for the optic cut - yes, the R7 Mako is red-dot ready - the slide assembly may lose some long-term durability. The slide design, with its smaller port, offers greater rigidity than open-top pistols, but a pessimistic response would be that there is less room for ejecting spent cases. The bottom of the barrel has the more common cam-type lugs borrowed from the Browning Hi-Power and used by virtually every striker-fired pistol on the market.
Unlike the familiar barrel-hood-to-slide lockup, the R7 Mako’s barrel has a lug on the top-rear of the assembly that locks into a corresponding recess notched into the slide.
This means that the pistol has an ejection “port” rather than an open-top design. The first and most glaring difference is that the R7 Mako uses what Kimber calls a “shrouded slide” design. The R7 Mako also has a number of deviations from what we’re used to seeing on micro pistols. The pistol’s namesake, the mako shark, is named for the Maori “Mako Mako,” or “maneater.” If you consider the mini red-dot lens frame as a fin and its front slide serrations as gills, Kimber’s little pistol really does have a sleek, shark-like look to it. The ejection port increases slide rigidity, which is allegedly weakened with deep optic cuts on some modified pistols. (Mark Fingar photos) More like an AR-15 than a modern pistol, the R7 Mako features an ejection port rather than an open-top slide design. More like an AR-15 than a modern pistol, the R7 Mako features an ejection port rather than an open-top slide design. While it’s fair to say that some consumer fads are worth ignoring (i.e., social media challenges, seltzer water, at-home DNA tests, the Instant Pot) the micro-compact pistol is transcending trends and becoming omnipresent. However, none of Kimber’s existing products checked all of the boxes, and that’s why we now have the R7 Mako. Kimber already has several handguns that come close to the micro-compact in size, including the Micro-9 ($706 to $1,155), the Evo SP ($638 to $965), and the venerable Officer’s Model 1911s, known as “Ultra Carry” models ($931-$1,828) in the lineup.
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