Israel Weapon Industries is now shipping the Masada, a full-size polymer-framed, striker-fired pistol chambered for 9mm Luger. The Masada was announced a few years ago but IWI quietly held on to the design until now, along with one key improvement.

The Masada may be a later entry into today’s “next-generation” of polymer striker pistols, but it checks all the boxes. It has a 4.1-inch barrel with polygonal rifling on a full-length frame that provides a solid 17+1-round capacity. It has front and rear slide serrations and an integral magwell and has oversized magazine base pads to aid in extraction.

 

It has fully ambidextrous controls, with slide levers and magazine releases on both sides. It comes with three interchangeable grip housings in small, medium and large. And the latest update: it’s optics-ready with a slide cut for mini red-dot sights. The cut is compatible with select Leupold, SIG Sauer, Trijicon and Vortex optics.

The Masada has a deep and undercut beavertail for a high grip close to the bore axis. This should help reduce felt recoil and speed up follow-up shots. It also has an oversized trigger guard for use with gloves.

 
Features include a full-length rail, true ambidextrous controls, interchangeable grips, night sights and more. (Photo: IWI)

The pistol has a trigger set with a 6-pound pull. It has a familiar passive trigger safety and no manual safeties. One nice touch is that the Masada comes with factory 3-dot night sights.

IWI designed and built the Masada to suit modern military needs and this looks like an all-around solid design. Like any new product it will need testing and time before it will fully prove itself but it has a great pedigree and IWI is a company with good experience that’s earned a lot of trust.

With a suggested retail price of $480, IWI won’t have too many problems convincing people to give the Masada a try. That includes the night sights and two steel magazines, and online and in-store pricing will likely be even less. On top of that, spare magazines have a list price of just $29. IWI will ship the Masada with 10-round magazines to places with magazine capacity restrictions.

It will be interesting to see if IWI works up different models of the Masada. Other calibers are an obvious way to expand the series but so are compact and subcompact versions along with the increasingly popular long-slide option.

As it stands the Masada on its own looks like a strong contender. There’s always more room in this market for full-size service pistols, especially pistols that bring a lot of features at a low price.