Which mid range Beretta for sporting clays only ?

[Southern]

looking to upgrade my aging Silver Pig, dont know how old its is, but I have had it since 2005.....

I seemt o shoot alright with it, and want to stay with Beretta.

Visited a couple of the local gun shops today…

Have now handled 694, 692 and DT10…. but interested in 690 black - should I be ?

I like the 694 hand grip , but it doesn’t quite come to
My shoulder in the way the 692 felt.

The 692 also had a nicer bit of wood on it.

I also tried a DT10, and altho I’ve no doubt it shoots well, this example had been previously enjoyed quite a lot….

The shop said they are happy for me to take a gun for 72 hours to try it out which I thought was good.

Hoping to book some time off work and take them up on the offer.

 

[Westward]

The 690s & 692s have historical issues with the ejector design, which was fixed on later models from about 2019 or thereabouts by reverting to conventional ejectors. 692s also have a history breaking the small setscrew which holds the trigger group to the action frame resulting quite literally in the gun falling into 2 pieces. Again this was eventually fixed. In a nutshell, the 694 is the gun the 692 always should have been and IMO is worth the extra spend over the 690.

A well cared for DT10 in good shape would be my choice if only for the vastly better triggers.

 

[Southern]

Thanks for that. Do you know what year the screw issue was finally resolved ?

 

[Westward]

The setscrews would fail because the vibrations from shooting sometimes caused them to loosen then break. Earlier designs like your 686 had screws top and bottom but beginning with the SV10 sporters, which are near identical to the 692, they went over to a single screw which probably saved them about 2p of the production costs. The SV10s however had a locating spigot for the trigger group which absorbed the vibrations, but they scrapped that for the 692s thus saving another 2p. The first "fix" in about 2018 was to Loctite the screw, I have heard that they they eventually used a beefier screw as well. Many 692 owners periodically check the screw, known as the top tang screw, for tightness.

I've heard nothing bad about the 694 reliability apart from many cases of forends splitting, but as I've long since got rid of my Berettas I'm not that aware of how they're holding up.

No doubt there'll be about a dozen happy 692 owners coming in on this to contradict me but Google is your friend!

 

[Will Hewland]

Agree, 692 a nice handling gun with a lighter barrel feel perhaps. Issues as mentioned above would stop me having one full stop. Pretty sure 694s are reliable now, maybe the early ones not so much. 2020 onwards is my feel for it.. Mine is just over a year old, faultless.