The T9 carries eight 9mm rounds in the magazine, a ninth in the chamber. T9, top, is distinctly larger and heavier than Kahr PM9, below.

Factory sight options include fixed night sights, left, and MMC adjustable rear sight, right.

The T9's slide always locked open when run dry, as designed.

Top: T9 with adjustable sights. Below: T9 with fixed, snag-free night sights.

The largest Kahr yet, the T9 is still compact. Florida Utility blade by Jason Clark gives perspective.

Many women have found the Kahr to fit them perfectly.

Many have found the superb double-action-only trigger stroke to be the deciding factor in buying a Kahr. T9's trigger pull begins here…

…and ends here, with smooth, even resistance in between.

Handsome Pau Ferro grips from Hogue help give the T9 the best gripping elements of the S&W M39 and the Browning Hi-Power.

Note that edges of slide stop have been rounded, and bottom edge is shielded by stocks. This is an improvement…

…over this early model P9, whose slide lock lever was uncomfortably sharp. It has since been changed.

Practicing from behind simulated cover, this lady quickly polished rusty shooting skills with a borrowed Kahr T9, and shot better than she expected.

The T9 pistol is "southpaw-friendly."

Six tight head shots from 25 yards with Kahr's smallest and lightest, the PM9. Seen as a "Target model," the new T9 has a lot to live up to.

The T9, seems proportional in small hands of petite lady in foreground, compared to full size GLOCK in hands of large male shooter to her left.

With all steel construction and a four-inch barrel, the T9 has a solid feel in the hand. The DAO pull, a sweet seven or so pounds that Kahr fans know and love, is there. So is enough room for even a big hand's little finger at the bottom of the grip frame, and the longest sight radius ever found on the inherently accurate Kahr pistol. We were eager to take it to the range.

I've shot four T9 pistols now. Two came to me from the factory, and two were brought by students to Lethal Force Institute classes, bought by ordinary customers through commercial channels.
My first K9 had once given me a 1.38-inch group at 25 yards with Federal 115-grain Classic 9mm JHP. A Covert P40 had done even better for me with Black Hills165-grain EXP .40S&W ammo. I was expecting great things from the Kahr T9.
Look at the following measurements. The T9 was a student's, and as good as any I've test-fired. Shooting hand-held from the 25-yard bench, we measured all five shots fired and also the best three in each group. This is particularly important with Kahr, since with its strong recoil springs, it has a notorious tendency toward "4+1 syndrome." First mentioned in print by my colleague Wiley Clapp, this is the tendency for a semiautomatic firearm to put the first hand-chambered shot in one spot on the target, and follow-up shots into another spot. We believe that this is because when the first cartridge is hand-cycled into the chamber, the gun's major components align themselves in a way that is very subtly different from the way the parts align themselves "in battery" as the gun cycles itself automatically during an actual firing sequence.
Now, I can certainly live with those "best three" measurements, which are probably indicative of the gun's true accuracy potential absent human error. Unfortunately, we are going to have to shoot guns in our error-prone human hands. That's why both measurements are listed for your reference, as input to your own judgment. The T9 seemed to be particularly "ammo sensitive." The second lot of Winchester ammo, provided by LFI staff instructor Dennis Luosey, who fired that "beat of test" group, proved markedly more accurate than the first. Note also the distinct "4+1 syndrome" with four of the five loads tested.
Of the four T9s I've shot, two were more or less right on target when test-fired, and two shot very wide of the point-of-aim. One had adjustable sights that didn't adjust.
The general rule of thumb is that four-inch accuracy at 25 yards is adequate for a service or defense pistol. That test T9 exceeded that with four of five loads tested and that group barely over 2.25 inches that Dennis fired with the second lot of Winchester ball was fine. I suppose I've been spoiled by the disproportionately good accuracy the smaller Kahr have given me over the years, and expected more from a longer barreled model. After all, the center scoring zone on an IDPA target measures eight inches in diameter, and on an IPSC target it's 5.5 by 11 inches. Still, I look at the target in my office on which the littlest, lightest Kahr PM9 put five Pro-Load +P115-grain bullets in 2.25 inches and the best three in just over an inch. I wish its big brother, the T9 could talk. I would ask it, "What's your problem?"

The fact is, a handgun's real-world accuracy is determined by two things. There is its inherent or mechanical accuracy, which is how tightly it can group its shots in slow fire under perfect conditions with artificial support. But there is also practical accuracy, which means how close to center can you deliver your shots while standing on your own hind legs and shooting under pressure. The latter tends to be a function of ergonomics, or "human engineering," more than of mechanical engineering.
In this latter aspect, the Kahr pistols come into their own, across the entire line of Kahr designs. This is particularly true of the T9.
The barrel-to-grip angle is well nigh perfect. Since the very first K9 pistol, we in the industry have noticed Kahr pistols’ resemblance to the Browning Hi-Power in this respect. The Browning Hi-Power was a triumph of the combined genius of John Browning and Dieudonne Saive that fits the human hand in almost all its common sizes. Either by homage or by confluence of genius, the Kahr design of Justin Moon duplicates its angle. The T9 has that element in spades, but it also draws from the grip-shape of another semiautomatic 9mm famous for fitting the human hand well.
Consider Smith & Wesson's famous Model 39. Almost exactly half a century ago, S&W brought forth a single-stack double-action 9mm whose trigger in the forward position was exactly in the right place for contact with the distal joint of the index finger of the average adult male for whom it was designed. The M39's grip-frame curved at just the right spot to fit the heel of the hand with the wrist locked. The checkering on its walnut stocks fit the palm in just the right way.
Look at a T9 pistol. Its exotic Pau Ferro stock panels, crafted for Kahr by Hogue, almost exactly duplicate the checkering pattern of the old Smith & Wesson Model 39. Combining the best elements of these two classic 9mm pistols, the Browning Hi-Power and the S&W Model 39, Kahr has not surprisingly created an absolutely superb grasping platform for the hands of a wide number of shooters.
From the seminal K9 on down, all Kahrs until the T9 have been short frame pistols. When you speedloaded one, you had to get your little finger out of the way or it would be pinched between the bottom of the frame and the lip of the incoming magazine. This is not a Kahr thing, it is a small pistol thing. You see it with all such compact autos: the Colt Officers and Defender and their clones, S&W 3913, SIG P239, baby GLOCKs, et cetera. I didn't find that happening with the new T9. The grip-frame was just long enough to keep that welt-producing pinch from happening.
The Kahrs have always been superb "feeling" pistols, and the T9 in my hand feels the best of all. The reach to the trigger, a bit short for me on most Kahr models, seems more natural on this one. Kahr has listened to our criticism of the sharp edges on the slide stop, and that part is more rounded on the T9. This and the shape of the Pau Ferro grips keeps the thumb from getting chewed up by the slide stop, which happened a lot with the subcompact models when fired right-handed.
The T9 takes one more cartridge than its 9mm predecessors. With eight in the magazine and a ninth in the chamber, it's now up to par in that regard with its two strongest competitors in the single stack 9mm concealed carry double-action market, the Smith 3913 and SIG P239. One more cartridge doesn't seem like a huge increase. A small raise from the boss is better than no raise, though, and I for one will take it. Same when one more cartridge is added to your firepower. The change doesn't shake the earth, but it's worth having.

The butter smooth, super-easy double-action trigger pull that has become the Kahr trademark is definitely there on the T9 pistol. All four that I shot pulled sweet. I watched with interest as two of my students in two different LFI classes each shot a T9 for a week.
One was a lady who hadn't been to the range since she completed LFI-I a year or more before. Now, in an advanced LFI-II class where the shooting goes much faster, she immediately found herself over her head with skills that had grown rusty. She was snatching the trigger of the compact 9mm she brought. We switched her to a T9. The longer, smoother pull made it more difficult to anticipate the shot and jerk the trigger, and soon her hits were back where they belonged. At the end of the week, still shooting the Kahr T9, she passed the difficult double-speed final qualification with room to spare.
The other shooter was a prime of life male, who had brought his own T9 to an LFI-I class. He had very small hands and had brought the T9 because it seemed to fit him perfectly. He was right, it did. He listened and did what he was taught. He sailed smoothly through the 40 hours of training. I didn't see his T9 bobble once. On qualification day, he shot an excellent score on the IPSC target in a course that encompassed strong hand only, weak hand only, speed reloading, shooting from cover positions, and all of that. Our T9 shooter finished among the top five in his class when final shooting scores were tallied.
His performance was more proof that the overall human engineering of the gun may be more important than its inherent accuracy. With a pistol that shot three- or four-inch groups but stayed where he aimed it while he pulled the trigger, this shooter did just fine. With a pistol capable of an inch at the same distance, but with a clunky feel and twenty-pound trigger pull, neither he nor I would have done well. Anything the Kahr T9 lacks in its inherent accuracy, it seems to make up for in ergonomics that make the accuracy it does have deliverable on demand under stress.

One of the test T9s jammed a few times in its early stages of evaluation. We cleaned it and kept shooting, and after a while, that problem disappeared and the gun perked reliably. The factory is quite specific about the importance of giving their gun a 200-round break-in before using it for anything serious. It's analogous to those few hundred easy miles the auto manufacturers tell you to put on your new car. It allows the machine to break in, and the parts to seat into proper working alignment before heavy-duty use begins. The jams we had in that one test P9 were within the first hundred rounds, and after a cleaning and some more shooting to break in the gun, ceased to occur.

If you already own, or like one or more Kahr pistols for self-defense, the T9 would seem to be a natural addition to your armory. That sweet trigger pull, and the handling characteristics are all pretty much identical except that you now have a firm place to park your pinkie finger when you hold the gun. That and its longer sight radius may improve your practical accuracy, even if your smaller Kahr does have slightly better mechanical accuracy in a slow-fire testing environment. If your regular Kahr is a .40, the T9 will let you take advantage of all the generic 9mm ball ammo that's available right now for practice and training. Will it kick less than your Kahr .40? Of course, it's a 9mm. Will it kick less than your smaller Kahr 9mm? Yes, because you can get more flesh and bone wrapped around its more substantial grip-frame for control, and because it's heavier weight will absorb more recoil. While in theory all practice should duplicate the recoil of the defense gun with the defense load, sometimes it's worth-while to shoot something that works the same but kicks less to better develop trigger control and accuracy, which can still transfer to the more powerful, harder kicking gun.
Carrying a suggested retail price in the $750 range, the Kahr T9 is a good value. It is a well-made pistol that is particularly suitable for people with smaller hands.