Honest Outlaw's S&W FPC 5.7 Review: Is the Folding 5.7 Carbine Worth Buying?

Is Smith & Wesson's folding FPC in 5.7×28mm the survival-carbine / PDW upgrade it looks like on paper — or should you stick with the 9mm version? Honest Outlaw took the brand-new S&W M&P FPC 5.7 to the range to find out before you buy.

Watch This Before You Buy The New S&W FPC 5.7 Watch on YouTube — Honest Outlaw Channel

The short version of what they cover: Chris walks the FPC's fold-flat hinge, dual charging handles, onboard mag storage, polymer M-LOK rail, and threaded 16-inch barrel, then runs the 5.7 sample as a truck / PDW-style carbine. Soft recoil, high fun factor, and real accuracy past 100 yards all show up. What also shows up: repeated first-round failures to chamber across magazines and ammo types — roughly a dozen stoppages in a few hundred rounds — which he contrasts against the 9mm FPC's clean 2,000-round reliability run and a 10mm sample that also stayed clean. Shootability is there; defensive trust, on this sample, is not.

Here's our take. The FPC platform itself is half the story: side-fold, optic stays mounted, three mags on the gun, light enough to live in a bag. Honest Outlaw's footage still makes a strong case for the folding carbine concept — and for 5.7 as a soft-shooting, high-capacity range round. The hard takeaway is caliber- and sample-specific: if you want this gun as a serious PDW, their testing points hard at the 9mm FPC instead of the 5.7. Worth watching before you chase the new chambering on reliability alone.

We stock the same Smith & Wesson M&P FPC in 5.7×28mm Chris ran in the video. If you want the folding FPC platform with the reliability profile he preferred for defense, we also have the M&P FPC in 9mm in stock.