TFB Review: FN 502 MRD And 502T
The FN 502 MRD and 502T are the rimfire cousins of the FN 509 family of centerfire pistols. These rimfire pistols have a lot in common with the 509 series but differ in a few interesting ways. After putting a few thousand rounds through them, it’s time to share my thoughts.
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Disclosures: FN loaned me these guns for review. I paid for the ammo. I do not have a prior relationship with the company.
Features
Before this review opportunity, I must admit that I had little to no interest in the FN 502. To quote Taylor Swift, “I forgot that you existed / It isn’t love, it isn’t hate, it’s just indifference.” But that changed over the course of this review. The 502 is the rimfire companion to the FN 509 series of handguns. As a die-hard Glock adherent, I saw little reason to check it out before this review.
The most obvious external distinction is the hammer. The 509 is striker-fired, like the majority of polymer centerfire pistols on the market today. But the 502 is a hammer-fired single-action only pistol. Adding an external hammer is a nice touch on a rimfire for re-striking rounds that fail to fire on the first attempt.
The FN 502 is an optics-ready handgun. It ships with a range of adapter plates for common red dot optics. Mounting is simple, with screws of the appropriate length included with each plate and reference information in the manual. The factory slide cover is quite a bit heavier than the optic mounts, which lets the gun function with or without an optic mounted without changing anything else.
Both of these FN 502 pistols ship with two magazines, the MRD ones with a pair of a 10-rounders and the Tactical comes with a 10-rounder and a 15-rounder. There is a small loading tab on the side of the magazine to take the spring pressure off while loading. That works fine on the 10-round mag but is less than ideal on the 15-rounder. It tucks down inside the floorplate extension and is uncomfortable to use at full load. Loading the 14th and 15th rounds in the extended magazine is a real pain (like loading RPD belts by hand level of annoying). They did get easier to load with use, but not easy.
I found a file online and 3D printed a small load assist tool. It works well on the 10-round mags but could only load the 15-round mags to 13. Still, that put less strain on my fingers while loading up the mags during the review. I also looked at buying additional magazines so that I could load them all up before going to the range, but unfortunately, they are not cheap. At about $40 a pop, stocking up would not be cheap so I just made do with the DIY loading tool.
On The Range – FN 502 MRD
Before I shot the FN 502 MRD I mounted a red dot. I keep a Holosun EPS around for use on review guns, and that seemed like an interesting choice for this gun given the size and weight of the EPS. That sight is a perfect fit on centerfire handguns, but a rimfire pistol has substantially less recoil energy to work with when cycling. Would this be an issue for the 502?
I fired 300 rounds of CCI MiniMag through the FN 502 MRD. At first, there were a few failures. But within about 50 rounds and with a drop or two of oil, it started running perfectly. The added weight of the EPS was not too much for the 502. Ejection is straight out at 3 o’clock. Shooting at an indoor range with narrow lanes, the lane divider walls deflected pretty much all of the brass back onto me.
The FN 502 has magazine release buttons on both sides of the grip. This is more convenient than needing to swap the release from one side to the other. The downside of this is that both release buttons are active at all times. I accidentally dropped the magazine once without using my thumbs to touch the release in the standard way.
The FN 502 MRD shoots well, in part because .22 LR pistols are just a lot of fun, and in part because the trigger is pretty good. It breaks between 3.5-4 pounds and is a single-action pull. It is not quite as good as a dedicated target pistol but is more than adequate for this kind of gun.
On The Range – FN 502T
I used the iron sights for the first several hundred rounds with the FN 502 Tactical. They are perfectly adequate and tall enough to use with a silencer. The rear sight has a small set screw and can be moved with finger pressure to adjust windage. This is not as precise as a target sight, but with trial and error, it works OK. I used a 6-o’clock hold to center the group due to the tall sights (bottom of black on a B8 at 10 kept most in the 10-ring).
The rear sight is on the optics plate, which was tight when I started shooting and became loose after 200 rounds. After another 300 rounds, the screw was backing out again though I had tightened it securely. At that point, I switched to an optics plate and added a ZeroTech Optics Micro Reflex Sight. The FN-supplied screws had a thread-locking compound on them, and after a good torquing with a Wheeler FAT wrench the red dot stayed in place for the rest of the review.
The main difference between the FN 502 MRD and 502 Tactical is the threaded barrel, which makes the 502T a fun option as a silencer host. I did a large portion of the shooting with a SilencerCo Sparrow. It breaks down easily for cleaning so the buildup from famously-dirty rimfire ammo. It is also rated for calibers up to 5.7×28 so it works on more than just rimfires. There is also FN’s own Catch 22Ti, a lightweight .22 can that will help you keep that all-FN aesthetic.
Suppressed .22 pistols are about the most fun that you can have with handguns, and the Sparrow on the FN 502T is a match made in fun heaven. With a mounted red dot, it is easy to hit targets quietly. This would be a great combo for introducing new shooters to guns, or that could be a good excuse to buy another gun and silencer.
I shot the 502T quite a bit more than the standard 502 because I could use a suppressor. In total, I fired about 1,800 rounds through the 502T, much of that suppressed. My original plan was to see what kind of cleaning interval was necessary to keep the gun running. At about 500 rounds the slide began to close slowly when using the release. It still went into battery most of the time, but not all the time.
At about 1,600 rounds the occasional round would flip up from the feed ramp to cause a stovepipe jam. But apart from the random stovepipes and slow slide closing, everything else kept running well. Some of the credit is due to the quality of CCI ammo, which made up the bulk of the ammo used in the review. There were very few failures to fire, far less than I would expect from a rimfire pistol. The 502 is a glutton for punishment where high round counts are involved.
Ammo Testing
Most of the rounds fired were CCI MiniMag and Standard Velocity, but I also broke out a large assortment of .22 LR ammo to see how it performed. Everything functioned fine except for a few with annotations. All types of ammo were fired in the FN 502T without a suppressor and measured with a Garmin Xero C1 chronograph.
ManufacturerLoadAvg. VelocityESSDCCIMiniMag 40-grain CPRN10296116CCIStandard Velocity 40-grain LRN9453911CCIPistol Match 40-grain LRN*9465316CCIStinger 32-grain CPHP12886721CCIQuiet 22 40-grain LRN**62715543NormaTac 22 40-grain LRN939399RemingtonThunderbolt 40-grain LRN102015743S&BClub 40-grain LRN947124Magtech40-grain LRN88123663FederalAutomatch 40-gran LRN9347723SKStandard Plus 40-grain LRN9254113Armscor36-grain CPHP103412345AguilaSuper Extra 40-grain LRN9815115AguilaHollow Point 38-grain CPHP10738322AguilaInterceptor 40-grain CPFP122723664AguilaSupermax 30-grain CPFP138210933
* Did not lock back
** Did not cycle
As a brief aside, all .22LR ammo is not equal. One of the challenges of reviewing rimfire guns is the rate of ammo issues. A decent day shooting .22 ammo bought at Walmart will yield more malfunctions than an entire lifetime of shooting duty-grade centerfire guns. Multiple loads have triple-digit extreme spreads, but others have single digit standard deviations. Finding the ammo that a rimfire gun likes best is time well spent.
Long Range
This portion of the review is a bonus and means very little. When I posted about this review on social media, one snarky commentator asked how it would perform at 500 yards. However, .22 LR ammo is cheap and I found myself at an outdoor range with favorable lighting and wind conditions and multiple spotters with high-magnification optics.
Hitting a torso steel plate at 100 yards was easy. At 200 yards, I still managed more hits than misses. Moving back to 300 yards was dumb, so of course we tried it. The success rate dropped to a few hits per magazine, but we could still call the hits. Finally, we moved on to the 500-yard targets (we could not figure out where on the hillside the 400-yard targets were). At that range, and with how little energy the .22 LR has left at that range, I have no idea if any rounds hit. But what we did see was a “beaten zone” of splashes within a target width or two, with the occasional shot that was unaccounted for. Were those hits? Maybe, maybe not. It does not really matter, as this is the least practical test possible. But it was fun and that is what counts!
Conclusion
The FN 502 MRD and 502T are great guns. If you live in a jurisdiction where suppressors are available, definitely opt for the 502T. But if not, the 502 is still a blast, and it can still mount a weapon light and red dot. As of writing, the 502 Tactical is selling for around $430. That is a reasonable price for the features and reliability of this gun. I expected the FN 502 to be a mediocre or forgettable rimfire pistol at the start of the review, but it left a distinctly good impression on me. It won’t be replacing my bullseye match pistol, but it is infinitely cooler to rip through bricks of ammo with a red dot and silencer on a pistol like this. Check out the FN 502 or 502 Tactical if you are looking for a modern-style .22 LR pistol, and if you are an FN 509 guy you have to go buy one of these too.