Kimber R7 Mako Carbon Compact Review: Sig and Springfield Killer?

Kimber is a company well known for their 1911s and 1911-adjacent designs.

But in recent years, they have expanded their line of handguns to include the excellent K6s revolver and, more recently, the polymer, striker-fired R7 Mako.

Their newest iteration of the Mako, the Carbon Compact, takes direct aim at pistols like the Springfield Hellcat Pro and Sig Sauer P365 X-Macro.

How does the Mako Carbon Compact stack against ultra-successful guns like those? Is it a worthy competitor? Or is it just another phoned-in striker-fired pistol?

We got our hands on one for testing so we could find out for ourselves. So keep on reading to how it performed.

Kimber R7 Mako Carbon Compact Specs & Features

Specs

• Caliber: 9mm
• Barrel Length: 3.92″
• Overall Length: 7″
• Height: 5.3″
• Grip Width: 1.16″
• Weight: 24.4 oz

Features

• 3-Dot TruGlo Tritium Pro Night Sights w/ orange front ring and white rear rings
• RMSc/Holosun K milled footprint
• Four interchangeable backstraps
• Comes with two 15-round magazines

How We Tested the Kimber R7 Mako Carbon Compact

To test the Mako Carbon Compact, we put 500 rounds of various types of ammo through it.

Including:

• AAC 115gr FMJ
• Sellier & Bellot 124gr FMJ
• Speer Gold Dot 124gr +P JHP

We conducted slow fire groups at 7, 10, 15, and 25 yards to measure practical accuracy. Mozambique drills were conducted at 7 yards to test combat accuracy. The gun came pre-fitted with a 6-MOA Holosun 407K red dot that was used during the entirety of testing.

A Dvorak TriggerScan machine was employed to test the trigger pull and provide a full readout of everything that goes on during the trigger pull process.

This gun was loaned to us directly by Kimber but at our request. We were not prompted to review this gun.

A Little History

As the saying goes, better late than never. Kimber hopped aboard the surging micro-compact train in late 2021 with their original R7 Mako.

The standard R7 Mako is a 10-round, 1.1-inch wide pistol that is very much in the same vein as the Sig P365, Springfield Hellcat, and S&W Shield Plus.

But in 2022, both Springfield and Sig released upscaled versions of their micro-compacts with the 15-round Hellcat Pro and the 17-round P365 X-Macro, respectively.

Seeing the success of these models, Kimber decided to release a slightly larger and higher capacity model of the Mako with some notable ergonomic improvements. This culminated in the 2024 release of the 15-round Mako Carbon Compact.

Who Is the Kimber R7 Mako Carbon Compact For?

The Mako Carbon Compact is for those looking for a modern, slim, concealed-carry gun that has good capacity and well-thought-out ergonomics.

People who don’t find other thin guns very comfortable, even those with larger hands, may find a friend in the Mako Carbon Compact.

Ergonomics: Fit & Feel

Instead of just adding length to their existing R7 Mako frame, Kimber completely redesigned the carbon-fiber-infused frame for the Carbon Compact. And I have to say, honestly, it shows.

Whoever designed this frame has a keen understanding of where to put texture, where to leave it off, and where your hand will naturally index with a modern, thumbs-forward, high grip.

Grip

With the last Kimber gun I reviewed, I lamented about how comically small the trigger undercut was. My prayers were answered this time around with the Carbon Compact’s absolutely massive trigger undercut.

This undercut really guides your hand into a position where you are getting full contact with the grip and riding high all the way up to the beavertail.

They even relieved part of the trigger guard on the bottom and added some texture so that your pointer finger on your support hand is nested in a nice little grippy area.

The areas around the undercut, near the magazine release, and toward the back of the beavertail are not textured. Having no texture in these areas means the gun isn’t going to chew up your sensitive areas during extended firing.

People who shoot thumbs-forward will appreciate the generously sized and textured ledge to rest your support thumb. This feature was implemented well and was comfortable for me.

Kimber went with a grip texture that I would call medium-aggressive. It is along the lines of something like the texturing on a Springfield Hellcat, just with a bit less of the fine-grain structure.

Overall, I found the grip very comfortable, even during a 200-round quick blast session. The Carbon Compact comes with four interchangeable backstraps for those looking to adjust the grip size.

Controls

Lefties will be happy to hear that the magazine release and the slide release are fully ambidextrous. No swapping around is needed here; these are true ambi.

The Mako Carbon Compact retains the recessed magazine release of the standard R7 Mako. Having a relief cut ensures that your finger or hand won’t accidentally brush the magazine release during firing, thus avoiding discomfort or accidental dropping of the mag.

A lot of recessed mag releases are difficult to depress, as are most ambi mag releases that aren’t paddles. But this one is pretty smooth and easy to hit. I don’t even really have to break my grip to reach it, either. Kudos to Kimber.

Kimber also added a guard around the bottom and sides of the slide release to make sure that it doesn’t accidentally get pushed up and cause the gun to lock open while firing.

The slide lock is also extremely easy to actuate. In fact, it takes so little force that if you insert a magazine with gusto, the slide will sometimes inertia-charge and launch itself into battery on its own.

While I didn’t have any false slide hold-opens, I did experience several failures to lock back on an empty mag. This was 100% due to my grip on the gun and riding the top of the slide lock. Firing one-handed or consciously moving my thumbs alleviated the issue entirely. Neither my fiancée nor my close friend who fired this gun had lockback problems, just me.

Trigger

A lousy trigger can absolutely make or break an otherwise good gun. Luckily, the Carbon Compact doesn’t have a bad trigger, but it is a bit different.

We threw the gun on our handy-dandy Dvorak TriggerScan machine, which showed an average pull weight of 4.1 lbs.

This trigger has a very smooth rising resistance to a plateau, and then you have a little bit of travel at the peak force of around 4 lbs before the trigger breaks.

The dot on the chart above shows exactly where the trigger is breaking. Instead of breaking right at the end of the plateau, it breaks slightly after it starts to fall off. As a result, the Mako has what I consider a slight “rolling break.”

It breaks a little after you’d expect it to and isn’t quite as predictable as I’d like. The reset is a bit on the long side as well, but it is extremely audible and tactile.

Overall, it is a smooth and consistent pull. I’d prefer a more defined wall and break, but it is still a good trigger.

Slide

All Carbon Compacts are optics-ready or come with an optic pre-installed from the factory. They are direct milled to accept RMSc/Holosun K optics — no fiddling with adapter plates here.

To be honest, direct milling for the most popular optic footprint should be a no-brainer. Seriously, why doesn’t everyone do this?

The forward and rear slide serrations aren’t anything to write home about, but they are effective and get the job done.

While night sights may not be the hotness anymore, I still appreciate them. Kimber slapped on a nice set of TruGlos that feature a serrated rear u-notch tritium sight and an orange-outlined tritium front post. Great combat sights, A+ from me.

Perhaps the most unique feature of the Mako series is its distinctive side-ejection port. They claim this reduces the chance of the gun snagging on clothing or gloves when it is being racked. I have also heard some naysayers theorize that the smaller ejection will lead to reliability issues.

For me, the ejection port is fine. It didn’t cause any undue issues, even if I feel that the design isn’t really necessary.

Frame

One thing I felt I needed to address is the flared magwell that Carbon Compact has. I typically love flared magwells that are done tastefully and aren’t oversized.

The one on the Carbon Compact is close to being great but has one flaw that really stuck with me — the magazines sit perfectly flush with the bottom of the magwell when inserted.

Why is this an issue? Well, if you don’t slam the mag home with authority, you run a real possibility of your palm bottoming out on the magwell before the mag is fully locked in. Mag not locked in = mag falling out = bad time.

I didn’t have this happen when I was reloading with the slide locked open, but it did happen 2-3 times when I was just messing around with the gun on the first day and testing the mags on a closed slide.

In my opinion, Kimber should have made the magazine baseplate about 1mm longer to fix this issue. However, since it didn’t happen to me at all during live-fire, I won’t call it a dealbreaker.

Lastly, you get a 3-slot Picatinny accessory rail. Three slots mean you should be able to mount just about any light your heart desires.

How Does the Kimber Mako Carbon Compact Shoot?

Really well, actually. The gun is a nice little shooter.

Recoil is fairly mild, and the gun was not particularly fatiguing to shoot. Any tiredness I had shooting was just from putting a lot of rounds down range in a short period and nothing on the gun itself.

The entire gun is just slightly chunkier and bigger in all dimensions than something like the Hellcat Pro or Sig P365 X-Macro.

I’d say it almost occupies a unique middle ground between those aforementioned guns and other guns like the Glock 19 or CZ P-10C.

The ergonomics seem to work well across a wide range of hand sizes, too. My fiancée has small hands, and while she didn’t like the way the Carbon Compact felt as much as her P365 XL, she was shooting lights out with it.

My best friend, who has much meatier hands than I do, also put some rounds down range. He shot pretty well with it and noted how much easier it was to shoot than the standard Taurus GX4 he brought along.

Accuracy

It only took me one mag to get the included 6-MOA Holosun dialed in to hit 1 inch low at 7 yards. With everything looking kosher, it was off to the races.

At 7-15 yards, I was able to achieve really solid accuracy, given the size of the gun. It didn’t seem very ammo-picky at all. 

It was printing awesome groups with my carry ammo of choice, Speer 124gr +P JHP. I love to see it.

I shot a handful of Mozambique drills, also known as failure-to-stop drills, which consist of a double tap to center mass and then one to the head in quick succession. It isn’t the fastest shooter, but it was easy to keep double taps nice and tight.

My Achilles heel with this gun was the rolling break on the trigger. While it didn’t affect me much from point-blank out to 15 yards, my groups opened up more than I’d like at 25 yards.

Everything was still on the 9-ring and in, which is still excellent combat accuracy, but I’ve been able to keep similar-sized guns in the 10-ring before.

Reliability

I can say that the Mako firmly distances itself from any of the shade that Kimber sometimes gets regarding the reliability of their 1911s.

The gun was lubed from the factory, so I elected to run it right out of the box without cleaning it or re-lubing it at all during the 500-round testing period.

I had a whopping total of zero malfunctions. The side ejection port caused no issues whatsoever. Having a gun run flawlessly out of the box from start to finish is always nice.

Toward the end of testing, I did feel like the slide was starting to catch a little bit when chambering a new round, but nothing came of it. Everything felt smooth again after cleaning it when I finished testing.

What Sets the Mako Carbon Compact Apart?

Nothing on the Carbon Compact is new or ground-breaking. But what Kimber did was take a bunch of sensible features found on other guns and put it all in one package with great attention to detail.

Direct optics mounting, great iron sights, forward serrations, intuitive controls, flared magwell, good texturing, places to index your thumbs and fingers…the Carbon Compact really does try to address everything a person interacts with when using a firearm.

The slightly larger size of the Carbon Compact compared to its competitors, combined with its features, may make it a compelling option for those who find those other guns just a bit too thin or too small.

By the Numbers

Ergonomics: 4/5

The gun feels absolutely great in the hand. I docked one point for the basepads being slightly too short for my liking, as well as the slide release being too easy to push down.

Accuracy: 4/5

At 7-15 yards, the accuracy was excellent with both FMJ and defense ammo. The rolling break on the trigger and slightly larger dot on the included optic did make accuracy at 25 yards a little more difficult than some guns in the same class.

Reliability: 5/5

There were zero malfunctions of any kind during testing.

Customization: 2.5/5

A full accessory rail and an optics cut are about all you get here. Holsters are out there, but choices are limited. Aftermarket accessories for this gun are almost non-existent.

Value: 4/5

You get a fully-ambi gun with solid ergonomics that is priced in between the Hellcat Pro and the Sig P365 X-Macro.

Overall: 4/5

Upgrades for the Kimber Mako Carbon Compact

Make use of the Mako’s full accessory rail with a quality weapon light that is built specifically for compact firearms.

Some versions of the Mako Carbon Compact already ship with a Holosun red dot, but if you snag one that doesn’t, the 407K is an excellent choice.

As always, eye and ear protection is essential when hitting the range for that sweet, sweet practice. We might be biased (since it’s our brand), but our favorites are the ShellShock Protection Combo.

Why Trust Pew Pew Tactical

This review was written by Pew Pew Tactical Editor Wyatt Sloan. Wyatt is an NRA-certified instructor with previous experience as a competitive shooter. He owns over 200 firearms, over 100 of which are handguns, and has 10 years of home-based FFL firearm sales under his belt. Wyatt uses his extensive experience with firearms at large to test guns for Pew Pew Tactical — evaluating them based on our standards and metrics. You can see some of his handgun knowledge in action in our Best Micro-Compact 9mm Handguns article!

Editor-in-Chief Jacki Billings runs our experienced team of reviewers and edited this review. She is an NRA-certified Basic Pistol Instructor as well as a member of the Society of Professional Journalists, ACES: Society for Editing, and the Professional Outdoor Media Association. Jacki has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and has worked as a media professional for close to 20 years, specializing in gun media for almost 10 years. With 2,000+ articles to her name, she uses her professional journalism and editing experience to set testing protocols and editorial standards for Pew Pew Tactical.

Final Verdict

There is no denying that the competition in the burgeoning ultra-thin compact carry gun market is stiff. I feel like most people will still opt for a more established gun with a larger aftermarket, like the Hellcat or P365.

But Kimber delivered a gun that ticks a lot of the same boxes as its popular rivals. And those who put a premium on the way a gun feels in their hand might just find their Goldilocks gun in the Carbon Compact and end up with a great pistol in the process.

What do you think of the Kimber Mako Carbon Compact? Drop us a line in the comments below. For more concealed-carry handguns, check out our guide to the Best Concealed Carry Handguns!