Palmetto State Armory Micro Dagger Review: Glock 43X Rival or Wannabe?

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In the crowded space that is the compact handgun arena, Palmetto State Armory looks to carve out its own place with the Micro Dagger.

A smaller version of the popular Dagger series, the Micro Dagger is a Glock 43X competitor with some elevated features that make it appealing to budget shoppers.

Does the PSA Micro Dagger bring the desired features missing from the Glock 43X at a more affordable price?

We grabbed a Micro Dagger to find out. So, keep reading as we take it to the range and dive into the specs, features, and our very own range report on this compact 9mm.

PSA Micro Dagger Specs & Features

Specs

• Caliber: 9mm
• Action: Striker-Fired
• Capacity: 15 rounds
• Barrel Length: 3.41″
• Overall Length: 6.5″
• Overall Width: 1.1″
• Overall Height: 4.7″ (without mag)
• Weight: 15.9 oz unloaded/26 oz loaded
• Ships With: One 15-round magazine and PSA Dagger Soft Pistol Case

Features

• Shield RMSc cut optic mount
• Extreme Carry Cuts on slide
• Flat-faced trigger
• DLC coated barrel
• Striker block safety and trigger safety

How We Tested the PSA Micro Dagger

To test the accuracy of the PSA Micro Dagger, we used four types of ammunition (both practice and defensive) over 800 total rounds.

• AAC 115g
• Blazer 124g
• Federal HST 124g
• Sig V-Crown 124g

For accuracy, we opted for five-shot groups benched at 7 yards. A Ransom Rest on a tripod kept the gun steady and removed any shooter error. We used USPSA open targets at 7 to 10 yards and C-Zone steel at 20-25 yards. As we encountered some accuracy issues past 15-20 yards, we also used a Sig Sauer P365 X-Macro to remove any questions regarding shooter error a those distances.

For reliability testing, we ran the PSA Micro Dagger with three types of magazines — one factory-provided PSA 15-round magazine, Glock OEM 10-round magazines, and Shield Arms S15 magazines.

Finally, we assess the actual trigger pull of the PSA Micro Dagger by using a Lyman Digital Trigger Gauge.

PSA Micro Dagger History

In the early 2010s, a few manufacturers dominated the concealed carry market. Models like the Glock 19, Glock 26, and Smith & Wesson Shield were top choices for concealment but lacked in certain features.

Fast forward to the present, and the concealed carry market has evolved dramatically. No longer constrained to choosing between a compact gun for capacity or a lower-capacity model for weight saving, newer options from major manufacturers, such as the Sig Sauer P365, Springfield Hellcat, and S&W Shield Plus, redefined the landscape.

Glock even attempted to jump in with their 43X/48 model. Much to the dismay of Glock enthusiasts, it didn’t quite live up, and many fans were stuck relying on third-party companies to offer capacity solutions.

Meanwhile, Palmetto State Armory was quietly developing a new pistol – an answer to the compact, capacity dilemma…the Micro Dagger.

A slimmed-down version of the company’s successful Dagger pistol, the Micro Dagger is a Glock 43X clone with a capacity of 15 rounds.

Who Is the Micro Dagger For?

The Micro Dagger from PSA is ideal for those who want a larger-capacity pistol without the extra weight. It’s perfect for concealed carriers who want a slim pistol that’s easy to conceal without the added cost of aftermarket accessories.

It’s also a great option for gun owners who want a single pistol for both CCW and home defense, as it works well in the home defense role.

Ergonomics: Fit & Feel

If you own a Glock 43X or 48, the Micro Dagger will feel very familiar…but better.

PSA integrated some ergonomic upgrades to the Micro Dagger, which I found to be immediately noticeable when handling and firing the handgun. The curvature and overall grip geometry maintain enough similarity with the 43X to allow magazine interchangeability but sit noticeably different in the hand.

When handling the Micro Dagger, the grip felt deeper into my palm than the 43X. I believe this is due to a few ergonomic design upgrades: the trigger guard undercut, extended beaver tail, and pinky flare.

If you aren’t familiar with a trigger guard undercut, this essentially means a small portion of material is removed from the bottom of the trigger guard at the portion that connects to the frame of the pistol. By removing and smoothing material in this area, the shooter’s dominant hand middle finger will sit ever so slightly higher into the frame of the handgun.

Glock shooters have been doing this modification in professional shops and garages for decades at this point, so seeing this upgrade coming standard on the Micro Dagger is a great start to the review of this handgun. I personally have done undercuts on multiple of my 43X and 48 handguns, so this is not new to me.

Around the beaver tail area on the top of the frame, PSA removed just enough material to allow the palm to sit a bit deeper into the grip. In practice, this allows the beaver tail to fit just a bit farther back into the hand. Not only does this provide a better subjective “feel” in the hand, it does wonders to prevent the user from getting slide bite.

I have a permanent scar on my dominant side thumb from all the times my thumb rode up just a bit too high on the thousands of rounds I have fired through the G43X.

During my few hundred rounds through the Micro Dagger, I did not experience any slide contact with my thumb to anywhere near the degree I do with the G43X platform. This is a huge win for the Micro Dagger in my book, as not causing permanent disfigurement to shoot a gun properly is always a major plus.

Near the bottom of the frame, you will see two noticeable departures from the G43X frame. The first is a pinky flare on the front side of the frame. Depending on your hand size, this may be a warmly received addition or frustration.

With my medium hands, I found the pinky flare helped to slightly lock my grip in during recoil. However, if you have larger hands, you may find this pinky flare detrimental to your grip. Similar to the love/hate relationship when Glocks came with finger grooves, your hands simply may not align properly with the grip, and the flare may actually dig into your pinky.

The second departure is the recessed cuts in the bottom toward the top of the frame. This is a feature you rarely see included with any factory handgun. The purpose of these cuts is to create a leverage point to pull the magazine out in the event a failure to extract or other type of malfunction causes the magazine to not be able to drop free.

I have personally added these cuts to different pistols I own. My preferred method to clear a failure to extract in a handgun is to rip the magazine out, reinsert the magazine, and rack the slide. This method works particularly well with Glocks and other handguns where the magazine baseplate is relatively large, like the P365 X-Macro.

Glock addressed the same issue in the Gen 5 Pistols by placing the magazine removal cutout in the rear of the frame rather than on the sides. From my experience, having these cuts on the sides is much more intuitive and reliable for stripping a stuck magazine.

The Grip Texture on the Micro Dagger is definitely underwhelming. While certainly an upgrade from the factory Glock Texturing, it isn’t aggressive enough for my liking.

As always, grip texture is highly subjective to the end user, so take my opinions with a grain of salt. Instead of a sandpaper-type texture included on the P365X, for example, the texturing on the Micro Dagger is more of a stylized pattern applied to the plastic. I found the grip texture to be extremely smooth.

One thing the PSA Designers did right is having the texturing continue high up on the frame, as opposed to many handguns, where the texturing ends too low on the frame. This design feature allows the support hand thumb to come mostly into contact with the grip texture rather than bare plastic.

During the shooting portion of this evaluation, I surprisingly didn’t notice my hands slipping around on the grip under recoil. I believe this to be more of a compliment to the gun’s ergonomics, which did a good enough job of locking my hand in place to not rely on the grip texture too much.

While the placement of the texturing is definitely a win for the Micro Dagger, hopefully, the designers at PSA will allow a customization or option to have a tackier, more aggressive grip texture from the factory.

Moving up away from the frame, the slide offers some great upgrades from the factory that come stock with the Micro Dagger. Forward and rear serrations are a standard feature on most handguns now, and the Micro Dagger doesn’t depart. While nothing special or fancy, they certainly provide the friction needed to effectively manipulate the slide from the muzzle end or towards the rear.

The Micro Dagger’s muzzle-end serrations do end low on the slide for my taste. During press checks, a large portion of my thumb was depressing into metal rather than serrations. While not a deal breaker, this is an area the Micro Dagger can improve upon in the future.

The highlight of the Micro Dagger in the slide category is the sighting options at the gun’s price point. While Glock still ships with plastic sights from the factory, PSA opted to include steel iron sights from the factory. Including steel sights, in my opinion, should be a standard feature for every pistol that comes stock, but the fact that this gun includes them at a price point several hundred dollars lower than the equivalent 43X MOS is somewhat mind-boggling.

These sights certainly aren’t anything fancy, just plain 3 dot-white sights. Something is always better than nothing, and plain Jane 3-dot steel sights are superior to plastic sights all day long.

For those of us living in the 21st century, the Micro Dagger comes red dot ready from the factory with the industry standard RMSc footprint.

For the purpose of this review, we utilized the Holosun 407K optic, which sports a 6 MOA dot ideal for closer-range engagements. Including an optic cut from the factory is one of the many features that sets this gun apart from others in the same price category.

How Does the Palmetto State Armory Micro Dagger Shoot?

The shooting experience on the Micro Dagger was very good when you take into account what it is.

Any subcompact 9mm handgun is going to be snappy and somewhat violent to shoot. Even with compensators, porting, and soft ammo, physics will always be the deciding factor in how a gun ultimately feels. I think the better question is how controllable the pistol is relative to its intended purpose.

For a lightweight, high-capacity concealed carry gun, the Micro Dagger was very usable. I found the shooting experience to be much more enjoyable and consistent with the ergonomic improvements described above over the G43X.

With proper grip fundamentals and being mindful of your trigger press, the Micro Dagger will certainly deliver acceptable performance for its intended use.

I ran the same target transition drills I use to evaluate every handgun and didn’t experience an unexpected drop in performance when compared to a full-size or better-handling pistol. When running a Bill Drill, for example, you will have considerably more muzzle flip and a sharper recoil impulse than a compact or full-size gun. That said, with the proper grip, you can still easily achieve sub-3-second, all A zone hits from concealment.

I know and understand my limitations with a subcompact platform, and the Micro Dagger is no different. The full-size grip is the best way to fight the laws of physics that hinder every pistol in this size category. Having a full-firing grip and being able to apply consistent leverage with the pinkies make all the difference in turning a subcompact pistol from a 5-yard gun to a 25-yard gun.

I found no issue reliably hitting C-zone steel targets quickly out to 25-30 yards — we will address distances further than this a bit later in the article.

Its 15-round capacity made running drills all that easier compared to the G43X. I have taken multiple shooting classes running my 43X with OEM mags, and every time, I would have to carry double the magazine in pockets and a dump pouch compared to my other classmates running compact and full-sized guns.

The Micro Dagger eliminates this issue, as the magazine capacity jumps up to that of most compact-sized handguns.

Its trigger is similar to what you would expect from a Glock trigger…just ever so slightly worse.

Surprisingly, the G43X has one of the best factory triggers for any of the Glock models, with probably the most crisp break once you go past the wall.

The Micro Dagger didn’t quite make it to the level of the 43X trigger. There is a significant amount of mush as you push past the wall, and doesn’t really have a defined point at which you know the gun is going to go off.

This isn’t problematic when shooting open targets at a relatively close distance, but it becomes quite noticeable when you start to take farther shots or shoot tight groups for accuracy. The trigger isn’t particularly heavy, with our average pulls breaking around the 5 lb mark, but the trigger pull itself leaves a lot to be desired. It’s a hinge design similar to the original Smith & Wesson M&P design, which works fine for what it needs to do.

Overall, the trigger in the Micro Dagger is certainly usable but far from ideal or desirable.

Accuracy

To test the Micro Dagger’s accuracy, we used a Ransom Rest to stabilize the pistol as much as possible. We fired 5-round groups at 7 yards with multiple ammo types.

The groups were subpar, and I was disappointed with the Micro Dagger’s accuracy. For reference, with many other handguns undergoing the same test with the same ammo, I can typically easily group the five rounds under 1 inch, and often, multiple rounds go through the same hole or touch. Not so with the Micro Dagger.

Our accuracy results were less than stellar when using AAC 115g FMJ, Blazer 124g FMJ, Federal HST 124g, and Sig V Crown 124g.

Multiple ammo types shot 2.5 to 3-inch groups, which is far from the standard we typically see from handguns. These accuracy issues were compounded at distance, as I struggled to reliably hit a C-Zone steel target at 40 yards.

I never really struggle to land these hits, especially with no added time pressure. However, I was unable to reliably hit the target at 40 yards.

To ensure it was not a shooter-induced error, I shot a Sig Sauer P365 X-Macro from the same distance and made all the hits with ease. While part of the issue could be an imperfect zero magnified by distance, the poor accuracy performance at the close distance of 7 yards begins to tell another story.

I didn’t have any issues hitting the target at 20 to 25 yards, so if you expect to hit farther distances with the Micro Dagger, you really need to test it for yourself and not make any assumptions.

Reliability

We fired over 800 rounds between multiple shooters through the Micro Dagger for our reliability testing.

Running a majority of AAC and Blazer Brass range ammunition, we experienced zero malfunctions utilizing the PSA 15-round magazines or the Glock OEM 10-round magazines.

The only issue we ran into was using the Shield Arms S15 Magazines with S&B FMJ range ammunition. This combo caused failures to feed. When using the Shield Arms S15 Magazines with Blazer Brass and AAC range ammunition, we experienced no issues.

To play it safe, the best option is to use the 15-round magazine designed for the Micro Dagger by PSA. The Glock OEM 10-round magazine does work, but you will notice the magazine can get stuck upon insertion if you rock it too far forward into the handgun. If you pull the magazine towards you during insertion, you will not experience this problem.

I was honestly expecting to have malfunction issues of some sort, considering the price point of the gun, but was pleasantly surprised that the gun ran flawlessly with multiple types of ammo

What Makes the Micro Dagger Unique?

If you are on a tight budget and are looking for a high-capacity, subcompact 9mm pistol, the PSA Micro Dagger might be the gun for you.

As I mentioned, my initial skepticism about the gun’s price point is based on PSA’s QC record. Though our overall experience was relatively positive, I would highly recommend buying a few hundred rounds of ammunition to ensure your gun will be reliable enough to be used as a concealed carry gun.

Considering the accuracy limitations we experienced, the Micro Dagger may not be able to flex into an unintended role outside of a 25-yard and defensive handgun.

There is undeniably a lot of value built into the low price of the Micro Dagger, and I am excited to see how PSA expands the Micro Dagger lineup as the years progress.

By the Numbers

Ergonomics: 4/5

The Micro Dagger stands out with several thoughtful design improvements that enhance user comfort and handling. Features like the trigger guard undercut, extended beaver tail, and pinky flare offer a more natural grip and prevent common issues like slide bite.

Accuracy: 3/5

Accuracy is somewhat underwhelming. While it performs well enough at close range, performance diminishes at longer distances. During testing, the pistol struggled to maintain tight groupings beyond 25 yards.

Reliability: 4/5

Across 800 rounds fired with various ammunition, this pistol proved pretty dependable with no malfunctions when using PSA’s 15-round magazines and Glock OEM 10-round magazines. That said, Shield Arms S15 magazines, paired with specific ammo types, caused failures to feed. Just be sure to test your ammo + mag combo before putting it in a holster.

Customization: 5/5

Its optic-ready slide allows you to add your preferred red dot. Plus, it is compatible with Glock magazines, so you can stock up.

Value: 5/5

Despite some limitations, the Micro Dagger blends solid performance with an aggressive price tag. It’s an appealing choice for gun owners who want a high-capacity, compact, conceal-carry solution that doesn’t break the bank.

Overall: 4.2/5

Upgrades & Accessories for the PSA Micro Dagger.

For this review, we used a Holosun 407K as our preferred red dot.

Holster-wise, we used a Hidden Hybrid Holster, which we prefer when it comes to hybrid holsters.

Ammo-wise, we dig AAC since it’s affordable and also a good quality 9mm.

Topping things off, you gotta have a good pair of eyes and ears! We love ShellShock Protection, our very own brand!

Why You Should Trust Pew Pew Tactical

Behind the gun is Preston Hughes, a former emergency room and trauma RN with plenty of shooting experience. He attended the North Texas Police Academy before having to leave due to a shoulder injury. Preston is also a competition shooter and owner of the Citizen Response channel on YouTube. His expertise lies in pistols, concealed carry, and competition shooting. Preston led the research, testing, and evaluation of the PSA Micro Dagger.

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. Jacki personally owns a variety of concealed guns, including a handful of Glocks and a PSA Dagger.

Final Verdict

The PSA Micro Dagger combines firepower and efficiency while maintaining a lightweight and highly concealable form. Its competitive price point also makes it stand out.

This 9mm pistol enters the CCW arena as an attractive option for budget-conscious consumers seeking a feature-filled self-defense handgun.

What do you think of PSA’s Micro Dagger? Let us know in the comments below. For more on PSA, check out our round-up of our experience with most of their guns in our PSA Review.