So I have had a Beretta Nano for a long while and while it is reliable and accurate, I didn't care for the grip. Most people would say the trigger is the worst feature, but having been brought up on double action revolvers, the trigger never bothered me (or any other DA pistol for that matter). Well Beretta now sells the APX Carry frame for $40. While Beretta just recently released the APX Carry, it's really just a Nano with different clothing. Thought I'd show the transformation and differences.

Here's the Nano next to the APX frame before I started swapping parts:



You can see that the APX frame has a slight beaver tail and a higher grip cutout on the rear compared to the Nano frame. It also has a downward tail piece that makes this frame frame taller than the original Nano regardless of what magazine is in the gun. Beretta's nomenclature for the APX Carry and the Nano are listed as the same height.. Cough, cough, bullshit!! Also the new APX frame has a cutout for the slide catch which the Nano doesn't have accessible. More on that later. The front of the trigger guard is also larger and more square, along with more aggressive stippling on front and rear straps. Otherwise, the hole and internal dimensions are exactly the sames

Here's a rear shot of the frames. You can definitely see the APX frame is taller than the Nano frame and has a higher grip purchase to lower the bore axis in relationship to the grip.



Here is the Nano frame on top of the APX frame. You can see there is there is more palm-filling arch angle on the APX frame. In hand, it feels better than the Nano frame. The actual curvature of the rear strap is almost exactly the same curves as on the rear strap of the p365



My original magazine fit in perfectly, however the new APX magazines have different (re: thicker) mag base plates that fill out the entire cutout in front of the tab at the heel of the frame. Since I'm going to be using my original Nano magazines with the slimmer base plates, I will file down the excessive tab thickness at some point in time. The APX Carry is definitely taller than the Nano without justifying the extra height other than more plastic since magazine round count is the same.



Here it is all "APX-ified". One pic with Pierce finger extension, and other with standard Nano flat base plate.





FYI: While I don't have the slide catch from the APX Carry, I can still pretty easily stick my thumb into the gap and manually activate the slide catch which makes it better for malfunction clearing (not that I've had any I can remember).

While I think the APX Carry Slide is ugly as shit, I do like the APX frame with the Nano slide. Once I file down that tail piece a little, it'll be perfect. I already made a post on how to modify the mags to hold 7 rounds a while back.

Here's the APX Carry. The slide cutouts are awful looking to me:



This was simply a fun project. While I have no problems relying on the Nano for self defense carry, it's not as small as my Kahr CM9 and the same size as my p365 which holds more rounds so it doesn't fit into my rotation. I also had a prior post a while back detailing why the CM9 was better than the standard Nano (especially now that Magguts springs lets you have 7 rounds in magazine), but many of the things I didn't like about the Nano are fixed with this newer APX Carry frame.

wild!

Very nice. A Nano is my daily CCW.

Interesting grip transition you did there. I actually like the Toblerone slide serrations & find them rather useful.

Finally got around to shortening the tail end to match the Nano magazine baseplates that are shorter than APX baseplates though they share the same mag body. Thought I'd update the final results. I simply shaved it down with a knife, then sanded with some sandpaper to smooth it out.

The completed Nano/APX Carry Hybrid! Note how in my original pics, the tail end of the frame overhung the Nano mag by a good quarter inch. Now it doesn't. One day maybe Beretta will sell the APX Carry slide release and I'll swap that part. Until then, it's fine.