I have one. These are some pics:
They are a very nice looking gun in my view. You may also be able to find a used one that looks like this for around $500-$600. I don't think these look anywhere near as cool as the "A1's", and they use a proprietary rail system that no light companies support anymore. I am looking for a used one of these for my collection, but there aren't tons of them around:
The sights on both the "M" and "M-A1" look like this (furtherest to the right). These sights take some serious getting used to in my view. I struggled with these sights for a long time (6 months) and was going to replace them with 3-dot night sights. I still might do that although I have been doing a lot better with the sights lately. The key seems to be to focus on the front sight and not worry too much about making the triangle fit into the trapazoid - just use the rear sight for rough centering.
The "supportedness" of the chamber vs. a Glock (left to right: Glock 17, HK USP, Walther P99, Steyr M9-A1). "Supported" sounds good, and is good in .40S&W, .357SIG, 10mm, etc., but in 9mm, it is a double edged sword. Your 9mm gun is unlikely to Kaboom anyway, and the tight chamber means that reliability goes down compared to a Glock. I find that, because a Glock is "cut open" like that (unsupported) they never really fail to feed no matter how dirty they get. The Steyr (in my experience) will encounter some fail to feed problems starting at around 200 rounds. Sounds brutal, but this gun does not like being dirty.
Size of the Steyr M9-A1 vs. a Glock 17. The gun is smaller, but not much.
Some other things about the Steyr:
It is deadly accurate. If you can master the sights you will get great results.
The trigger is a vast improvement on the Glock idea. Very crisp.
Muzzle flip/felt recoil is very very low with this gun.
Ergonomics are great. It also has a 1911-style grip angle, different than most European handguns.
On the bad side:
The magwells are tight. For IPSC-style shooting you'd have to add some kind magwell extension.
I find the barrel to be harder to clean out than other similar land and grove barrels. I'm not sure why that is.
The sights are inferior to 3-dot sights, in my opinion.
Reliablity seems questionable when shooting a lot of rounds. The fit of everything is probably too tight for its own good.
The extractor/ejector combination sends brass coming back at a steeper angle than I would like. I prefer it to be straight sideways. Occasionally I have been hit in the head with brass using this gun.
The recoil spring is really strong. This may have something to do with the weird brass ejection angle as well. With light loads (like UMC 115gr.) the slide will often not lock back on the last shot. The gun loves hot loads though, and in my mind that is clearly what it was built for: the fully supported chamber, stiff recoil spring, low bore axis, low recoil... the hotter the ammo the better. +P loads or the equivalent re-loads will work great in this gun.
Despite my criticisms I actually really like this gun. It has a really cool feel to it, and like shooting it. It is not my "main" pistol or anything, but I'll be keeping mine. I have been thinking of replacing the sights, but I think I may have finally figured out how to shoot this gun. The last couple of times I've had it at the range I was getting almost the same results as my USP - which is the gun I shoot the best.
