I have shot Geco for 2 years and never felt the need to choose another brand because it’s extremely accurate and reliable. A month ago my range bought Sellier&Bellot Nontox rounds and I decided to try them to see how they compare with Geco (both are 124 grs FMJ).
Price
The price here in Switzerland is almost the same: for 1’000 rounds it’s 250 CHF for Geco and 240 CHF for Sellier&Bellot (bulk prices). With a difference less than 5% I don’t take the price into account for this review.
Performance and reliability
When I bought the Sellier&Bellot rounds I was really interested to see if they can match Geco’s quality, their accuracy is always impressive. Sellier&Bellot seems to have some accuracy problem at 25 meters (27 yards): overall they do their work but I wouldn’t use them in competition. Other shooters from my range have the same results and it just seems too hard to get tight groupings. Lately I switched to IPSC shooting and at closer distances the difference disappears: there’s absolutely no problem at 10 meters and the bullet goes exactly where you want. I’m also used to Geco’s strong recoil (if I remember correctly they are rated as +P ammo) but I know other shooters that don’t like it and use Sellier&Bellot for this reason. Regarding reliability both of them work great with my Glock 19: in 3 years I never had an ammo related malfunction.
Cleanliness
I expected this to be a strong point for Sellier&Bellot and it was easily confirmed after a couple of shots. I took a couple of photographs to show the difference (from left to right you can see Sellier&Bellot, Geco and Federal American Eagle):
Geco and Federal are almost the same but Sellier&Bellot is amazing, the brass is like new. The only downside that I have with Geco is that it tends to leave too much dirt on my gun, after 200-300 it really looks like it needs to be cleaned. I fired 500 S&B rounds and the gun is still reasonably clean, I don’t know how they achieve this result but it’s really impressive. Since I switched to IPSC my ammunition consumption skyrocketed and I find important to use an ammunition that it’s safer for my health. Citing directly the Sellier&Bellot website: After firing the cartridge is free from toxic exposure to barium, lead, mercury, antimony. It does not pollute the environment, does not endanger the shooter’s health with combustion products, and does not pollute the gun. It ensures safe shooting in closed premises and on target ranges.
Conclusions
After a month of trials I have to say that I’m not going to replace one brand with another. I think that for precision shooting Geco is unbeatable (if you don’t mind to dirt) and at 25 meters it’s the best that you can buy. I find them overkill for IPSC where the focus shifts from quality to quantity: I’ll use Sellier&Bellot because they are clean, reliable, accurate at short distances and you breathe less toxic products.
