Here are my thoughts, and experiences with a compensated Glock, specifically a Glock 22C.
First, to me the recoil control with the compensated over the none was for all practical purposes for me, no different. I know some people claim it to be a huge improvement, and it might depend a bit on ammo, junk low pressure range ammo, verse higher end/velocity ammo verse defensive ammo, but the difference wasn't enough that I could tell the difference, it was a Glock, and in .40 and had a little more oomph than my 17. As far as flash, outside, during the day I didn't seem to catch much of a difference, indoors though there was the occasional spout of flame, but nothing that would have caused too much issue. In very low light, or night conditions though you could get a fair amount of flame and flash from the cuts in the slide/barrel. Enough so, that it could flash blind you for a few moments. Found this out during night drills, illuminating a target with a flashlight at about 15 yards, given command to fire two rounds, fired the first, the flash was enough to cause me to lose the target as my eyes adjusted, and ended up having to just kind of go off where I assumed target was. Made my hits clean, but it is still there. Now, maybe some ammo is less flashing or prone than others, but considering my course of fire I had about 90% of the rounds fire cause enough flash from the ports to either obscure or flash blind my vision I'd personally rather not have the C model.
As far as blast goes, yeah it is a little more indoors, or outdoors for that matter, but nothing horrible compared to a standard 22 in my opinion. I know some will hit it for being a bad gun to fire from retention. I'm going to say that personally I never had an issue, but when firing from retention I was also taught to cant the gun slightly away from the body to prevent the slide from possibly getting caught on clothes, so doing that the vents are angled away from my face as it were. Now, with something like the S&W Shield Performance center guns, depending on dominate hand you use to draw doing a retention drill could me more.... interesting judging by the position of the porting, but that is yet to be seen.
A final con, I will say for the C models, is that if you are shooting an extended amount of ammo in a given day your front sight can begin to get rather filthy. I've seen some that went a good while between cleanings and the front sights were pretty well blackened. Not a huge issue, but one worth noting. Also, it does require a little more TLC and time to get good and clean. That said, I have known a few guys who went looking for the C model glocks to pick up and then replace the barrels with standard barrels and use as carry guns because they waned that extra half ounce, if that, of weight reduction. I suppose that is as valid a reason as any.
"I don't collect guns anymore, I stockpile weapons for ****ing war." Chuck P.
"Some days you eat the bacon, and other days the bacon eats you." SeriousStudent
"Don't complain when after killing scores of women and children in a mall, a group of well armed men who train to shoot people like you in the face show up to say hello." WillBrink
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