Tag Archives: beretta 84

Oh, that Cheetah roar

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Probably one of the most underrated of .380ACPs, the old-school Beretta 84/85 Cheetah, with its subcompact alloy frame and its 13+1 capacity, was a rock-solid classic back in the 1990s and early 2000s.

I have a couple of different .32 and .380 Beretta Cheetahs, all recently imported former Italian police guns, and I really like them.

Well, Beretta has brought it back in a very modern second generation, the 80X.

As its name would imply, borrows the Vertec grip, X-treme S Double/Single trigger, and skeletonized hammer as seen on the 92X line, but shrinks everything down a bit while keeping a 13+1 round capacity.

Direct blowback action, it runs a 3.9-inch barrel giving it an overall length of a very handy 4.9 inches. Weight is 25 ounces unloaded. Either way, nice to see folks are still making hammer-fired metal-framed guns for mainstream carry use. 

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Turkish Cheetah

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To be clear, I love the Beretta 80-series of DA/SA pistols, best known to collectors as the Cheetah line. In my opinion, they were the high-water mark for when it comes to 1970s-80s all-metal hammer-fired compact carry guns. A simple blowback action, the pistol is light due to its abbreviated size, open-top slide, and aluminum frame.

As Beretta was in the small pistol market for about 60 years before the Cheetah hit the scene, they knew what they were doing when they came up with the design. What people wanted. What worked.

I have a couple of different .32 and .380 Beretta Cheetahs, all recently imported former Italian police guns, and I really like them.

While surplus Euro police guns can be had for around $300-$400 today, they often have a good bit of abuse to them as, let’s face it, many were carried for 25-30 years. Still imported as new-production for the commercial market as late as 2017, a factory-fresh Cheetah these days almost always goes for $1K or higher.

Sigh.

This lead us to the Turkish-made, some say commercially licensed (production started two years after Beretta closed down its own Cheetah line) Tisas Fatih B380 as brought in by SDS Imports, a double-stack 13+1 capacity .380 that I have found in testing to handle fairly well…

More in my column at Guns.com.