The pros and cons of CS:GO’s newest gun—the MP5-SD

The MP5-SD made its debut in CS:GO last night, and users are already going nuts with it. Despite the hype, the gun isn’t as good as it sounds.

At a small price point of $1,500, you can try out the silenced SMG for yourself on official in-game servers already. The only catch is that you’ll need to swap out the MP7 in your SMG loadout in your inventory.

Related: The MP5 has officially returned to Counter-Strike

Initial testing of the MP5-SD upon its release shows that it’s weaker overall when compared to its SMG counterparts. The majority of its stats are exactly the same as the MP7, with a few exceptions, according to weapon analyst SlothSquadron. Stats that have different values are damage, movement speed, running inaccuracy, and reload time. These values can be verified on the public CS:GO weapon spreadsheet.

Pros:

• High rate of fire
• No tracers
• Same spray pattern as MP7

• High movement velocity of 235 (vs. MP7’s 220)
• Shorter reload time of 2.94 seconds (vs. MP7’s 3.13 seconds)

Cons:

• Shorter damage drop off at range
• Silencer not detachable
• Low base damage of 27 (vs. MP7’s 29)
• High running inaccuracy of 40.60 (vs. MP7’s 30.46)
• Slower clip ready time after reload of 1.97 seconds (vs. MP7’s 1.43)

Below is a list of ways to frag an enemy while using the MP5-SD. The silenced weapon has one of the lowest damage values in its class, behind the P90 and MP9, which have 26 base damage.

Bullets needed per kill with the MP5-SD:

• 2 headshots
• 1 headshot, 3 body shots
• 1 headshot, 2 leg shots
• 6 leg shots
• 7 body shots

As SlothSquadron mentioned in his in-depth analysis on Reddit, it’s better to just to stick to the SMG that you’re used to. Unless you’re an avid user of the MP7 and you can do serious damage to enemy teams consistently, it’s better to just stick to the UMP-45 or MAC-10 within the meta. The MP5-SD is overhyped because of nostalgia from CS:1.6 and CS:S.