Every conversation about affordable carry revolvers arrives at the Taurus 605 eventually, usually with someone insisting it's either the best value in wheelguns or a compromise too far. The truth is less dramatic and more useful: the 605 is a small steel revolver that does exactly what its price promises, provided you understand what that promise is — and isn't.
What the 605 is
The formula is old-school and sound: a compact five-shot cylinder chambered in .357 Magnum, a roughly two-inch barrel, all-steel construction, and a double-action/single-action trigger with a spurred hammer. The stainless-over-black configuration is the version most buyers land on — stainless where weather hits — with a blued variant for traditionalists. No lightweight alloys, no two-piece barrels, no reinvention: a small tank of a snub built to a price by a company that has made small revolvers in enormous volume for decades.
What the steel buys you
The 605's weight is its argument. Where featherweight alloy snubs make full-power .357 a two-round experiment, the 605's steel mass soaks recoil into something a committed shooter can actually train with — stout, certainly, but on the civilized side of the line. And because it's a .357, the two-cartridge system from our caliber guide applies in full: cheap, soft .38 Special for volume practice, .38 +P or full magnum from the .357 board when it's loaded for real work. That flexibility is the whole point of buying the magnum chambering at this size.
The heft also carries into the pocket-versus-belt question honestly: at steel-snub weight, the 605 is a belt gun. It will ride in a coat pocket, but it's happiest in a proper holster, and buyers wanting a true featherweight should know they're shopping a different category — one that trades this gun's shootability for carry comfort.
Where the price shows
A working-price revolver makes its compromises somewhere, and on the 605 they're the honest kind. The double-action trigger arrives heavier and less glassy than guns costing multiples more — it typically smooths noticeably over the first few hundred dry and live cycles, but it starts as a working trigger, not a presentation piece. Fixed sights are regulated for typical defensive loads and are not adjustable; your job is discovering which load they're regulated to in your gun, which is one more reason the test-fire protocol below isn't optional. Fit and finish are functional rather than furniture-grade. None of this affects what the gun does; all of it is visible next to revolvers that cost twice as much, which is exactly how pricing is supposed to work.
The buyer's protocol
Our advice for any working revolver, doubled for a budget one: prove it early. Run a few hundred rounds of your intended practice load and several cylinders of your intended carry load through it in the first sessions — checking function, point of impact against those fixed sights, and ejection with full-length magnum cases, which is the one area short ejector rods make you work. Dry-fire generously along the way; it's free trigger-job labor on this platform. A 605 that passes that protocol has told you everything you need to know, and the overwhelming majority pass.
Kit it out for pennies: the 605 shares its speedloader fit with the broad five-shot .38/.357 class — the HKS 36-A pattern covered in our speedloader guide — so the reload ecosystem is cheap and everywhere. Holster selection in this frame size is equally deep on the holster board.
Who it's for — and not
Buy the 605 if you want maximum genuine .357 capability per dollar in a carry-size steel gun you intend to actually practice with, and you value simple, proven, serviceable hardware over refinement. Look elsewhere if you need featherweight pocket carry, if a premium factory trigger matters more to you than the price gap, or if adjustable sights are a requirement. That's not a criticism sandwich — it's just the category map, and the 605 owns its square of it as well as anything made.
Verdict
The Taurus 605 is the rare budget gun whose compromises are all in the right places: cosmetics and refinement sacrificed, steel and function kept. Feed it right, break in the trigger, confirm the sights, and it delivers the .38-to-.357 flexibility that makes compact magnums worth carrying — at a price that leaves money for the practice ammo that matters more than any gun. Working-class isn't an insult here. It's the review.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Taurus 605 good for concealed carry?
Yes, with the right expectations: it's a steel snub, so it carries best in a proper belt holster rather than a pocket, and rewards the carrier who practices. Its five shots of .357/.38 flexibility and manageable recoil for its size are the draw.
Can the Taurus 605 shoot .38 Special?
Yes — like every .357 Magnum revolver, it fires .38 Special and .38 +P freely. Most owners practice with .38s and reserve magnum or +P loads for carry, which is the platform's intended rhythm.
How is the Taurus 605 trigger?
The double-action pull starts heavy and workmanlike, then smooths noticeably over the first few hundred cycles of dry and live fire. It never becomes a custom trigger, but it becomes a good working one — generous dry-fire practice is effectively a free trigger job.