AmmoForSale.com has a fairly good offering of .40 S&W ammo, and its fairly well priced. I went with a 50 round box of 180gr JHP .40S&W ammo by Federal to try them out. My first reaction to this ammo was poor. It comes in a plain white box. It’s not the least bit sexy. You’ve heard that you can’t judge a book by its cover. This also applies to ammo. The box is not flashy, but the quality of the ammo is good.
The cost of this ammo is a cheap $22 a box at the time of this writing. This is the price I normally pay for FMJ target ammo. A box of JHP that can be used for home defense for less than 50 cents a round is almost unbelievable.
It is generally accepted that you should practice with the same ammo you plan on using in a defensive situation. The reason is that every brand and type of ammo behaves differently. Target ammo will have a different point of impact and recoil than high quality home defense ammo. The problem is that high quality JHP ammo is normally very expensive. Who can afford to shoot a hundred rounds at $1 a pop?
This ammo is well suited for home defense. It may not have a high tech bullet, but I believe it would stop an attacker as well as anything. In fact, it has some advantages over many of the expensive brands. These Federal 180gr JHP rounds have less noticeable recoil than most home defense ammo I have tried. This helps keep you on target and helps maintain accuracy. The low price of this ammo would allow you to practice more, which is more important than any ammo type.
I am not a great pistol shot. In fact, I am quite bad. I’m not a great shot with any weapon, except maybe a shotgun. However, this ammo did as well as any in my gun. I’m sure this ammo can perform much better than I can. It did shoot slightly low and to the right. This could be my technique. With that said, I did not experience a single jam or misfire in the entire box. There were no fliers. All of my shots hit the targets kill zone. It was clean burning and did not dirty my barrel excessively. I was surprised when I cleaned my gun the night after I went to the range at how clean it was.
I really like this ammo. From now on I am going to buy this instead of my standard target ammo. I highly recommend it!
Score: 9/10
Smooth 
Ben