I'm entering this thread very late, but wanted to put some very nice words out about the S&W M&P 15-22. I bought an olive green version from Academy Sporting Goods for $459 this past weekend and took it straight to the indoor range. I have a Bushmaster 223 Superlight Carbine and was really interested in the M&P 15-22 for fun plinking and possibly a practice tool. I have to agree with all the comments I have read in this thread about the pros & cons of using this gun as a practice tool, but I have to say that the gun was freaking fun to shoot. I fired about 200 rounds and only had one FTF, but it was a CCI round that was probably over 14 years old. After giving the round time to react to a delayed fire, I ejected the round to see that it should have gone off, as the indentation on the rim was complete and sufficient. Gun didn't fail, but the old round did.

I've purchased a couple of extra magazines from cheaper-than-dirt.com (who delivered the shipment in to my house on Wednesday when I placed my order Monday morning! - Excellent job and excellent prices!) as well as an inexpensive 5-position forearm grip (UTG Model 4 Vertical Foregrip Black Ergonomic Ambidextrous 5-position Foldable Foregrip Picatinny RB-FGRP170B). The magazines were less than $16 each and the forearm grip was $15. The grip does fit a bit loosely on the rail, but for $15 it very nice.

The olive green version I purchased looked very similar to the one posted in this thread (great photos btw), but the barrel, upper, and lower receiver are olive green and the 5-position butt, the pistol grip, magazine, and front and rear sights are black. (Apparently this version is a limited run of the gun, and it was about $40 cheaper than the version with the raised AR sight/handle, so I was very proud to become its owner.) The indented lettering on the receivers are filled with white paint, so the gun has a very sweet look in my opinion. The added forearm grip was black, so all the attachments match for a very nice look. I added a Bushel red-dot sight that came with my Bushmaster (on which I put a tatical 1x->4x scope) on the M&P (black of course) which worked very well when sighted in at the range.

The gun does disassemble like an AR, and was very easy to clean and reassemble. The magazines are S&W Proprietary, but also very cheap. The magazines also disassembled and reassembled very easily for cleaning. Nice engineering work here S&W. I read reviews about the Colt version of a 15-22, but was dissappointed with that gun when I saw that it was basically an inexpensive (but proven) typical 22lr design internally. Heck one should probably just buy the Mossberg 15-22 for $250 in my opinion if you are considering the Colt version.

I obviously want to run many more rounds though the gun, as I've barely spent more than $5 on ammo so far. However, at this point, I highly recommend you snatch one of these babies up.