I bought an sp101 with the 4 inch barrel. I bought it for multi purpose, range, defense, for the wife.
It does recoil quite a bit with 357 mag loads, but isn't insane. My wife shoots light 38 special loads out of it and seems to do ok with it. she has small child like hands and although she thinks the gun is heavy, she can actually grip it.
I had issues shooting extremely dirty hand loads out of it. The grime would get under the cylinder spindle and bind up the cylinder. I changed my loads to something cleaner and no problems since.
