Neos — Beretta's American .22, 2002 to 2023

The first pistol Beretta says it designed entirely in the United States: the Greek name, the entry-level brief, the DLX of 2003, the carbine kit that was not 2004, the 2010 recall, the loss of California, and the quiet disappearance of the product page

Figure 1 — A blued U22 Neos with the 4.5-inch barrel, left side. Almost every line the eye follows belongs to the barrel unit: the long flat-topped rib with its integral Weaver rail, the scalloped cut in its left flank, and the adjustable rear sight standing at the back of it. The slide is the short ribbed block in the middle, and the polymer grip module carries the trigger, the trigger guard, the ambidextrous safety and the magazine. The barrel length is not stated on Beretta's page; it is read here from the ratio of overall length to overall height, which is 1.70 for the 4.5-inch gun, 1.98 for the 6-inch and 2.27 for the 7.5-inch. This photograph measures 1.71. Beretta studio photograph, recovered from beretta.com through the Internet Archive. Editorial reference use.

The Beretta U22 Neos is a .22 Long Rifle, single-action, blowback semi-automatic pistol made by Beretta U.S.A. Corp. at 17601 Beretta Drive, Accokeek, Maryland, from 2002.¹ It was sold with interchangeable 4.5-inch, 6-inch and 7.5-inch barrels, each carrying its own adjustable rear sight and its own integral Weaver-style rail, in blued or stainless (“Inox”) finish, with a deluxe DLX version from 2003 to 2007 and a carbine conversion kit from 2010. Its styling and ergonomics came from Giugiaro Design in Italy. Beretta’s own catalogue page called the result “Cool, Futuristic Design” and no other factory has said that about a .22 pistol with a straight face.²

It is also a gun about which the public record is unusually inaccurate. The most-cited reference work has its width wrong by a factor of ten and credits the design to the wrong party. The best recent article puts the optic rail on the wrong part and the carbine kit six years early. The pistol’s own instruction manual contains a specification that cannot be right. This volume sets out the company history and the dates; the corrections are made where they arise and are gathered in the series README.

1.1 What the U22 Neos Is

Beretta’s own specification table, from the instruction manual coded UD6A0277-04/04 and dated 23 April 2004 on its interior pages:¹

Table 1 — What the U22 Neos Is

	4.5 in barrel	6.0 in barrel	7.5 in barrel
Operation	Semiautomatic, slide blow back
Action	Single action, semiautomatic
Striker	Cocking indicator
Rifling	R.H. 6 grooves, pitch 350 mm / 13.8 in
Safety	Manual, ambidextrous, blocks sear
Slide	Alloy steel, matte finish, stainless or blued
Barrel	Alloy steel, matte finish, stainless or blued
Calibre	22 LR (Long Rifle)
Overall length	224 mm / 8.8 in	262 mm / 10.3 in	300 mm / 11.8 in
Barrel length	114 mm / 4.5 in	153 mm / 6.0 in	191 mm / 7.5 in
Sight radius	189 mm / 7.4 in	227 mm / 8.9 in	265 mm / 10.4 in
Overall height	132 mm / 5.2 in
Width across the safety levers	30 mm / 1.2 in
Width across the bottom of the grip	37 mm / 1.5 in
Magazine	10 rounds
Weight, unloaded	900 g / 31.7 oz	1,025 g / 36.2 oz	1,114 g / 39.3 oz

Two corrections are folded into that table.

The first is Beretta’s own. The manual prints the 7.5-inch gun’s overall length as “224/11.8”. 224 mm is the 4.5-inch gun’s figure, repeated by a typesetter; 11.8 inches is 300 mm. The receiver contributes 224 − 114 = 110 mm in the short gun, so 110 + 191 = 301 mm, and the inch figure is the one that survives arithmetic. The table above prints 300 mm, which is also the figure Beretta’s international catalogue carried.¹³

The second is Wikipedia’s. Its infobox gives the width as 370 mm, which would be 14.6 inches across a .22 pistol.⁴ It is a misplaced decimal point on the manual’s 37 mm.

A third point is not an error but is worth knowing before any two sources are compared. Beretta published this pistol’s dimensions at least three times and rounded them differently each time. For the 6-inch gun the 2004 US manual gives 262 mm and 1,025 g; the 2009 international page gives 260 mm and 1,000 g; the 2023 catalogue gives 261.62 mm and 1,026 g.¹³² The 2023 metric column is an exact conversion of the inch figures — 6 in is 152.4 mm, 1.5 in is 38.1 mm, 8.8 in is 223.52 mm — so it is derived rather than measured. All three describe the same pistol. None should be averaged with another.

1.2 The Brief, in Beretta’s Own Words

The manual’s opening paragraph is the clearest statement of intent the company published:

“From the Greek word for ‘new’, the Beretta U22 NEOS represents a starting point for a complete line of pistols ideal for beginners but sophisticated in design and complete with features. Safety, affordability, modular construction, easy maintenance, performance (accuracy, reliability and durability), modern styling and innovation were all goals for Beretta’s first 100% American designed and manufactured pistol.”¹

Eight goals, and the two that shaped everything visible are modular construction and modern styling. The pistol was designed so that its barrel, its grip, its slide and its sights could all be changed by the owner, and Beretta’s marketing leaned on that harder than on anything else. The inside cover of the manual is a photographic plate captioned “U22 NEOS MODULAR SYSTEM — BARRELS, SLIDES, SIGHTS AND GRIPS EASILY INTERCHANGE TO PERSONALIZE PISTOL”, showing an accessory slide assembly, an accessory barrel assembly, accessory front sights, accessory rear sight blades, and two sets of accessory grips.¹ Offering the slide as a user-swappable accessory is not a normal thing for a pistol maker to do, and it is the strongest single expression of the modular claim.

In 2004 Beretta also ran an interactive “build your Neos” configurator on its website — “Use This Interactive Site to Select and Customize Your Neos Pistol… It’s easy to personalize the Neos from mild to wild… You can print out a parts list and find a dealer near you.”⁵ It required Flash Player 6, and nothing of it survives but the landing page.

1.3 Why “Neos”

Neos is Greek for “new”. Beretta’s own copy explains the choice in market terms rather than classical ones: the pistol “reflects a sleeker look and feel, guaranteed to appeal to a new generation of Beretta enthusiasts.”¹ The 2011 store page put the same thought the other way round — “Neos means ‘new’ in Greek, and Beretta’s American design staff started with a clean sheet when drawing up this new line of .22 pistols. The lines are meant to appeal to a new generation of shooting enthusiasts who are respectful of the past while bringing a fresh attitude to the shooting sports.”⁶

The name is also a statement about where it sat in the catalogue. Beretta’s rimfire history is long — the 71, 75 and 76 target pistols, the 21A Bobcat, the 950 Jetfire — and all of it is Italian. The Neos was not a development of any of it.

1.4 “Beretta’s First 100% American Designed and Manufactured Pistol”

That claim, from the manual, is worth holding up to the light, because the same manual credits the styling to an Italian design house three sentences later.¹

Read as a statement about engineering, it is defensible and is what Beretta meant. Beretta U.S.A. had been building pistols at Accokeek since the M9 contract, but those were Italian designs made under licence in Maryland. The Neos was drawn in Maryland. The 2011 page says so plainly: “Beretta’s American design staff started with a clean sheet.”⁶ Beretta’s international site, writing for a non-American audience, phrased it as “Designed and manufactured in America by Beretta USA Corp.”⁴

Read as a statement about the whole object, it is in tension with the next paragraph of the same document, which credits “styling and ergonomics” to “world renowned Giugiaro Design stylists” in Italy.¹ The company appears to have regarded styling as something separate from design — a view that is itself a fact about how the Neos was made, and one Volume 2 takes up.

1.5 Launch, 2002

The pistol launched in 2002 and was carried as a cover story in American Rifleman that June, under the title “Do U22?”.⁷ American Rifleman’s own retrospective, twenty-one years later, remembered the reception:

“When Beretta’s U22 Neos officially launched in 2002, its racy looks were different, unexpected and a breath of fresh air in a market dominated by clones and lookalikes… Some traditionalists immediately labeled the pistol’s looks as futuristic and that, of course, led to scattered claims the gun was out of sync with the rimfire’s legacy.”⁸

The price was the other half of the pitch. Paco Kelly, writing for GunBlast on 10 May 2003 in a review headlined “Beretta’s New Space Handgun”, placed the pistol commercially in one sentence — “Beretta has at last joined the likes of Ruger, Browning, and High Standard for a piece of the mid-priced .22 Rimfire handgun market” — and gave the street price as “around 250 dollars retail”.⁹ Five years later Jeff Quinn was still quoting “under $250 at many retail gun shops.”¹⁰ Beretta’s own list price was $275 for the 6-inch gun in July 2011 and $325 for both catalogued lengths by March 2023.⁶²

That is the whole commercial story in four figures. Against the American target .22 pistols the hub covers elsewhere — the Smith & Wesson Model 41 and the Ruger Mark III and Mark IV — the Neos was never intended to compete on accuracy or on finish. It was intended to be the .22 a shop could sell for $250 to somebody who had never bought a pistol.

1.6 The DLX, 2003 to 2007

By 2003 Beretta had added a deluxe version, the U22 Neos DLX. The manual lists exactly five differences, and the list is shorter than most accounts of it:¹

An adjustable trigger, for pre-travel and overtravel.
A set of three replaceable coloured front and rear sights — black, white and red — “which may be mixed in any color combination”.
A set screw added to the front sight to make blade removal easier.
Textured soft rubber grip inlays, coloured to complement the finish.
Slide engraving: “the DLX slide is engraved with the elegant and contrasting U22 Neos logo.”

The DLX came only with the 6-inch or 7.5-inch barrel; there was no 4.5-inch DLX.¹⁸

🔴 The adjustable trigger is a good deal less adjustable than it sounds, and Beretta says so in the same manual. Under TRIGGER ADJUSTMENT: “The trigger pull weight is pre-set at the Beretta factory and is not adjustable. Adjusting the pre and overtravel of the trigger will NOT change the trigger pull weight.” Of the two adjustments, only overtravel is an owner’s job — a 1.5 mm hex screw. Pre-travel “requires partial disassembly of the trigger mechanism. This operation should be performed by Beretta or by a competent gunsmith.”¹ So the DLX offers the owner one adjustment, and it is the one that does least for a shot.

The last year of DLX production was 2007.⁴ Beretta afterwards “occasionally produced standard Neos pistols with colored grip inlays as dealer exclusive models” — Jeff Quinn reviewed a pink one in 2008 and a Davidson’s exclusive with purple grip inserts and a purple rail in 2014.¹⁰¹¹

1.7 The Carbine Kit Was 2010, Not 2004

🔴 This is the correction that matters most for anyone dating a Neos or a kit.

Wikipedia states that “Beretta released the U22 Neos Carbine Kit (to convert the pistol into a long gun) in 2004.”⁴ American Rifleman repeats it: “In 2004, the gun’s modularity shone when Beretta introduced a carbine-conversion kit.”⁸ The hub’s own working note on space-age candidates carried the same date before this dive was written.

Beretta U.S.A.’s press release is datelined ACCOKEEK, MD (February 3, 2010):

“Beretta U.S.A. recently introduced its new U22 Neos Carbine Kit, adding another level of performance and modularity to its U22 Neos pistol product line. The new carbine kit, which is now shipping to dealers and distributors, is ideal for target shooting and for hunting small game.”¹²

Beretta’s own online store page for the kit, archived in December 2010, opens with the words “New for 2010”.¹³ And the 2004 instruction manual — which documents the modular system down to accessory slide assemblies, accessory barrels, accessory grips with rubber inlays and three colours of replaceable sight blade — says nothing whatever about a stock, a fore-end or a carbine barrel.¹ A kit that existed in 2004 would have been in that plate.

The error is traceable. Wikipedia’s carbine-kit paragraph cites a PoliceOne reproduction of Beretta’s press release dated 5 February 2010 — two days after Beretta’s dateline.⁴ A 2010 citation carrying a 2004 date is what a transposition looks like, and it has since been copied into the magazine literature. The kit is covered in full, with its legal consequences, in Volume 6.

1.8 September 2010: the Recall

Seven months after the carbine kit shipped, Beretta recalled the pistol.

“Beretta U.S.A. Corp. has discovered a potential condition with Beretta .22 caliber NEOS semiautomatic pistols in which the pistol will fire even if the safety is activated and, in some cases, the pistols may fire if the safety is moved from the OFF to the ON position. Chances of either of these situations occurring is extremely remote and no injuries have occurred because of this condition, however, because of safety concerns relating to this situation, Beretta U.S.A. Corp. is immediately implementing a recall of Beretta .22 caliber NEOS semiautomatic pistols.”¹⁴

The remedy was a replacement firing pin assembly, fitted free at Accokeek, with Beretta paying shipping both ways provided the owner generated the call tag through Beretta’s own site. Not every pistol was affected; Beretta published a visual check and a serial-number lookup.¹⁴¹⁵

This recall is the single most important practical fact about buying a used Neos, and it is unfinished business: the serial-number lookup is long gone, the support site now sits behind a bot challenge, and the visual check Beretta published is harder to read than Beretta seems to have realised. Volume 4 covers the repair and what the change actually was; Volume 5 covers how to perform the check on a gun in a shop.

1.9 March 2011: California

California certification for sale expired for all Neos models in March 2011, after which dealers in that state could no longer sell them; the pistols appear on the California Department of Justice’s de-certified handgun list.⁴ This is a roster-expiry event, not a finding against the pistol — California’s roster requires a maintenance fee and re-testing, and manufacturers routinely let low-margin models lapse — but the timing, six months after a recall, is not nothing.

The carbine kit was a separate matter and was advertised by Beretta as “Now approved for sale in California” in the same December 2010 page that announced it.¹³

1.10 Accokeek to Gallatin

In July 2014 Beretta U.S.A. announced that firearms production would move from Accokeek, Maryland — where the Neos was made — to Gallatin, Tennessee.⁴ The Neos remained in the catalogue for another eight years or so. Where the last ones were assembled is not stated in any source located here.

1.11 The End, and How It Can Be Dated

Beretta never published a discontinuation notice for the Neos that could be found. American Rifleman recorded the fact without a date: “MSRPs were in the $300 range, approaching $400 when Beretta, unfortunately, discontinued the versatile handgun. The last factory-fresh models produced had 4.5” barrels, measured 8.8” in length and weighed 31.7 ozs., (unloaded).”⁸

The product page itself gives a tighter window. beretta.com/en-us/u22-neos/ returned a live product page with an MSRP of $325.00 on 1 March 2023, listing four model codes — JU2S45B, JU2S45BFC, JU2S60B and JU2S60BFC — all at that price, with only the 4.5-inch and 6.0-inch barrels catalogued.² By 31 October 2023 the same URL returns a 301 redirect, and it has not returned since.¹⁶ So:

the 7.5-inch pistol and the DLX had already gone;
the gun was still catalogued, at $325, on 1 March 2023;
the page was withdrawn between March and October 2023.

That does not date the last pistol out of the factory, which is a different event. It dates the moment Beretta stopped advertising it, and it is the tightest bracket the public record supports. American Rifleman’s “$300 range, approaching $400” is consistent with a $325 close.

As of this writing the Neos does not appear in Beretta’s US pistol catalogue.

1.12 What Is Not Known

Set out plainly, because these gaps get filled with invention:

No production total. No figure for how many Neos pistols were made, in total or by year, was located in any Beretta document, magazine article or reference work consulted. None is given here.
No breakdown by variant. How many DLX pistols, how many Inox, how many 7.5-inch, how many carbine kits — unknown.
No serial-number date table. Beretta once ran a serial-number lookup for the recall; it did not publish a date-of-manufacture table, and none was found.
The receiver’s material. Discussed in Volume 3. Beretta’s specification table says the receiver is fibreglass-reinforced technopolymer; every other Beretta statement applies that material to the grip, and no Beretta document names what the receiver itself is made of.
What the FC suffix means in JU2S45BFC and JU2S60BFC. The 2023 page lists the codes without explanation. No guess is offered.

1.13 Timeline

Figure 2 — The U22 Neos timeline, drawn for this dive, with every event dated from the source named beside it. The carbine kit sits in 2010 rather than 2004, where Wikipedia and American Rifleman put it; the … — Figure 2 — The U22 Neos timeline, drawn for this dive, with every event dated from the source named beside it. The carbine kit sits in 2010 rather than 2004, where Wikipedia and American Rifleman put it; the dashed line marks the 2004 instruction manual, which documents the modular system in detail and mentions no stock and no carbine barrel anywhere.

Table 2 — Timeline

Date	Event	Source
June 2002	Launch; American Rifleman cover story “Do U22?“	magazine citation
2003	U22 Neos DLX added	Beretta manual
10 May 2003	GunBlast, “Beretta’s New Space Handgun”	GunBlast
23 April 2004	Instruction manual UD6A0277-04/04 printed	the manual itself
2004	Flash “build your Neos” configurator online	Beretta USA
2007	Last year of DLX production	Wikipedia
3 February 2010	Carbine Kit announced, “now shipping”	Beretta press release
14–15 September 2010	Recall announced	Beretta recall notice
December 2010	Carbine Kit, $249.00, “approved for sale in California”	Beretta store
March 2011	California certification expires for all Neos models	California DOJ list
July 2011	Beretta list price $275.00, 6-inch gun	Beretta store
25 July 2011	ATF Ruling 2011-4 approved — see Volume 6	ATF
July 2014	Accokeek production to move to Gallatin, Tennessee	American Rifleman
1 March 2023	Still catalogued at $325.00, 4.5 in and 6.0 in only	beretta.com
by 31 October 2023	Product page withdrawn	Internet Archive capture index

Figure 3 — The U22 Neos as it was sold: the pistol, two magazines, the multi-purpose tool that doubles as a sight adjuster and grip-removal wrench, the cable lock and the orange chamber plug, in the moulded c… — Figure 3 — The U22 Neos as it was sold: the pistol, two magazines, the multi-purpose tool that doubles as a sight adjuster and grip-removal wrench, the cable lock and the orange chamber plug, in the moulded case Beretta's own copy singled out for praise as "captivatingly designed". Beretta studio photograph, recovered from beretta.com through the Internet Archive. Editorial reference use.

References

Beretta U.S.A. Corp., U22 NEOS Instruction Manual, Accokeek, MD. Cover code UD6A0277-04/04; interior page footers dated 4/23/04. Retrieved from Beretta’s own asset path http://www.beretta.com/assets/12/29/Neos_Manual.pdf through the Internet Archive capture of 26 December 2022, https://web.archive.org/web/20221226070531/http://www.beretta.com/assets/12/29/Neos_Manual.pdf , accessed 2026-09-19. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³
Beretta, “U22 Neos”, beretta.com/en-us/u22-neos/, Internet Archive capture of 1 March 2023. MSRP $325.00; model codes JU2S45B, JU2S45BFC, JU2S60B, JU2S60BFC. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Beretta International, “U22 Neos”, beretta.com/Pistols-Carbines/Practice-Competition/Compact/U22-Neos/, Internet Archive capture of 23 June 2009. ↩ ↩²
“Beretta U22 Neos”, Wikipedia, revision 1370411866 of 21 August 2026, retrieved as wikitext 2026-09-19. Cited here for the dates it sources to third parties (DLX end 2007; California de-certification; the Accokeek–Gallatin announcement) and quoted for the errors this dive corrects. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷
Beretta U.S.A., “Use This Interactive Site to Select and Customize Your Neos Pistol”, berettausa.com/promotion/U22/neos_land.htm, Internet Archive capture of 4 August 2004. ↩
Beretta U.S.A. online store, “U22 Neos”, stock no. JU2S6, $275.00, berettausa.com/products/u22-neos/, Internet Archive capture of 18 July 2011. ↩ ↩² ↩³
Scott E. Mayer, “Do U22?”, American Rifleman, June 2002, vol. 150 no. 6, p. 42. Cited as a bibliographic fact from the Wikipedia article’s reference list; the issue itself was not consulted. ↩
Guy J. Sagi, “Beretta’s U22 Neos: A Legacy Gun Not Forgotten”, American Rifleman, 22 February 2023, https://www.americanrifleman.org/content/beretta-s-u22-neos-a-legacy-gun-not-forgotten/ , retrieved 2026-09-19. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Paco Kelly, “Beretta’s New Space Handgun – The U22 NEOS”, GunBlast.com, 10 May 2003, https://www.gunblast.com/Paco_Beretta-NEOS.htm , retrieved 2026-09-19. ↩
Jeff Quinn, “Beretta’s New Pink U22 Neos .22 Long Rifle Auto Pistol”, GunBlast.com, 17 June 2008, https://www.gunblast.com/Beretta-Neos.htm , retrieved 2026-09-19. ↩ ↩²
Jeff Quinn, “New Exclusive Kahr CW380 & Beretta U22 Neos Semi-Automatic Pistols from Davidson’s”, GunBlast.com, 25 August 2014, cited from the Wikipedia article’s reference list. ↩
Beretta U.S.A., press release, “Beretta Adds Carbine Kit for U22 Neos and Expands Versatility of Product”, dateline Accokeek, MD, 3 February 2010; Internet Archive capture of 7 April 2010. ↩
Beretta U.S.A. online store, “Beretta U22 Neos Carbine Kit .22LR”, stock no. JU22CK1, $249.00, Internet Archive capture of 28 December 2010. ↩ ↩²
Beretta U.S.A. Corp., “Recall Notice – Beretta Neos Pistols”, PDF at berettasupport.com/neos/RecallNotice.pdf, Internet Archive capture of 22 September 2010. ↩ ↩²
Beretta Customer Support, “Neos Frequently Asked Questions”, berettasupport.com/neos/faqs.htm, Internet Archive capture of 18 September 2010. ↩
Internet Archive capture index (CDX API) for beretta.com/en-us/u22-neos*, queried 2026-09-19: HTTP 200 responses through 1 March 2023, HTTP 301 from 31 October 2023. ↩