I own both of these guns and have for years.
Not "I borrowed one for an afternoon" own. I put somewhere between 500 and 1,000 rounds through each of them every year, and I've been doing that long enough that the round count on both is well into the thousands.
So when people ask whether the Browning Buck Mark or the Ruger Mark IV is the better .22 pistol, I'm not answering from a spec sheet. I'm answering from years of range trips where one of these two came out of the bag.
Here's the short version: they are both excellent, and I genuinely rotate between them. But there is one real, practical difference that should decide it for most people, and it has nothing to do with accuracy.
The Short Answer
Buy the Ruger Mark IV 22/45 Lite if you want the easier gun to live with. The one-button takedown is not a marketing bullet point, it is the single biggest day-to-day difference between these two pistols.
Buy the Browning Buck Mark if you want the better sights out of the box, a longer sight radius, and a gun that looks like a piece of jewelry on the bench.
Everything below is why.
The Two Guns I'm Comparing
I want to be specific here, because both of these are families of guns, not single models.
Mine are the Buck Mark Plus Vision Black/Gold Suppressor Ready (Browning item 051573490) and the Ruger Mark IV 22/45 Lite. Both are threaded, both wear a top rail, both are the suppressor-friendly versions of their respective lines.
If you're looking at a plain Buck Mark Camper or a standard Mark IV Hunter, most of what I say about ergonomics, triggers and takedown still applies. The sights and the rail don't.
Takedown
The Ruger Mark IV takes down with one button. You push a pin at the back, the whole gun pivots open, and you're cleaning it from the chamber to the muzzle the way you're supposed to. It takes seconds.
The Buck Mark requires a bit of practice.
Neither of these is hard. But you will clean a .22 far more often than you clean a centerfire, because rimfire ammo is filthy by nature.
Multiply a mildly annoying takedown by every range trip for the next ten years and it stops being a small thing.
Ruger solved a problem here that the rest of the category, Browning included, largely hasn't. Credit where it's due.
Ammo and Accuracy
Here's where I think most comparisons get the question wrong.
People ask which of these is more accurate. The better question is which one is fussier about what makes it accurate, and the honest answer is that they're similar.
I've run everything from cheap Aguila up through CCI in both guns. Both of them run everything. I have not had a gun-specific reliability problem with either one, which is not something you can say about a lot of rimfire pistols.
Both of them shoot best with CCI. That's been consistent enough across both guns that I'd tell anyone buying either one to just start with CCI and stop thinking about it.
The Aguila runs fine in both, and it's cheap, and it is noticeably dirtier. If you're feeding bulk Aguila you're going to be cleaning more often, which loops right back to the takedown section above. That's the practical reason the takedown difference matters more than it looks on paper.
I have not yet shot the premium match stuff, Eley or SK, through either gun. I plan to, and I'll update this when I do. I'd rather tell you what I haven't tested than imply I've tested it.
Sights and Optics
Out of the box, the Buck Mark wins this.
The Plus Vision has a fiber optic front sight and a white-outline adjustable rear with sixteen clicks of adjustment.
The fiber front sticks out and picks up light well. I'm not personally a fan of the white outline on the rear, but that's taste, not a defect.
The Mark IV 22/45 Lite gives you plain black front and rear.
No tritium, no dot, no fiber. Just line up the post in the notch. They're adequate, and I've been reasonably accurate with them, but I've never called them good.
Both guns wear a top rail, and both are better with a red dot on them. The Buck Mark's rail is the more interesting design, because it's removable and the rear sight is built into it. Six slots, plenty of room.
The longer Buck Mark also gives you a meaningfully longer sight radius, nearly an inch and a half more barrel. On irons, that helps.
What's on them today: the Mark IV wears a Bushnell red dot, which is a placeholder until I put something nicer on it, and the Buck Mark wears a Vortex Defender CCW.
Either way, a .22 pistol is about the easiest job you can give a red dot. There's no recoil to survive, so you can run a budget optic on one of these far longer than you could on a centerfire gun.
Controls
The Mark IV's safety is ambidextrous, sits right under the thumb, and has a red and white indicator so you can see its condition at a glance. If you're left-handed, this is the gun. It works identically on both sides, the only thing lefties miss is the colored indicator, which is on the left side of the frame only.
The Buck Mark's safety is not ambidextrous and it's stiff. It may loosen up with time. It sticks out far enough to grab easily, and I've never had trouble with it as a right-handed shooter, but I'd think hard about this gun if I shot southpaw.
Magazine releases are a wash. Neither is ambidextrous, both are positioned where you'd expect, and both throw the magazine clear with real force. You will never fight a magazine out of either gun.
The bolt stop goes the other way. The Buck Mark's works cleanly in both directions with a flick of the thumb. On the Mark IV, pulling down to release takes real pressure. It's easier to just pull the bolt back and let it go.
Both guns have a magazine disconnect. No magazine, no bang, safety or not. I'm not a fan of that on most guns and I don't much mind it on a .22.
Worth knowing that the Volquartsen accurizing kit for the Ruger removes it, if that bothers you.
Triggers
Neither trigger is going to impress you, and both wear gold.
The Buck Mark's feels like a 10/22 trigger. It has a solid little break and it does the job.
The Mark IV's take-up is smooth and the break is clean but not well defined. The reset is audible and comes back out to the wall rather than all the way. It's smooth, and it's missing something I've never been able to name.
Both have deep aftermarket support if the stock trigger doesn't suit you.
Volquartsen's kit takes the Ruger to a crisp 2.25 pounds and kills the magazine disconnect at the same time. Tandemkross and Apex both make trigger parts for the Mark series too.
Suppressed
This is where I spend most of my time with both guns, and where the size difference stops being theoretical.
I run a SilencerCo Sparrow 22 on the Buck Mark and an Angstadt Arms Reticent 22 on the Mark IV.
Those are very different cans. The Sparrow is stainless, 6.5 ounces, a bit over five inches long. The Reticent is DMLS titanium and weighs 2.5 ounces.
So the practical outcome is that my Buck Mark, already the longer and heavier gun, gets the heavier suppressor, and my Mark IV, already the shorter and lighter gun, gets a can that weighs about as much as a full magazine.
Neither combination handles badly. The Buck Mark carries its weight well and the added length hasn't thrown off its balance for me. But if you want the lightest suppressed rimfire package, the Ruger with a titanium can is a different class of handy.
Both guns cycle subsonic ammunition suppressed without complaint.
And to state the obvious, suppressed .22 is the most fun you can have with a handgun. Both of these are excellent hosts. That's half the reason to buy either one with threads already on it.
Price
MSRP is $819.99 for the Buck Mark Plus Vision and $759.00 for the Mark IV 22/45 Lite, so Ruger has the edge on paper.
Street prices run well under both numbers and they move around. Check the current price rather than trusting a figure in an article.
So Which One Should You Buy?
I rotate between these two guns, and I want to be honest that this isn't a dodge. Having shot both for years, I don't think there's a wrong answer here. But there are clearer answers for specific people.
Buy the Ruger Mark IV 22/45 Lite if: you're left-handed, you want the easiest cleaning of any rimfire pistol in this class, you're building the lightest suppressed setup you can, or you plan to put a red dot on it and don't care about the factory irons.
Buy the Browning Buck Mark if: you shoot irons and want good ones without spending more, you want the longer sight radius, you like a rubber overmolded grip over checkered polymer, or you just think it's the better looking gun. It is, and that's a legitimate reason to buy a range toy.
If you're brand new to handguns and only buying one, take the Ruger. The takedown alone will save you frustration you don't need in your first year.
If you already own one of them, the other is not a redundant purchase. I own both on purpose.
Range Bag
Whichever way you go, you're going to want something to carry it in. Both of these live in a Pistol Bag when they travel, and a single pistol with mags and a few boxes of .22 fits the Prime perfectly.
If you end up doing what I did and buying both, the Concord holds the pair with room for cans and ammo.
The Full Reviews
Both of these guns have a dedicated hands-on review on the site with a lot more detail on each individually.
If you're still shopping the category, the Taurus TX22, Ruger SR22 and Glock 44 are worth a look, though none of them are really trying to do what these two do.
If you want the wider field instead of just these two, both of these sit at the top of my best .22LR pistol roundup.
