...Really, the more of the weight of the thing can be placed on your forearm and away from your hand, the better. Plus, swinging is easier when the thing has no length beyond your own body dimensions. TOS Type 2 had a good thing going. Timo Saloniemi
The 2285 and 2287 Phaser, at least to me, were the best looking...I've always had a tremendous soft spot for the 2285 design though.
The double-barrel disruptor looks like the robot blaster weapon from The Black Hole movie. weight balance maybe? Barrel length doesn't matter so they can be stubby. There's no slide like on a semiautomatic pistol to kick back and hit your arm. The cage laser pistols on the other hand look like they'd handle, from a weight standpoint, more like a heavy steel pistol from the era like a 1911, with all that weight past the trigger. OTOH the Cage era laser pistol actually has sights and could be aimed whereas the TOS phasers and the dustbusters apparently rely on cowboy skillz since they have no sights and cannot be aimed. Starfleet officers apparently spend countless hours learning to shoot from the hip. The Discovery phaser is my favorite since it takes the best elements from the Cage and TOS phasers: a well balanced weapon that actually has some kind of aiming system.
Considering how light weight the design is I would that is probably the case. Also, watching TOS I definitely remember a lot of quick draws on the part of Kirk and security personnel.
I mean, I can buy, to a point, the TNG hand phasers not needing sights..they naturally flow from the hand into a point, so whatever your hand is pointing at more than likely is what is going to be hit. Certain handguns were similar, the Luger for example is such an exceptionally well pointing weapon you can reasonably hit your target just by line of sight, without actually having to use the sights themselves
Allow me to reply to this with something out of the book of Fireproof78. Ugly is an opinion. To others it's beautiful.
I'd like to see an image of that, if there is one. Sounds interesting. But as I was thinking, we're talking about 300 years from now. The weapon itself could sense eye movement of the user and adjust to hit the target correspondingly. There's no reason to think a phaser wouldn't be a "smart weapon." The Type 1 seems more close range "Belly gun" derringer stuff, so aiming would not be critical.
I’m trawling this up from over 25 years of memory so it might be a bit off but weren’t the TNG-era phasers intended to have in-built targeting sensors and variable beam emitters for augmented target acquisition rather than just single direction line-of-fire like a projectile firearm? I have a feeling this may have come from the Sternbach/Okuda TNG Tech Manual. Does anyone else remember this? It does seem crazy that in 24th Century technology they would be limited to simplistic point-and-press and I think it was also intended to explain why the on-screen beams never quite came out of the phasers at the same angle — because they didn’t need to...!
You see a lot of that in old movies and tv shows, people waving pistols around like they're pencils. My favorite has to be one of the detectives in Plan 9 from Outer Space. He points his service revolver at just about every member of the cast at some point, while casually talking. It makes Lorca sleeping with a phaser on "red" under his bed or trying to carry it all 80's detective show kidney/back-o-the-pants look safe in comparison