I love 10" barrels for handling, but 10" just too short to get decent performance out of some chamberings. Straightwall pistol cartridges perform well, but bottle necked cases like 30-30 or 7-30 Waters for instance really suffer with the short tube. I chrono'd the same load in 7-30 from a 16" barrel @ 2560 fps, and from a 10" barrel @ 2050 fps. The shorter barrel also was significantly LOUDER and had a lot more muzzle flash. I went with 13" for my MGM barrel as a compromise and am happy with it. The 223 is another that really gets starved in a short tube. One needs to match length with the case capacity and bore size.