50 Words or Less
The PXG 0311 T GEN8 irons offer a significant leap forward in forgiveness for a players iron. High and consistent ball speed. Dual weight opens up new doors in club fitting.
Introduction
When PXG released the 0317 T irons [review HERE], I truly felt they’d been designed just for me. They looked the way I wanted, they felt great, and they had all the forgiveness I needed for the days when my lack of practice catches up to me. I genuinely did not know if they would ever leave my bag. Then, in October 2025, I took a trip to Scottsdale National Golf Club and was introduced to the PXG 0311 T GEN8 irons. Sorry 0317 T, you had a good run, but I have new gamers now.
Looks
The PXG 0311 T GEN8 irons is the slimmest of the GEN8 irons. It’s compact from heel to toe with a fairly thin top line and modest offset. At address, this is a very good looking players iron. Comparing it to the 0317 T, the top line of the GEN8 is a hair thinner, and there’s been an improvement to the shaping where the face meet the hosel.
Above you can see, from left to right, the T, P, and XP GEN8 irons. To my eye, PXG did a really good job keeping the P very close to the T in size and shape. I think there are some performance issues with doing a combo set, but visually it could work. The biggest differences are the offset and top line. The jump from the P to the XP is much more noticeable – the XP is longer, thicker, and has more offset – but I think each iron is very good looking within its category.
In the bag, the PXG 0311 T GEN8 irons are a notable departure from previous 0311 models. The biggest difference is the change in the weights. Where GEN4 through GEN7 had a larger weight in the center of the head, the GEN8 irons have two weights – one toward the heel, one toward the toe. My first reaction was that I didn’t really like the busier look, but as I’ve spent more time with them I’ve come to appreciate the monochromatic aesthetic.
Sound & Feel
Get thirty golf media folks, specifically gear nerds, in the same room, and they will find plenty to disagree about. However, one thing that I heard from everyone was that they loved the softer feel of the GEN8 irons. There’s a new polymer in these irons – QuantomCOR – and more of it, thanks to the new weighting. This provides a soft, solid feel that’s reminiscent of the early generations of 0311 irons. There’s ample tactile feedback, but even thin mishits refuse to sting your hands.
The sound of impact with the PXG 0311 T GEN8 irons is very pronounced despite being no more than average in volume. A Tour-caliber ball produces a “snap” on centered strikes that becomes dull when you move off center. This pairs with the feel to provide unambiguous feedback on strike quality, which is important given the level of forgiveness in these irons.
Tech Talk
There’s a lot of tech to talk about with the PXG 0311 T GEN8 irons, so I’m going to give it its own section. If you just want to know what the clubs do in hand, feel free to skip ahead to the next section.
The biggest change from the 0317 T to the 0311 T GEN8 is the dual weighting. This change does two important things: it makes the irons more forgiving and adds another dimension to the club fitting/adjustability.
Starting with forgiveness, the new weighting system moves roughly 11 grams from the center of the head to the perimeter. This combines with an internal tungsten weight to give the PXG 0311 T GEN8 irons a 17% boost in MOI compared to the 0317 T. In an era where OEMs are up against the limits for performance, this 17% jump is an absolutely staggering number.
Turning to adjustability, the dual weight ports can house weights ranging from 1 to 12 grams. This gives golfers and club fitters a huge range of options for tuning their clubs to their preferences. It can be used, as the previous system was, to dial in swing weight, but it also allows the clubs to be biased toward a fade or draw. In their testing, PXG saw that 83% of players could feel the difference when the weights were imbalanced and 100% experienced a change in their face-to-path at impact.
Getting even deeper into the club fitting weeds, the dual weighting will allow fitters to focus their lie angle fit only on turf interaction. Traditionally, fitting lie angle has been as much about fixing ball flight as it has about the club’s impact with the ground. Now that the ball flight can be fixed with weights, lie angle can be left for its “proper” purpose.
Finally, the PXG 0311 T GEN8 irons are filled with QuantomCOR, a polymer that helps each iron reach the USGA limit for C.O.R. (ability to create ball speed). Because the weight has been moved away the center of the face, there’s room for more polymer, leading to improvements in feel, ball speed, and launch angle – what PXG calls Deep Core Recoil Technology.
Performance
In 2025, I played less golf than I have in any year since I took up the game. Additionally, I went into this fitting (October 2025) a month removed from knee surgery. While I swung the club much better than those facts would lead you to think, I still gave the PXG 0311 T GEN8 irons ample opportunity to show off their forgiveness.
During the fitting, it was that forgiveness that stood out both in the ball flight and in the launch monitor numbers. I tested all three GEN8 models and actually had the most consistency with the T. Of course, this had a lot to do with my comfort with this type of iron and my preferences, but it also speaks to the level of forgiveness that PXG has packed into these irons. As I noted in the Tech Talk, the PXG 0311 T GEN8 irons have a 17% higher MOI than my 0317 Ts. That showed up in a dispersion pattern that was extremely tight both left to right and long to short.
Two days after the fitting, I got to take these irons to the course at Scottsdale National. What stood out there was the easy, high launch and distance. There were instances where I was hitting the 5I 200 yards with a trajectory that could hold the green. This got me very excited to take them home and find out how much of that was the PXG 0311 T GEN8 irons and how much was the thin desert air.
When I got the PXG 0311 T GEN8 irons home, I took them straight to my launch monitor. To answer my previous question, the distance gains were real: I picked up about 5 yards with the potential for more when I went after the ball. But the more important piece is the consistency. Shot after shot, the ball flew straight and went the same distance. There’s ample ability to shape the ball with these irons, but you can also play point-and-shoot golf. They’re really the best of both worlds.
During my PXG visit, something that several media members remarked on was the relatively low spin of the GEN8 irons. As a fairly low spin player, I didn’t see a noteworthy difference, but others did. PXG explained that lower spin is the tradeoff for higher ball speed and higher launch with the thin face and polymer core. Beyond the virtues of extra distance, higher launch and higher speed combine to create a steeper landing angle, so more spin is not necessary. Again, I saw only a modest spin difference between the 0317 T and the PXG 0311 T GEN8 irons, but I did see evidence of the higher launch and speed creating steeper landing angles.
I’ll close by sharing my experience with the dual weighting system. After we got all the other specs for my PXG 0311 T GEN8 irons locked in, my fitter, Terry Trammel, suggested we move around some weight. Since I fight a hook and prefer a fade, he removed one gram from the heel and put that extra weight in the toe. Despite this being the smallest change possible, I felt the difference and saw the change in ball flight*. We determined that since I tend to miss in the heel more than the toe, this change wasn’t worth making, but it does indicate that this tech can have a major impact on performance.
*Obviously this is not a perfect scientific test since I knew the weight was being moved. This is something I’d love to explore in a future Golf Myths Unplugged. If this is interesting to you also, let me know in the comments.
Conclusion
While I try not to make golf club decisions when there’s snow on the ground, I’m not sure what could keep the PXG 0311 T GEN8 irons out of my bag in 2026 [follow my WITB HERE]. These irons have everything I loved about my previous gamers but with significantly more forgiveness. If you’re looking for new irons this year, you owe it to yourself to explore the unmatched fitting options of PXG’s GEN8 irons.
Visit PXG HERE
PXG 0311 T GEN8 Irons Price & Specs
Editor In Chief at Plugged In Golf
He founded Plugged In Golf in 2013 with the goal of helping all golfers play better and enjoy the game more.
Matt lives in the northwest suburbs of Chicago with his wife and two daughters.