Apparently, switching to pistol is always faster than reloading.

... is it heck. It takes just as long! This is what really makes your sidearm useless in this game, the time it takes you to pull out your pistol and do kill damage someone could easily reload their assault rifle (or faster weapon like SMG) and unload on you for much more profitable results.

If this were solved somehow I would feel much better about being forced to carry round a seemingly useless secondary weapon. Cheers guys for hearing me out. What does everyone else think?

The pistol with a silencer is nice while in cloak

I never really switch to a pistol when out of ammo...I normally go stealth and reload.

It is kind of slow but I think it's fine.

only really usefull in an extreme case to me.
much rather get a couple of decent weps to cart around, as in Crysis,
the Scar and the FY71
they were always at hand and nearly always well loaded with ammo.
hell i even used the scar as my sniper rifle instead of the high powered wep,
way too noisy.
scope up the Scar single shot headshots at medium were smooth

It is faster, maybe you just take a long time to use the switch command when your weapon reloads. If you try to switch when your weapon is 1 sec into its reloading animation then sure you might as well let it finish but if your reaction speed is faster than a yoghurt then its always faster to switch.