I have a shield plus and I like it a lot. It carries well, shoots well enough for its short barrel and doesn't weigh much.
But holy fuck the safety is just AIDS. It's small and hard to manipulate. I hate it so much I rarely use it. If they have the gun a decent safety, it'd be a solid 10/10 for me.
I haven't had an issue manipulating the safety on my (gen 1) Shield 9, but dumb question, can't you just carry it with the safety off and run it like a Glock? My gen 1 has a two-part trigger that functions as a trigger safety, again like a Glock.
You can. That's how I typically carry it. I just find it hard to sweep with my thumb while drawing. I much prefer something with more girth. Something that seems it was out there on purpose and not the result of an engineer drilling a whole into the frame to extend a minute internal lever after the design was already completed.
You should look into upgrading. The trigger on the plus blows away that trash hook on the gen 1.