In trials, the Snider Pattern 1853 conversions proved both more accurate than the original Pattern 1853s and much faster firing; a trained soldier could fire ten aimed rounds per minute with the breech-loader, compared with only three rounds per minute with the muzzle-loading weapon.

The converted rifles received a new breechblock/receiver assembly, but retained the original iron barrel, furniture, lock, and hammer.

The breech block housed a diagonally downward sloping firing pin struck with a front-action lock mounted hammer.

[9] The Snider–Enfield served throughout the British Empire, including Cape Colony, India, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, until its gradual phaseout by the Martini–Henry, beginning in 1871-1880.

Frank Richards, who served on the Northwest Frontier between 1902 and 1908, records in Old Soldier Sahib that the British army still used Sniders during that period.

Rudyard Kipling gave a graphic depiction of its effect in his poem, "The Grave of the Hundred Head": A Snider squibbed in the jungle— Somebody laughed and fled, And the men of the First Shikaris Picked up their Subaltern dead, With a big blue mark in his forehead And the back blown out of his head.

Some less well-equipped Portuguese units deployed in the Niassa Province, in northern Mozambique, were still using this rifle during World War I.

Enthusiasts still use these rifles today, with the number in circulation boosted by the acquisition by Atlanta Cutlery and International Military Antiques of a vast quantity of antique weapons held in the Royal Nepalese Armory in the Lagan Silekhana Palace for over a century.

Ammunition is reloaded into either modern production .577 Snider cases, or re-formed 24-gauge brass shotgun shells.