Having had 3 280's and 1 7 WSM I would say it depends on what you want out of the gun. 280 is very accurate when handloaded but suffers from an extremely poor selection of factory loaded ammo. The 7 WSM on the other hand has 2 1/2 great loads in the Winchester lineup (the 150 powerpoint is so and so) and a bunch coming out in Federal Premium if you don't handload. Its a Tossup between the 2 as far as accuracy goes but I'm not comparing apples with apples since the 280 is handloaded and the 7WSM is not. Chronographed speeds shows a pretty significant difference. I am always hearing that you can drive these 280's fast and that is partially true but overall it is a step behind the WSM. All the 280 's have 24" barrels with exception of the Ruger 1b which has as 26" tube . I got 3000fps using max load in Nosler #4 manual out of the Ruger with Remington brass and a 140 grain Ballistic tip and it has pretty stout recoil when loaded this way. The 24" guns were 100-150fps slower. Using Federal HE 140 grain TB bullets in the 24" guns I get 3070 all the time I used them and I chronographed samples from 5 boxes I bought before a hunt. The 7wsm cruises at 3150 or so with the WW 150 grain factory powerpoint load and WW rates it at 3200 coming out of the Muzzle. Once I start hand loading this WSM I expect group sizes to go down considerably if my old 300 wsm is any indication. Altogether I have been extremely impressed with these short mags both Winchester and Remington. They are easy to load for have high quality brass and the guns are a tad handier then a comparable long magnum. I have 2 friends that have a mixture of both Remington and WW short mags and all the guns show great accuracy with minimum of work. The latest Hornady manual has load data for all the WSM's and you'll see the difference there.