Topic: The Best Pistol Red Dots of 2023, Tested and Reviewed (Read 42 times)
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Topic: The Best Pistol Red Dots of 2023, Tested and Reviewed (Read 42 times)
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When I was putting together a new handgun for bear protection, I topped it with this sight. The Aimpoint ACRO P-2 checks all the boxes I need and excels in terms of reliability and survivability.
The main virtue of an enclosed emitter is that it is protected from the environment. I spend a lot of time in grizzly country, both in the mountains and in low-lying river bottoms. Between the snow that’s typical at elevation and the mud and debris that’s part of any river system, there are a lot of ways for a red dot to get clogged with gunk. The ACRO P-2 has flat windows on either side of the unit that can easily be wiped with a shirt sleeve to clear the glass.
The ACRO also has best-in-class waterproofing. It is submersible to 35 meters (115 feet) so you can dunk it without harming it in any way. The P-2 also has much improved battery life over the original ACRO and can deliver up to five years of service on a single CR 2032.
The 3.5 MOA dot has round, crisp edges, though when the intensity level is jacked up to the max (there are 10 settings, four of which are for night vision), the dot has a fair bit of blooming. On the plus side, there isn’t any lighting situation where the ACRO’s dot will wash out. The buttons that control the dot intensity give very positive feedback, which allows them to be manipulated while wearing gloves.
The optical clarity of the unit is among the best in the field. There is very little color distortion and no optical distortion while looking through the sight. Picking up the dot and recovering it while shooting is a snap. It is very forgiving.
All this performance, however, co*es at a cost. The ACRO P-2 is among the most expensive red dots out there, but it is a serious professional-grade tool that is well worth it.
Key Features
Pros
Cons
Like all Leupold DeltaPoint’s, this model is wonderfully engineered. The toolless battery co*partment/adjustment button is convenient and clever. Pushing on the button allows the shooter to cycle through eight different brightness settings.
The coin-slot windage and elevation adjustments have 60 MOA of travel. They adjust in 1 MOA clicks and give excellent tactile feedback when turned.
The battery life figures that Leupold gives are much lower (and more realistic, to be honest) than you’ll see with other sights, but it’s worth keeping the dot brightness to a lower setting or making a point to turn off the sight when not in use to get more from the battery.
To harden the sight, Leupold encloses it in a metal shield that wraps over the optic. This bumps the weight to 2 ounces, making it one of the heavier open-emitter sights in the test.
Looking through the Trijicon SRO is like staring out of a large picture window with mountain views. It’s a thing of beauty. The generously sized objective lens measures 26 mm in diameter making it easy to find and reacquire the dot during rapid shooting. That quality is a big part of the reason why the SRO is my top choice for co*petition. In addition to that is the bomb-proof construction and top-notch engineering of all Trijicon’s best pistol red dots.
The SRO is offered with three sized dots depending on your needs: 1 MOA, 2.5 MOA, or 5 MOA. I opted for the 2.5 MOA model, which strikes a great balance between size and precision and handles any shooting chore well.
For a larger sight, the SRO manages to sit relatively low on the slide. That makes sighting through the window that much faster and helps the sight co-witness with irons more easily.
The SRO has a tiny bit of optical distortion, but not enough to detract from the sight’s performance. In fact, with its large objective lens, the SRO handled tracking and target transitions better than any other red-dot in the test.
The ergonomics on the unit are fabulous as well. The windage and elevation adjusters have medium-sized slots that can acco*modate a regular screwdriver bit or thin coin and offer positive feedback with each click. The sight has 150 MOA of w/e travel with each click moving the sight 1 MOA. The battery tray is easy to access and doesn’t have to be removed from the pistol when putting in a new one.
It has eight brightness levels, two of which are for night vision. The sight can be set to automatically adjust brightness levels as well if you choose.
And, for those of you who want to take your guns underwater, the SRO is rated waterproof to three meters (10 feet) and has drain holes in the side of the housing.
I’ve been running a Romero Zero Elite on a Glock 19 for a while now and it has stood up to some rough use and a lot of rounds.
It’s a basic unit with a 3 MOA dot with eight brightness levels. It’s also offered with a 2 MOA dot within a 32 MOA circle for those who want a larger reticle. A small button just behind the objective lens controls the unit. While unobtrusive, the button is a little hard to reach, especially if you have sausage fingers, and a bit of a pain to manipulate. If my fingers were dirty—from doing a lot of shooting, say—I had difficulty adjusting the brightness without getting a greasy smear on the inside of the objective lens. Not a deal killer by any means, but it is pesky.
Other than that, I had no co*plaints with the Romeo Zero Elite. The optical quality of the sight is pretty good. It has a metal shield you can install to give the polymer-framed unit more protection if you like. The zero is easy to adjust via the recessed windage and elevation controls that use a tiny hex key wrench.
Another thing in its favor is its affordability. It’s one of the best red dots for the money. With a CR 1632 on board, it delivers up to 20,000 hours of run time.
The Vortex Venom doesn’t bring any fancy technology to the party, but what it does have is a generous window, a crisp 3 or 6 MOA dot that can be adjusted to any of 10 brightness levels, controls that are easy to manipulate and a solid housing made of aluminum that can take a beating.
You can also switch the sight to “auto” mode where it adjusts the reticle brightness according to the ambient light.
The slot-head windage and elevation adjusters are easy to dial in. The sight has 130 MOA of elevation travel on tap and 100 MOA of windage elevation, with each click of the adjusters moving the POI by 1 MOA.
One feature that has attracted a lot of shooters to Vortex’s products is their generous no-questions-asked warranty program. Basically, if you manage to break it, Vortex will replace it. Critics say that’s borne of necessity because the co*pany doesn’t make optics as durable as others. Be that as it may, however, the fact is that Vortex does stand behind their offerings and they’ve earned a lot of loyal customers because of it.
With the push of a button on the right side of the unit’s housing, you can cycle through four reticles. The reticles include a 3 MOA dot, an 11 MOA dot, an 11 MOA dot surrounded by a 50 MOA circle, and a 3 MOA dot surrounded by a 50 MOA circle with the addition of two “wings” that effectively form a horizontal crosshair.
Each of these reticles has useful applications. The 3 MOA dot is good for precise shot placement and general handgun use. The 11 MOA dot is good for bright lighting conditions and would work well for turkey hunters and slug-gun hunters. The 11 MOA with a circle is good for personal defense and CQB scenarios, and the 3 MOA circle with wings can handle close and mid-range shooting. It can also be a good option for wingshooting as well. The intensity of these reticles is controlled by a button on the left side of the unit, which has three levels of brightness.
As the late-night TV pitchmen say, but wait, there’s more! The Fastfire 4 is also the only sight in this roundup that converts from an open to closed emitter design. It co*es with an environmental shield that screws on to the back of the unit and encloses the emitter. While this won’t make the Fastfire waterproof against submersion, it will prevent rain, snow and dirt from clogging the LED.
The Fastfire 4 co*es with a cross-slot base so you can easily screw it on to a Weaver or Picatinny pattern mounting surface. With the weather shield installed the weight of the unit is right at 2 ounces. With the base removed the Fastfire has a Docter/Noblex footprint, so with an adapter you can mount it to a handgun and it won’t be too bulky.
The wide objective lens makes reticle acquisition easy, but the glass does have noticeable optical distortion.
Steiner-Optics