As they did with rifles years ago, red dots are slowly becoming the standard sighting system for handguns. Seldom is a new firearm released without an optic-ready version, and more and more older firearms are being converted to allow for the use of red dots.
While some still wonder if red dots are worth it on pistols, the benefits are easily seen; red dots are faster and easier to use while being more accurate for most people and allowing for a target-focused approach to marksmanship that’s beneficial for both competitive and defensive applications. The benefits are many, and the drawbacks are few.
With the surge in popularity has come a glut of options, though, as nearly every optics manufacturer hurries to get in on the trend. This smorgasbord of makes, models, and variations can leave even a veteran firearms enthusiast in the weeds as to which optic is best for their needs.
Factors to Consider When Choosing a Pistol Red Dot
As with most firearm parts and accessories, there’s always more than one thing to evaluate when making a decision. “Best” is always going to be relative, changing depending on who you ask and your precise purpose for the optic.
The best pistol red dot for you is going to depend on several factors, each of which we’ll review individually.
Footprint
Footprint refers to the shape of the body of the optic, including its exterior dimensions, screw hole placement, and any locking lugs or recesses for them. This pattern is key for determining how and if you can attach the red dot to your pistol.
To successfully mount your optic to your pistol, the footprint of the optic must match the cut machined into your pistol’s slide. If it doesn’t, you’ll need to use an adapter plate to connect the two.
Some pistols, such as Glocks using the MOS system, use adapters for nearly all optics. Other firearms, like many of Sig’s P320 and P365 handguns, are machined to be natively compatible with a single optic footprint but can accept adapters to use certain other footprints—which is why they are among the best optic-ready pistols.
Before purchasing an optic, you’ll want to double-check that its footprint is in some way compatible with your pistol, whether directly or using an adapter. If an adapter is not available to convert your optic cut to the footprint of your desired optic, you won’t be able to mount it to your pistol—an expensive mistake to make, if you’ve already bought the optic.
Reticle
In most cases, pistol red dot sights use a simple dot reticle. This functional, if somewhat spartan, option uses the least battery power and is the simplest to manufacture. Other reticles are available, though, and in some cases can have significant benefits.
Holosun is particularly well known for its various reticle options, often with many in the same optic. Their 507C and 507K sights both allow users to select between a bare dot, a dot and 32 MOA exterior ring, or just the exterior ring, leaving your target unobstructed. Each of these options can be selected merely by holding a button.
Many users find the large ring around a small, precise dot to be an optimal blend of speed and precision. The large ring draws the eye and allows for fast, rough aiming at very close distances, while the center dot provides maximum precision when required. Others, though, find a very bright red dot to be perfectly sufficient for rapid target acquisition and engagement at any distance—it’s really just a matter of personal preference.
Other reticles, like our ACSS® Vulcan® and ACSS Vulcan Dot reticles, provide a different functionality. These reticles use a chevron or 2 MOA dot as an aiming point, respectively, but also feature a massive 230-250 MOA outer circle.
Unlike many other reticles, this outer circle does not function as a way to draw the eye faster or as an aiming point for short-range shots—in fact, if you’re using the sight properly, you won’t see it at all.
The outer circle in our Vulcan reticles instead functions as a reference point to indicate when and how the optic is misaligned, resulting in the red dot aiming point not being centered in the window, or not being visible at all. This allows for rapid correction, saving users from the oft-seen practice of bobbing the barrel of your firearm around trying to get the dot to appear in your optic window.
With a Vulcan reticle, misalignment corrects are rapid and precise, getting you on target faster and more reliably.
Open or Enclosed Emitter
While open emitter red dot sights have been the dominant design in pistol optics for years, enclosed emitter designs are slowly but surely invading the market.
Open emitter sights are smaller, lighter, and often cheaper, but leaving the heart of the optic exposed to the elements comes with its drawbacks. These optics are always at risk of something getting into the space between the emitter and the lens, blocking the beam of light that generates the reticle and rendering the optic useless. In a worst-case scenario, mud, dust, or debris could even obscure both the emitter and the lens.
With an open emitter optic, clearing these sorts of obstructions can be challenging. Sometimes it’s as simple as swiping a finger through the optic to clear out the debris, but because of the open nature of the design, it’s easy for mud or other obstructions to find their way into little crevices like the emitter opening that cannot be easily cleared in the field.
A closed emitter red dot remedies many of these problems. They are often larger and heavier, but are fully sealed systems, making it impossible for any kind of debris to enter the optic itself. Mud or lint could coat the exterior lenses, but because they are flat panes of glass, cleaning them is easily accomplished by just wiping them off.
Window Size
The size of the viewing window of your optic has a direct impact on your ability to rapidly acquire a sight picture and transition between targets. A larger window will allow you to view more of your target’s surroundings and allows for a greater margin of error when acquiring your sight picture.
With a smaller window, having your firearm misaligned by even a few degrees can result in the reticle being outside your field of view, and therefore useless. A Vulcan reticle goes a long way toward rapidly correcting this by providing an immediate visual indicator of exactly how you are misaligned, but a larger window will allow for greater misalignment before the dot disappears.
However, a larger window obviously means a larger overall size of the optic, which is important to consider for factors like concealability or holster compatibility.
Durability
Durability is obviously a primary consideration with nearly any firearm part or accessory. Firearms are important tools, and you need to be able to count on them to function if the situation calls for it.
Fortunately, there is a wealth of highly durable options on the market. While it’s true that some optics are tougher than others, there are many available in a wide range of price bands that are entirely sufficient for less-demanding roles like recreation or concealed carry. For truly hard or duty use, you’ll want to stick to brands with a strong reputation for reliability.
Brightness Adjustment/Night Vision Compatibility
Lastly, it’s worth considering features like settings adjustment, lockability, and night vision compatibility. These all relate to the brightness of the reticle.
Nearly all pistol red dots come with buttons or a dial to adjust the brightness of the reticle, but some also feature auto-adjustment capabilities. This technology allows the red dot to automatically change its brightness to match the level of ambient light around it, which, theoretically, ensures your dot is never too bright or too dim for your conditions.
In practice, though, this feature is not quite perfect. Because auto-adjustment depends on the level of ambient light around you, not your target, there are specific scenarios in which it can be a hindrance. The most common one is when standing in a dark or shaded environment, such as a covered firing line at the range, and aiming at a target in a brightly lit area. In this circumstance, an auto-adjusting red dot may self-regulate its brightness down to a level appropriate for the dim light of your position, making the dot invisible against the brightly lit background of your target.
In most circumstances, though, auto-adjustment can be a very convenient way to save time fiddling with your brightness settings.
Settings lockability is a feature that allows users to “lock out” the controls, deactivating the buttons and preventing further adjustment until a specific, deliberate combination of buttons is pressed. This can be helpful for users who frequently find their settings accidentally changed, often by bumping into their holster or from handling the pistol to reload or rack the slide.
Night vision compatibility is simply the ability of the dot to produce a reticle at sufficiently low brightness levels to avoid blinding a night vision optic. It’s important for those who use night vision and irrelevant for everyone else.
Top Brands in the Market
As always, there’s no single best pistol red dot, but there are a number of brands producing highly popular sights that have built strong records for performance and durability. Below, we’ll review a few of these brands and their most popular sights.
Primary Arms RS-10/RS-15
Primary Arms offers several pistol red dot sights in various sizes and footprints, but the most popular among them are our SLx® RS-10 red dot and GLx® RS-15.
The RS-10 utilizes the popular Docter/Noblex footprint and truly delivers on the philosophy of our SLx line of optics, delivering exceptional bang for your buck. Machined out of 7075 aluminum, the RS-10 is built to last and is more than capable of handling the rigors of everyday carry.
The 3 MOA dot reticle features daylight-bright illumination as well as night vision settings and even comes equipped with our AutoLive technology, which deactivates the sight after a few minutes of inactivity and instantly reactivates it upon sensing movement, helping to squeeze the most out of your battery life.
Our RS-15 Primary Arms pistol red dot performs at an even higher level, with a larger objective window, optional ACSS Vulcan Dot reticle, and precise .5 MOA adjustments for windage and elevation.
Like the RS-10, the RS-15 features night vision compatibility and our AutoLive technology. It also boasts upgraded glass and lens coatings for optimal clarity and color fidelity. Utilizing a C-More footprint, the RS-15 can directly mount to most Sig Sauer P320 slides and several other pistol slides with similar optic cuts.
Vortex Defender
Vortex is one of the best-known names in optics of any type. Their catalogue ranges from high-powered precision rifle scopes, to LPVOs, to pistol red dots, to non-firearm optics like binoculars and golf rangefinders. They have a wealth of experience and a strong record for backing every product they make, no matter the price point.
As such, it should come as no surprise that their Defender Vortex pistol red dot is one of the more popular red dots on the market. The Defender comes in several different variations, ranging from the CCW model, which is sized for micro-compact pistols, up to the XL, which features an extra-large window for competition or duty use.
The standard Defender red dot features a 3 or 6 MOA dot reticle and utilizes the DeltaPoint Pro footprint, allowing for native compatibility with several handgun slides, including the Sig M17. The motion-activated auto-shutoff helps to preserve battery life, and the front face of the optic is uniquely textured to aid in racking the slide using the optic.
Sig Sauer RomeoX
Sig Sauer may be best known for their firearms, but their optics are nearly as diverse and well-respected.
The RomeoX Pro is the latest Sig Sauer pistol red dot sight. Uniquely, it is offered in both an open emitter and enclosed emitter variant, allowing users to select the configuration that is best for them. It’s also available with a variety of different reticles and finishes, giving customers plenty of options to select the best fit for their pistol.
The RomeoX Pro features Sig’s motion-sensing technology for battery life extension as well as its magnetic activation sensor, which, when used with a compatible holster, allows the optic to automatically deactivate when holstered and reactivate upon being drawn. All of this works together to make the most of your battery.
The open-emitter variant even has rear backup iron sights built in.
EOTech EFLX
After having built a legacy through their exceptional holographic optics, the EOTech EFLX is their first foray into the world of pistol red dot sights.
The EFLX features a large optic window for rapid sight picture acquisition and utilizes a top-loading battery design. This configuration ensures that users don’t have to remove the optic to change the battery, saving them the hassle of re-zeroing every time the battery is replaced.
Not that batteries will need to be replaced frequently—the EFLX boasts 20,000 hours of run time on a single battery. It also utilizes the DeltaPoint Pro footprint, making it easy to find mounting options for a wide range of pistols.
Holosun 407C/507C
Holosun has long been hailed as one of the preeminent choices for innovative, cost-effective optics. Among their most popular products is the Holosun 407C/507C. While technically two distinct models, they two are similar enough that they are often mentioned together. The primary difference between the two is simply that the 507C offers multiple reticles, while the 407C does not.
Both Holosun pistol red dot sights feature motion-activation technology and offer a solar-powered backup option in the event of a dead battery. Their battery life is stated as being up to a whopping 50,000 hours, and both sights offer night vision-compatible brightness settings.
Trijicon
One of the oldest and arguably the best-known names in pistol optics, Trijicon offers a plethora of models, all of which are among the most popular pistol red dots on the market.
Their classic RMR is the oldest of the bunch, featuring an open-emitter design that is widely hailed for its incredible durability. It’s available with a variety of different reticle sizes, shapes, and colors, and even comes in a battery-free variant that relies on fiber optics and tritium for its illumination, similar to Trijicon’s line of ACOG optics.
The RMR HD, a newer model derived from the original RMR but sporting a larger lens and enhanced features, is raising the bar for pistol optics. It features a forward-facing light sensor for more useful auto-adjustment and a top-loading battery tray that allows the battery to be changed without removing the optic from your pistol—solving one of the more common complaints about the original RMR.
Trijicon also recently brought their first enclosed optic to market with the RCR, a fully-sealed and ultra-rugged dot that utilizes a unique capstan screw mounting system to mount directly to most standard RMR slide cuts and adapter plates. This innovative mounting system also allows it to have a deck height nearly identical to that of the original RMR, avoiding the overly tall sight height common to many other enclosed designs and allowing for cowitness with most common RMR-height iron sights.
While most of their optics are focused on suitability for self-defense and duty use, Trijicon offers a competition-focused red dot in the SRO as well. This specialized reflex sight features a massive circular aiming window that makes drawing and aiming extremely quick and forgiving, making it a perfect choice for competitors at all levels.
Lastly, Trijicon offers its line of ultra-miniaturized sights for concealed carry: the RMRcc. With a reduced size and streamlined design, the RMRcc fits perfectly on a wide range of popular concealed carry pistols while maintaining the quality and durability for which Trijicon is legendary.
Conclusion
Red dots are the next frontier for pistol optics. As they did with rifles, they are slowly becoming the sighting option of choice as optics become more durable and affordable.
The benefits offered by a red dot are hard to refute, making them one of the most effective upgrades a user can add to their pistol. By finding the right red dot for you, you can ensure both you and your pistol perform to the absolute maximum of your capability.
Once you’ve chosen your optic, check out our guide on how to zero a red dot on a pistol for best practices on installation and zeroing.
