January 06, 2020
By Patrick Sweeney
The EOTech Holosight is a solid, effective, durable and easy to use dot sight. The 65 MOA ring makes it wicked fast at close range, and the pip in the center allows you to drop 300 meter targets, if you do your part.
OK, it is fashionable in some circles to bash EOTech. If you want to bash it, or ditch your Holosight, that’s OK. I know lots of shooters (myself included) who will be more than happy to take your “undesirable” Holosights off of your hands.
The Holosight works differently than your basic LED-driven red dot. The Holosight uses an actual laser to project a 3-D image of the reticle onto the screen in the housing. If there is any part of the screen that is intact, there is an image to be seen, and no problems with parallax.
The method makes it possible to design and project any shape image you want. The basic EOTech reticle is a 65-MOA ring with a center “pip.”
The advantages of the Holosight are that the larger screen allows you greater situational awareness. You are much less likely to get “sucked into” the screen, than a narrow tube. The huge ring makes it easy to find the pip in the center, as the ring tells you in which way to correct. If you lose the dot in a narrow tube, it can be a very
The drawbacks of the Holosight system are the larger, and thus heavier package, and that lasers draw more power than LEDs do. The run-time of the Holosight can be between 600 and 1,000 hours, depending on model, battery size and type. Six hundred hours is eight hours of “on” time at the range once a week, for a year and a half.
There is a host of models (14 for firearms at last count) with MSRPs ranging from $479 to $699, and three of the 14 are paired with magnifiers, and the paired ones list for a bit over $1,000, magnifier included.
What was the problem with the Holosight that got EOTech in trouble? A small zero shift, at extreme temperatures. By small, not enough to miss a person, and by extreme, we’re talking temps like 40 below zero, or 140 above. Personally, if I’m missing people at those temps, I’m not going to be blaming the sight, I’m going to be worried about surviving the weather I’m in. So much so that when EOTech announced that it would refund money to Holosight owners who sent their sights back, none of mine went back .
Take the gospel of the gun shop commandos at your peril.
One detail of red dots that some shooters just can’t get over is the 1X power. “No magnification?” Well, if you have to have power, there’s a solution. The design of red-dot optics makes it a relatively simple task to add magnification. (Says the guy who isn’t an optical engineer.) All the makers of red-dot optics offer a mount and magnifier to let you have a 2X or 3X magnification, along with the red dot. Some are flip-overs, some are removable, but they all offer power.
The drawback is that you have to build your setup from the rear. You have to mount the magnifier so it has enough eye relief for recoil, but close enough to see the whole field of view. And, it has to clear your BUIS. Then, you have to place your red dot in front of that, with enough room to work the controls, and not bridging the gap between receiver and handguard.
Finally, it has to play well with the ejection port (powder residue, smoke, and oil are bad for optics) and whatever other accessories you may have mounted. It can get crowded on a compact carbine if you try to bolt on too much stuff.
EOTechinc.com
