Blue I called Leupold and they tell me the battery life on the delta point pro is 72 hours on bright enough to see in bright light setting.
I don't know what the battery life will be for daily carry, but 72 hours doesn't seem right. Folks have told me they get 3 months on a DPP for a carry gun, but I don't know their actual carry habits. I put a Duracell in mine six days ago and have had it on me more than 72 hours since then and it's still on.
Can you give me an idea of how sensitive the motion sensor is? Does walking with a holstered pistol 'wake' the sight?
We've got one on a SIM pistol at work that sits on top of a pretty sturdy metal cabinet. Just swinging the door, even when it's already actually open, turns the optic on. If it's touching your body it's definitely on.
Blue,
Do you think the co-witness sights are essential or would you be just fine without the option?
Also, which holster are you using with the Compact?
I wouldn't have a carry gun without them (I say that but I've carried this one for a week without them) just because sooner or later it's gonna die on you. I've got a suppressor height front sight waiting for me at work.
I had a holster made for it with the TLR7 but it's still not right even after going back to the shop once. The kydex is too thin and flexes enough to activate the light. So without the light I've been using a Harry's Holsters model with a claw at 3 o'clock. He sent us a box of them to try and so far I'm very impressed. I've had it on for several 16 hour days and it's been surprisingly comfortable. It seems very well built and he molds several carry options into the holster so you can switch from soft loops to a belt hook or whatever you want without needing a new holster shell. If it would accommodate a light I'd carry it permanently.
Such as varying light conditions, for one. A carry gun might be used in the dark, or in bright noon Arizona sun, and the optic should be automatically functional in either without adjusting settings. An optic on a competition gun can be adjusted for the current conditions, for the most part.
Just because an optic automatically adjusts doesn't mean that it will automatically adjust correctly. Many end users and some of the guys at upper end of using MRDS for fighting guns prefer to have their optics permanently adjusted to their preference rather than letting the optic decide the dot brightness. The dots can't account for drastically different lighting conditions, such as weapon mounted or handheld lights used in dark environments, or for when the optic is in a dark place but the shooter is looking into a brighter area.
I'll include a link to Aaron Cowan's paper in the next post so that it doesn't get lost here.
Leupold's motion sensor tech is another one, where the dot is switched on when it detects motion and shuts off after 5 minutes of inactivity. For a range gun that spends most of it's life in the safe, that works great. That same optic carried in your waistband will be switched on all the time, and the electronics should be designed around that.
And of course there's durability. Competition shooting is not fighting. Priorities for a competition or target optic are more towards clear glass, window size, etc (all things the DPP is great for). For a carry gun though, being able to take a beating and always being on, visible, and zeroed are higher priorities.
I'd think anyone looking for a carry optic would want to consider these things before just copying whatever the top competition shooters are using.
When you say that "the electronics should be designed around that" it seems like your implying that they're not. If the DPP electronics aren't robust enough to handle constant on use then please tell us where you're getting that from, because I'd sure like to know about it.
From Cowan's paper you can see a very detailed list of optic tests. Every 500 rounds he conducted drop tests onto the optic from shoulder height, water submersion for one hour, frozen for 24 hours, and heating to 150* for 24 hours, then verified that the optic held zero, then kept repeating the tests.
At the end of four years of record keeping he only recommends the RMR and DPP for duty use.
