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Folks ,

Do any of you gents use one of those holographic sights on a Glock or a 1911 ?
I have never used one but looked through one at a gun show last week . This one was in the $ 300 range , I'm not looking to get into a lot of coin for something I might not really like .
Is there anything in the $ 100 range ?
Thanks for your help .
Soup

TTT

Soup - in the current market, none of the cheap red dot sights are durable enough to be worth installing on a semi-auto service caliber pistol, you'll be essentially throwing away that money when the unit fails. Most of these are just fine on a .22 Ruger, Buckmark, etc but don't handle slide recoil very well.

I do use red dot sights on several pistols, including my carry gun (a Glock 19), and in my experience this is one of those things that's only worth doing right or not at all. If you try to go cheap on the mount and use one of those dovetail mounts, you don't get the full benefit, and if you buy a cheap optic you should expect it to fail if you shoot very much. Unfortunately doing it "right" is fairly expensive and not for everyone, which I fully understand because it's a lot of cash to plunk down on something you're not sure about.

The only reasonable cheap option to try it out IMO is to put a red dot on a .22 pistol, but that's not really the same either because there's no way I'm aware of at the moment to mount one with co-witnessed iron sights.

If you were near my area I'd let you try some of mine. Maybe a local range near you has a red dot equipped pistol you can rent? They've become more common on some factory pistols in the last few years.

Yondering ,

I sent you a pm.
Soup

What Yondering said.

Even the expensive dots break. The cheap models aren't even worth considering.

I would not go cheap, either. I've got a Burris FFIII on a Ruger MKIII .22 that is a joy to shoot. I almost always run it with a can, and that just adds to the giggles. I've also shot other people's guns with FFIII's and they shot well, also. Once you get the dot dialed in and learn how to find it, they're a blast.

You can pick up a FFIII for about $200, thereabouts. In my experience, they are good sights.

The Burris falls in the cheap category.

If it's going to be on a handgun designated for serious application, you should expect to spend about $500.00 or more. The Military Arms Channel just did two videos reviewing the latest technology and thinking on the matter, so check them out.

PS My nephew, a cop in one of our nation's largest cities, just recently told me he was planning on going this route for his duty Glock 19. I was surprised his department permitted it, but apparently they do.

That's where the RMR comes in.

Yep. A slide mounted reflex sight has the toughest job in the shooting world.
Go big ($) or stay home with reflex sights on a centerfire pistol.

I used all generations of Holosights on my pistols. First I had a Gen 1 holosight made for Bushnell by Eotech on a 454 Casull, then on a 500 and 460 Smith. Never a hiccup. I've got a AA battery Eotech on my Beowulf. The creator of the Beowulf told me that was the only sight the AR had not destroyed. The first generations are really hard to find now but loved the one I had on my Ruger Mark II 5.5" heavy barrel. Unfortunately, contractors stole the several I had set aside and now I'm down to 2 that were on rifles in the safe.

None of those equal the abuse of mounting a red dot directly to a semi auto pistol slide.