EOtech 551 Holo sight

first to differentiate red dot sights and holo sights….reddot is made so the dot appears on a heads up display (little window) or it can be placed in a tube up to the size of a toilet paper.

holo sights are made to be used with both eyes open, and will give the apperance of the dot being on what you intend to shoot, it appears like a “hologram”

ok to start out somewhere i will start with a daisy reddot…10 bucks at wallmart…actually posted ok groups at home, but in the field not so…but it was very cheap too…dot is more of an oval shape, and paralax is pretty bad, you really need to keep the dot centered on the window

then i had a BSA 40mm reddot, it was ok but nothing impressive, again it the same type of dot as the daisy, more oval, and not super defined…works fine for shoorter ranges, but the dot quickly covers the target at ranges of 20+yards, the glass used is way better than the daisy which uses plastic lens

i got a Pentax Game seeker red dot sight, it sucks down battery fast, and only a slight upgrade to the BSA reddot, paralax is fine in confined quaters…but once out at 50 yards the dot gets large, and hard to see in bright daylight, paralax is ok close up bt again at distance over 50 yards it starts to move around a bit as your eye moves behind it….dot is oblong..sight is is quite long and it has two mounting points, so unless you got a long rail to put it on it will not work

next is a 4 reticle reddot of the kind sold under the bsa name among others from 15 bucks on ebay to 70 bucks at cabelas…nice for shooting indoors, not real accurate, because the center dot is quite big, but actually pretty good, well until it started to work intermittenly…on a bright range day it was very hard to see the reticle, it uses a diode like those used in scopes to illuminate the reticles with. it is allmost paralax free, at the edges however this does not hold true, but pretty good for a 30 bucks payd on ebay including shipping…mounting is pretty solid, but adjustments are not !, if it is pushed or struck…it will move a bit

i then had a Bushnell holo sight gen1 i think visit me….at the time i thought it was a piece of crap, it uses a laser to draw the dot with, i found the pattern in the laser (like if you look closely at a laserdot you will see its not uniform but a moving pattern) the centerdot was quite big, and the lasers moving pattern annoyed me, how ever the paralax was top notch, the dot would stay in place no matter what kind of angle you look through it…at 250 bucks i thought the above reddot was just as nice except in bright daylight….the bushnell was also both heavier, and larger…i belive that the bushnells are made by EOtech….the bushnells have evolved just as the eotech has….the new ones are much improved, a key difference between eotech today and bushnells are that bushnells does not have the metal brace that covers the window that eotechs does

Today i recieved a Eotech 551 sight i won on ebay, the 55x series features nightvision mode which is a feature i wanted, but other than that its same as 50x series.

it has some substancial weight to it, lighter than rifle scopes but its definatly going to be felt putting it on a pistol ! it uses N batteries, and unlike any of the above, it shuts it self off after 4 or 8 hours, which is nice, batteries are rated at about 600 house…from reviews this is a bit optimistic, expect more like 3-400 hours, still quite a lot. it sits approx 1″ higher than the rail it attaches to…so this is not a low mount solution. but most reddots are not

it has a metal brace that does not touch the sight it self except at the base, which is strong enough that if you drop your rifle on the sight it will not break, a new brace can be had from EOtech.

it is water tight to 33 feet (10m) nice feature if you like swimming with your airgun 8)

it seems to be built to last a long time.

like most reddot and holo sights the adjustments are a bit crude, only ½” MOA it is easily changed with a penny or spent cartridge

buttons to turn it on and off are easy to work, with a nice firm feel to them, one thing i miss is the ability for it to resume at the last used powersetting, it will allways start in the middle of the powerrange, but with 3-400 hours of run time, one could just have the sight on during the hunt, and not worry about it

reticle is where i see a big difference, the center dot is very tiny, however easy to see, theres a 65 moa circle that helps your eye find the center dot fast.

the pattern within the lines of the laser i can still see a bit, but it is nowhere near as bad as it was on the bushnell (which are at gen4 now so this has possibly changed alot)

the centerdot is so small i estimate that i would be able to knock the head of a squirrel at 50 yards, i saw one playing on a house roof about 50 yards away, and the centerdot did not cover the entire head, however it was hard to tell whats gutter stuff and whats squirrel head with it covering that much. so this is not for small game hunting much beyond 50 yards, unless you are comfy with body shots…

considering a new price of 420 bucks, it doesnt exactly come cheap, you can get lucky on ebay however as i did…beware theres lots of imitations of them !

420 bucks you could get a bushnell 4200 6-24×40 also…which is something to consider, such a scope would look silly on a handgun however 😕 which is going to be my intended use…however i am very tempted to mount it on the SS with a dovetail to weaver converter rail i got…it would be pretty awesome for squirrel hunting in forest areas.

i havent had a chance to test out the nightvision bit, but im sure it will come in handy 😈 even with gen1 regular reddots tend to be too bright, especially the cheaper versions that has red and green dot in them as they usually only have 5 setting for each color.

working for the EOtech is everything except size and weight it is by far the largest and heaviest of dot sights i have seen, but its also the only one that will stand up to every day use and abuse…this will probably go on the Taurus Raging bull i plan on buying this month

yes there video too 🙂
the camcorder has trouble focusing on the pentax game seeker making the dot seem more oval than it is, also on the 4 reticle bsa sight it makes it seem a bit more fuzzy than it actually is….on the EOtech the brightness setting gives it halo effect that is not present, in real world conditions, but camcorder has trouble deciding what to focus on

what can be seen is that the eotech seems be much more clear than the others…and thats a difference you can see with human eys for sure !