I’m going to start out by making a confession: I resisted the idea of red dot sights (RDS) for years. While others in the field were proclaiming them as the best thing since sliced bread, I was keeping my opinion to myself: that being that RDS was for “lazy” shooters who simply didn’t want to train with their fixed sights. Then… life and age happened, and all of a sudden, I couldn’t see that front sight quite as clearly as I needed to if I was going to shoot as accurately as I (generally) always have. As circumstance would have it, I ended up testing a handgun (the FN 509 MRD-LE) that was designed to accept/be used with an RDS and I was able to secure a Bushnell RXS 250 RDS. Between the two, I am definitely a convert. I’ll take an RDS-equipped handgun over mechanical sights only all day every day.
The Bushnell RXS 250 (priced at $199.99 as of this writing) is a “simple” unit. It’s compact, has an easily accessed battery compartment—even while the unit is mounted—and has adjustments for windage, elevation and brightness of the dot. The dot is 4 MOA in size (minute of angle—if you’re unfamiliar, look it up because it’s too much to explain here) and has ten different brightness settings. The published information says the battery is good for 50,000 (!) hours if the brightness is set mid-range (5) and since the unit turns itself off after 12 hours, that 50K hours equates to 4,167 days of use or about 11.5 years (if you use it every day). When you DO have to replace that battery, you can use any screwdriver, coin, or the tool that is supplied with the unit, to open the battery compartment without having to remove the unit from the handgun.
The recessed push button controls are easy to operate but not impact accidentally. The windage and elevation adjustments are 1 MOA per click and the same tool that you use to change the battery is the tool you use to make those sight adjustments.
The first day I had this RDS on the handgun at the range was, quite literally, life changing for me. As a shooter with over 40 years’ experience, my first experience with an RDS opened my eyes (so to speak). After spending a few rounds to zero the sight (I zeroed them to the mechanical sights), I started engaging the target with untimed shots at distances ranging from three yards to 15 yards. What I ended up with was a ragged hole about 1.75” across at the widest point that represented 52 rounds of 9mm. Don’t get me wrong: trigger control and all other marksmanship basics matter, but using the RDS as the aiming system as compared to hard sights is almost magical. If you haven’t checked one out, you definitely should.
