The Best Pistol Red Dots for Night Vision 

Falling star in the background of nods shooting with dual tubes passive pistol shooting= ultra mega goon drip

I was a part of the evaluation team for a new service pistol for my agency. We've decided to add an enclosed emitter and the SIG M17 was one of the options tested. We discovered, quite by accident, that the SIG option had rather frail coatings. One of our training officers decided to clean all of the lenses on the options we were testing because they were getting dark from carbon. He used products intended to clean optics and cleaned all 4 options with the same techniques but the SIG was the only one damaged. I mention this because it's not one of the tested criteria you mentioned. The coatings we're scratched up enough that we were able to detect a slightly slower shot time among the officers using that optic. When pistol dot sights first started to gain acceptance I had no interest in them till I took John Lovell's 5 day Night Vision Professional course. In it he described the use of tritium sights with night vision and in shooting I found I was able to get regular and repeated hits at 25 yards easily but 50 yards was a much harder task (we had steel at 25 and 50). One of the other students had a Glock 17 with RMR and while I only fired a few rounds with this combination hitting at 50 was now relatively easy. This started my interest in red dot sights on pistols. Unfortunately I'm cheap and didn't dive into them until I hit 53 years of age and lost the ability to focus on iron sights. Now they are one of my favorite inventions of the century (to date). Aging is not for the weak but since many find the alternative untenable I'd suggest developing habits that lead to a fit and active lifestyle. I can still out perform many of my coworkers who are 20 years or so younger but probably not for much longer. Yes, that's a pointless digression but it's my life and I do as I please. Most people won't read this anyway.

So cool that you guys recorded a shoot star around the 8:57 I'm always looking and rarely see one when I'm using my NODs.

8:55 Ok, nice falling star.

Hop, I have to say thank you for the amount of work you put into getting quality content out. It fills my Saturday night with things that interest me. Back in the old days, before RU-vid, I was limited to thumbing through gun magazines. What a time to be alive.

The point you raised about night sights on a RDS equipped pistol for shooting under NV is something I never considered. Night vision season is like pumpkin spice season, but for dudes.

I’m so proud of you committing to a purchase list

BrassFacts with Nova under nods should end up as a picture or even as his avatar. So good.

Man if only the DPP was useable during the day when the sun shines at you.

As a guy who’s primary weapon is a m17 due to being aircrew and an easy 50% of our opps being conducted under nvg’s I wish there was more content out there on running a pistol under nvg’s. Not kicking in doors but if I do need to shoot at night it becomes incredibly counterintuitive to do so. Maybe this discussion defaults to figure something else out but still it’s a conversation I would like to hear between you and brassfacts.

If you do have night sights and still want to passive aim with your red dot, you can put some tape over them and it works fine. Peel it off after you are done. It's really easier to just use your weapon light on your pistol and aim using the daytime sighting system by raising your head up a little and looking under your tubes.

I figure night hiking would be pretty much the most realistic time for this to be a concern, Nods on your head but don’t wanna bring a rifle hiking so RDS pistol.

"A lot of guys don't integrate a pistol into their preparedness kit" Okay good its not just me. Everyone has a pistol on their battlebelt and I just...replaced it with more magazines.

My favorite RU-vid content creator. Keep the content coming I shall consume it.

I used to agree that the shooting pistol under NV was very limited in general. Now my opinion is changed. Warfighting? Yeah still limited there, but for normal use (at least what I considered normal use) I found my self often just hiking around or hanging out outside with nothing more on me than my EDC pistol. In the time I've had my NV I've had run ins with angry homeless people, people on the rivers hunting for that midnight catfish, animals big and small, and naturally normal people who look at me like a lunatic for wandering around in the dark. Point being there's plenty of use case that you may need to shoot a pistol under NV as a civilian. Train on your gun and stay alert. For those wondering. L3 WP DTNVSs and a glock 19 / staccato c2 with blacked out suppressor height sights and a RMR Type 2. Never had any issues finding the dot and making shots.

The fact that the Romeo-M17 can only be mounted with factory integrated tritium night sights ruined the entire package.

Good stuff Hop

You’re amazing, Hop.

Im glad you brought up the holosun issues. I love holosun and mostly use their red dots, but people look the other way on some of their models being straight lemons. My gold 503 had to be RMAd 3 times in a row for parasitic battery drain (like within a week the battery would be dead). They ended up just giving me a more expensive AEMS so customer service rocks, but it sucks knowing that some of them are just straight lemons

Good video man

Besutiful shooting stars at 8:57 and 10:36 I can't wait to get my hands on the new RMR HD, mostly for the upgraded light sensor.

Thanks Hop. Good video, I have the EPS on my G19, so hopefully I got a good one. To cap off the video you had Nova!

This applies heavily to top mounted dots. Thanks for this.

I saw at least 2 shooting stars during the night vision shots. Pretty cool! Very informative video as well lol

Holosun EPS is the best pistol dot as of [current date] (I haven't watched the video) :hopsmirk:

Excellent video, great point on the incredibly small use case percentage of pistol dots.

Thanks for the info George McFly

Nice catch on the shooting star

That was awesome how the N.V. camera caught that shooting star at 8:57 🙌🔥💪🤙🇺🇸

RMR as always still relevant because while it might not be amazing in any category, it is definitely good in all of them.

I’m still enjoying my pile of 509Ts

8:57 pretty cool shooting star

Awesome... caught 2 shooting stars on camera. *Squirrel!*

@Hoplopfheil Perfectly timed nod shooting with shooting star right above your wrists at 8:57 into video. Just the heavens showing your video pleased them. 😂😂

That meteorite in the background at 8:57 was pretty sweet.

Me, nodding my head in agreement about NODS While eating ramen noodles and driving a 2005 corolla

Clearly, it's an eotech jb welded onto a hi-point, so that you're able to better throw it at night with the extra weight when it inevitably jams

Great vid. But like normal I have to replay parts to get the model numbers (so fast, much replay), but at this point I'm pretty sure it a tactic to get more view metrics... Either way, great vid.

8:58 look at the shooting star in the background!!!

My bear gun and conceal carry weapon is a G40 with 509ACSS on it. It is also my night vision pistol. I chose it because I figured in my activities being outdoors at night with big scary animals that also see well in the dark around... the ACSS ring would be real handy if I'm in a less than ideal shooting position. Such as fallen on my ass dodging an animal, or my hands are severely shivering. On that note, the cold killed my battery temporarily, and I switched to solar and it kept me going for the remainder of the day. While I don't think ACSS is for everyone, I feel more people should consider it as a choice for a woods gun.

I call dibs on the shooting star at 8:59!

Shooting star at 8:57. Dope.

There are dedicated matches for this, RPGI runs some of them and handgun+nods is a division.

My use case is wandering around my property at night and hiking before the sun comes up, so my EPS makes a great carry optic and shoot-a-bear-at-night optic.

Hey hop, do you use anything like the tarsier eclipse? I have found that they have a profound positive impact on red dots. If you didn’t use them in the review, I would like to hear your opinion on it and hopefully that can be a video for another time. I love your content, please keep doing what you do.

Bpth EPSs I bought work great, but I bought an AEMS that was messed up, so 2/3 for Holosun

Surprised you gave the Eflx a recommend considering the alarmingly high rate of failure due to losing its glass/zero and emitters coming loose.

8:59 shooting star on night vision. Sick shot.

Much like trying to figure out what to pick for your rifle optic it comes back to the expensive (for you) optic you skipped past first RMR always you literally can not go wrong

“If you run out of ammo for your rifle and have to switch to your pistol, you’re probably going to die” -paraphrased from Master Sergeant T. Popp’s “rules of a gun fight”

You missed the Sig Romeo 1 Pro, another option for the DPP footprint that has side buttons and an optional hood/shroud for dings. Usually see them for around $350

It’s time I finally say this. What is it about Hop’s voice, cadence, and cynical vibe that is so welcoming to the audience? Clearly his gun content is terrific; it’s concise and most importantly, informative. But bro should be covering something more mainstream as well. Something outside of politics that with little polarity. Like film or gadget reviews. Just too funny not to.

sick shooting star at 8:55

I'M WATCHING IT BECAUSE IT WAS SENT TO ME *HOP*

The EFLX has been working great for me on my PDP, but I wish I had gotten an SRO. The EFLX is a battery devouring black hole, losing brightness every month and needing a new battery. I also need to leave it on at the highest setting for it to be usable during daylight hours outside. It works. But man am I not as pumped about it as my other EOTech optics.

0:55 Because snarky gun man amuses me, that's why.

No mention of the ACSS holosun? Interesting. I know you've covered it before, guess it missed this video. I like the big circle for passive aiming.

The best dots for enjoying NV are Dots, the candy

Did I see a shooting star a bit after nine minutes into the vid? That was pretty cool.

Oh yes as a former splinter cell I'm completely rattled

Luke C Spotted, like button smashed, what's the 1911/2011 he's shooting?

I wonder if that Steiner issue is a Nods only issue. I haven’t had any problems with one on a pistol under daylight conditions

We need hop to get a few of the super cheap pistol red dots, like the 75-150$ range and see which one suck the least.

Why am I watching this video?! because I love the sound of your voice baby

I think the only reason the DPP has a reputation for being fragile is because for years it could only be compared to the RMR, which is like the best in the industry for durability.

I don’t have nods or a red dot on my pistol but I’ll probably watch this because I’m at lunch

I wish the DPP came with a different brightness button that's my only issue with it.

10:40 100% agree

What chest rig are you using in BrassFact's "Choosing the right assault pack" video at 6:04?

I wanna see you review the OZ9 combined with XVL2 for nighttime pistol use. The metal rail seems like the only real benefit. Also, will a polymer rail hold zero?

We need a hop/PSR collab please!

In certain types of shtf, it may be that you don’t want to be fully overt but you arent planning on being seen. In that case night vision with a handgun on the hip makes a lot of sense to me

The only reason why you may think nods and pistols are silly is because you aren't wearing a bandana while speaking over on coms with a husky voice during the usage of said two things.

hop said kinda so its gotta be good

Hey, Hop. Purely because you decided to indulge in this can of worms, can I ask your opinion on pistol mounted IR illumination/IR aiming solutions and if that's even worth it? And on that topic, would it be better to for example: Go for the bare minimum and just be able to have an IR light like an X300V, or to actually spend the money on an X400V with an actual IR laser built in to try and somehow get a "more workable aiming solution" from said handgun. On a side note, I personally figure dedicating one of my handguns to exclusively night vision use seems expensive and silly, but I could be entirely wrong on that. Thanks!

Hey Hop, what would it take for you to review the Ryker foregrip? I'd love to hear a deep-dive on it, especially for non-AR guns where ambidexterity isn't really on the table anyway (bullpups, PTRs, BrassFact's B&T MP9, etc). I'm also curious how useful it is for guns with more recoil than 5.56 rifles (namely battle rifles and shotguns). Would I need to mail you one in order to make this video happen?

So the older holosuns had bigger buttons, but they had to go to small buttons because trijicon sued them for using the same size buttons as them

What about the CH Precision ACRO copy?

The Leopold Delta point micro actually works well with night vision.

I've been trying to find out about the NV performance of Crimson Trace's pistol red dots for a while. Virtually no information about it exists on the internet that I've been able to find, aside from a random-ass, now two-year-old Reddit post from a sales rep saying that the Night Vision settings aren't "calibrated correctly".

Does the RMR HD foward light sensor do anything for you? Outdoors it probably doesn't. I put up with tridium bloom as it helps me find the freaking dot. Plus i don't stare at it for a long time. Maybe I'm just coping. Also, the Surefire X400VH works brilliantly. Sucks that it costs more than the pistol.

This information will be useful to me in ten years when I can afford Night Vision.

I wonder if it's a local thing, but here on the other side of the pond Holosun's customer service is on par if not superior to big name brands like Vortex, but then again they have an actual presence here in Europe and other brands just have distributors mostly...

I’d love to see Hop break down Knifes in his kit. He’s definitely got one, but I don’t see it being like a Rambo knife.

We gonna ignore that bright object flying through the air at 8:58?

Shooting Star in the sky at 08:57

For every one of these videos you should do a "Chinesium" version.

shooting star at 8:58 went hard

You should get your MPS replaced. Mine seems to be pretty good under NODs.

🙂Greetings! 🤔Anyone else noticed at the 08:54 timestamp, a shooting star in the background! 🤩I like to view and enjoy videos or content material in detail! It is like skipping stones in water, every throw is different, so is watching videos, specially as great as the ones in this channel! 🕊️May the Lord Almighty bless you all!

One thing that bugs the shit out of me is that piggy back mounts for DPP do not also support the sig red dots. The R1P, and R2 do not have the front lug post hole like the RomeoX does, so really the R10 and R2 have the same thread pattern as the DPP but they do not share the exact footprint for mounts unfortunately

If you have to use passive under nv for a pistol. Just get a t2

Sky looks good at 8:57

Shout out to the shooting star at 8:58

When I get enough money, maybe never, I really want to try the Trijicon Dual illuminated RMR with fiber optics. I think it’s the only good long term optic since it doesn’t use any electronics, part of the problem is which one to pick.

I don't understand why the DPP footprint isn't the industry standard. 28inlbs of torque vs 15inlbs on the RMR footprint. The DPP footprint has thicker beefier screws and every DPP optic, Romeo2, EFLX, DPP, Romeo1 has better window size, glass clarity, night vision performance, and emitter clarity than the RMR.

Holosun it is then. Not because I have NV, or an optic cut, but now I know.

I wish Trijicon would just fix the distortion. After transitioning from an MRO to a Romeo 4T I just can’t stand the RMR or MROs glass. I still use and trust my RMR but the MRO is just unusable now.

just use a ruger mark with a suppressor and get a t2. travis haley style

8:57 for a neat surprise.