Choosing the right magnifiers for red dots is not an easy task. I’ll just real quick get this out of the way for those not familiar a magnifier. If you’ve ever seen somebody using a red dot or a holographic sight and there is yet another optic behind. Let’s see our ranking below.
The Best Red Dot With Magnifier of October 2023 – Reviews and Comparison
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It could be flipped off to the side, could be flipped up directly behind that optic. That is usually unless you’re using something else. Interesting, a magnifier, which is essentially magnifying the image that you’re seeing through the red dot or the holographic site by three X, four X, five X, whatever it might be. It magnifies essentially everything, the reticle image, all that stuff. And you would use it in the case. Obviously, if you need a little bit more than just what your natural I can give you, which I guess you could call one power and that’s kind of the use of it. It’s something small I can flip to the side. You can use just the red.it can flip up and then you can use the magnification. So we’re going to talk all about these things. Rob, can you explain to us just some of the engineering behind what these are is, and it kind of basically just like a prison site on a Mount essentially.
It’s, it’s pretty similar to that. Principle difference, I guess, between this and a prison site is that there’s no radical in the magnifier, so, but yeah, otherwise largely constructed similarly. You might not be able to turn a magnifier into a prison site, but you could turn a prison site into a magnifier and that’s just based on the construction and kind of where you decide to put the radical and things like that. So fun fact for you there, but yeah, that’s a fact fact effectively that it’s also, you could think about it as it’s like half of a binocular if it’s this using a roof prison design, so you can also think of it that way, just in a much more compact form factor. So that’s pretty cool.
Wait, now the actual unit itself is pretty simple. I mean, you can take this thing in this case right now, what’s in front of us and we’ll talk about it in a bit. Here is the new micro three X. Pretty cool. You can take it. It’s got a quick release base on it, slap it on the rail, right behind your dot and in theory, you know, boom, what more is there to talk about for techs? Well, a few things that people ask sometimes is why does it actually have turrets on it? If it doesn’t have a radicle in it, what’s the deal with those? What are those actually do?
Good question. So it’s, you’re really kind of adjusting the optical system to be centered with whatever optic you have in front of it, whether it’s a red dot or holographic site. So think of it as more of a centering system than anything else.
Oh, it doesn’t just automatically do that necessarily.
It’s an interesting product idea, but I think it, it might be a little bit cumbersome and expensive to have an auto centering system. But yeah. Good, good idea. But yeah, it’s really just so you know, you look through it, let’s say you have a red.in front of it and your dots kind of off to the top right. Of the field of view, as you’re looking through the magnifier, it’s really just to kind of center the image that you’re magnifying center it up, if it wasn’t centered, would that have any
Issues on your point of impact?
No, it really wouldn’t. I mean, what you could end up having happen is if there’s any sort of aberrations that are going on with the optical system and the prison, which this is actually pretty pretty good optical system all things considered for the price and what else is in the market, that’s a lot more expensive than it. You might have some point of aim shift that could be that you could be seen that could be seen with it, but really it’s not a huge deal if it’s not perfectly centered.
Okay. Generally speaking, a good idea to center things up though in optics. Yeah.
Yeah. It just, it has a weird effect with your brain where it’s just a little bit more pleasing when everything’s centered there. At least for me, I guess. Yeah.
Yeah. Now Mark, I forgot to mention earlier, this is something that traditionally goes on an AR 15, you know, you’re familiar with ours now. I heard of it. Yeah. Right. Cause you have one. Yes. Do you remember that? I haven’t talked about it in a while. I think you’re still working with Ryan to get it set up, but
We’re sorted out. She’s going to be a Butte though clerk,
But that’s what we’re talking about here.
It’s all coming together. All right. I do have a question. Are there any unique challenges because you know, you look at a binocular binocular, look at a rifle, scopes that rifle scope. Now we’re pairing essentially two entirely separate optics together. Are there unique challenges to make that work or is that what the Turks are overcoming on the magnifier? Yeah. I mean, you’re, you’re basically taking the whole optical system and an, and you’re building in some adjustability to it. So it’s really largely the same optical design. There’ll be a carriage that interfaces with these turrets that kind of allows everything to get centered up, but it’s, it’s really not too complicated from a, from an engineering standpoint. So
Can work behind, obviously, like you said, red dots and holographic sites now they don’t really work very well behind other prisons sites. You’re essentially doubling up, Oh, he’s giving me the look now as though maybe they do work, what are they? What’s the deal there?
The, the verbiage that we had with the old magnifier and not being compatible with red dots are certain red dots. I think that was from more of a usability standpoint. We didn’t want to give people a false misconception of that. It w you know, we, we, we wanted to set them up to have a really good experience from that standpoint.
And so really with the red dots, what you’re seeing when you put a magnifier behind it, and if you remember the parallax discussion that we had, I don’t know, a month ago or whatever it was that 10 minute talk with a magnifier, not really introducing any additional parallax, you’re just magnifying the parallax it’s already present. So depending on the, the red dot that you’d put in front of it, if that is designed in a way that you have a lot of parallax you’re magnifying that. So it’s becoming more apparent to you. You’re not you’re not creating three times more parallax, but your eye looks at it and sees, well, everything’s magnified three times more, so it’s a little bit easier to free for you to pick up on it. So, okay. So that’s kind of a, I guess was kind of a misconception and, and with some of the optical designs maybe that we had in the past, there was a touch more, but anyways, so you’re really not introducing anything new. You’re just magnifying what’s there. And as that relates to prison site, I, we say that these aren’t compatible with prison sites. We have an interesting setup down in product development right now, where we’ve got a Spitfire AR and then this behind it. And I haven’t had a chance to go out and shoot it yet. But it’s kind of a cool setup in that you’ve got a really crisp etched radicle in the Spitfire AR and it appears to just kind of magnify everything, just like it would with a, with a red dot,
But the only problem would be that you’d have to set your Spitfire AR forward on the rails. So then if you flip this out of the way to just use the one power, it’s far enough forward, you’re not in the eye really for it anymore.
And so I thought that too, I was like, this can’t possibly work. And it does. It’s super weird. And I don’t have a great way of explaining it right now, which is why we haven’t marketed it as such or said that it’s compatible, but it’s kind of a fun, little Easter egg that I found is you know, as we were playing around with it. And yeah, cause you would think, well with the Spitfire AR having a fixed eye relief, this has to be in the, in the sweet spot for it, but it’s not quite quite the case. I have some ideas, but I don’t want to get into it in case they’re not true. And I don’t want to, you know, be putting misinformation out there.
So with two minutes and 40 seconds, what do you think about this new micro three X what’s the, what’s so special about this particular magnifier here?
I think, well, first and foremost, we heard you loud and clear on the, on the mound and having the button and, and flipping in the direction out of the box with the VMX three T of it not being super friendly for right-handed shooters. So made sure to address that this new Mount is awesome with just gross basically gross motor function. You can just push it out of the way. There’s no button and bring it back and improve quick release system there. And then as far as the optics go, the field of view is wider. The resolutions better color tones, better, and everything is smaller. So we really looked at a way of making, making the system, just basically making everything better. And, you know, with typical engineering, trade-offs, you’d kind of think of it as like a rubber sheet. If you pull it in two directions this way, it kind of gets more narrow this way.
So so kind of the trade-off that we made when we did that with improving the optics and the size and the form factor in the S this better Mount is just, it costs a little bit more cause you can’t always get performance for free, but you know, for the, for the extra money over the VMX three T you really get a, a stellar optical optically performing magnifier, really flat, really wide field of view and a, in a short form factor in about the same eye relief as you have in the VMX three T. So yeah,
Even a little bit longer, I think it actually has some pretty decent. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, it’s really comfortable to get behind and in the way we design the optical system, the, the black bezel kind of around the outside, as you look through it and call that parent field of view,
We’re able to really minimize that as well. And it’s just a really nice it’s just really nice and comfortable to get behind. Yeah. I’m just holding my phone up to it. Cause I have like the big fat iPhone 10 or whatever, and it’s less than half the length of my phone and it’s not even like height wise. It’s not even as tall as the width of the phone or though it’s pretty much right there. Oh, okay. Way better. 6.9 ounces and 2.9 inches long that’s mighty, mighty tiny compact. Yep. I’ll say this, Jim, when we were running this thing a couple of weeks ago down at the range, I mean, my groups did tighten up fairly considerably with the magnifier versus without, I mean, all the impacts were on target and you know, we’re probably going to do whatever they needed to do, but it was, it was interesting to watch them tighten up.
Just being able to see everything a little bit, a little bit better. So totally now with 15 seconds, here’s one thing I see all the time people say, they say, why would I put a magnifier three X magnifier behind my red dot that has say even a four MOA dot, like the Strikefire too. That’ll make that dot 12 MOA. Actually, no, it won’t. You’re magnifying everything three times. So if the image gets three times bigger and the dot gets three times bigger, the net effect is zero. And that also goes into the parallax thing, the net effect of, you know, what, it looks like a growth in parallax is zero. Right. Anyway. But I had to throw that out there because you see it a lot. That’s zero. And there we go at 10 minutes. Thanks Ron. For joining us. That’s magnifiers everybody. If you have any other questions, hit us up. Thanks for listening. We’ll catch you next time. Thanks. Thanks. Ma’am thank you. Sweet
Dog probably went into a little bit too much detail in that one second. No, but that was excellent. Yeah. Kind of like the interesting little, Oh, it was, I thought it was really interesting to you. The other thing that I think, you know, people say, well, why don’t you just buy us a little power variable, right? It’s like I’m spending 300 bucks on a red dot and I’m spending 300 bucks. I might as well spend 600 bucks on a, on a low par variable, like a PST on a six. Right. and so definitely that’s a valid point. I would say the one thing that’s that you can maybe get out of a low power variable is you really get that, that daylight bright illumination from a red dot and then the magnification along with it. So like with a strike Eagle, the trade-off that you’re making is to twofold there.
One second focal plane. So it’s only the sub tensions are only accurate at six power or eight power. And then just the illumination isn’t super bright. So that’s kind of, I guess another thing that you pick up with this is you have a really bright dot regardless. And then, then the ability to just adding some extra magnification. So one power with a red.is just undeniably different than one power on any low power variable. Even the razor, the razor one to six has one of the best one power experiences. So to speak of any low power variable out there. But if you get behind a red dot, there’s just something undeniable.
