No experience with the new models. But the gen 2 were great. I ran one for ~3 years, issue free. 5.56 and 12 ga for a bit.

I did hear that initial units on the new gen had/have NV brightness issues. Has either been addressed or is currently.

There was a thread in the PA IF on these awhile back, check there as suggested.

Same.

Correct it seems.

Per PAMike:

"We just pulled them off our site until the new circuit boards arrive, it's smarter to just wait until we can fix all the ones we have in stock instead of selling them just to have people send them back to us for the NV fix.".

Oh hey guys, what's going on in dis thread?

Ok, so I work for PA and therefore you guys can treat me as a biased source, and I understand. But if you surf the PA industry forum a bit hopefully you'll see that I'm allowed to be very open and honest about what's up with our company and products. You won't see me put down any products that we sell on our website, but if there's a product that I don't recommend, what you'll see me do is try to suggest an alternative product that we also sell. For example, "hey if you're looking at buying that really cheap cheap cheap AR15 barrel, hey can I suggest a Ballistic Advantage, they are really good for the money." That sort of thing. I tell people, I work for a company that lets me keep my dignity. So, what you see below is my honest opinion and response.

I'm willing to claim that I'm a subject matter expert on these because I wrote the user manual for the optic and I was the second guy to buy one as soon as they came out, and I've had it on my retro M4gery consistently since 5/24/17. I like to shoot it offhand it vs. steel plates at 100 yards as it is, or combine with one of our 3x magnifiers to reach out to 200 shooting supported. So aside from having access to all the tech specs I'm also a product user. Here's my M4gery, it's not a "clone" of anything, it's just sort of M4-retro-ish with our red dot in our PAHICANT mount and one of our compact weapon lights up front. I enjoy it and use it as a standard baseline to compare other AR setups to.



Here are some answers to questions posed above.

@Birddog1911 The quality on these is a huge step up from our previous full size red dots. I think ours is better built than the Vortex Strikefire II for the same coin. I like our rotary control better than the soft push buttons on the Strikefire II. It has nice clicks and physically stops at "off" when you turn it in either direction, so you don't even have to look at it to turn it off after a range session, just spin the knob until it stops and your optic is off.

On the blue tint, I took a couple of photos for you. My buddy Matt has an Aimpoint M2 on his truck gun, and we have a PA 30mm on a "blue gun" as a demo in our storefront, so I pointed each of them at a white wall indoors and took a cell phone pic. I didn't try to focus the red dot at all because when I do that my iPhone changes its exposure and brightens everything up. I set up these photos to show you "worst case" scenario difference in tint, which is indoors with fairly dim lighting. If I had stepped outside and taken the pics in bright sunlight I could claim that there's no difference, but what I'm doing is showing you the maximum difference. For my eyes, personally, there's no difference worth worrying about in real life. There's nothing scientific about these photos, just one guy hand-holding an iPhone 6.

I will also say this, through my left eye both 2 MOA dots look really really similar. My right eye has astigmatism and I see a "comet" instead of a dot. The Aimpoint dot's "comet tail" isn't as pronounced for me, so that's a point in their favor for my eyes. But everyone's eyes are different, especially when we talk about astigmatism.



@Subimeon24s used Aimpoint PROs are awesome. The secret is kinda out though, they aren't losing that much value compared to the new ones anymore. Still, you'll never hear me knock any Aimpoint product, they are the standard everyone else is judged by.

@cheekibreeki the clone game is getting kinda insane. One of my coworkers is building a clone of the rifle he carried in Iraq. Have you seen what certain used flashlights are going for now on Gunbroker and stuff? Honest-to-gosh correct KAC rail systems? Wow. It's important to him, it's nostalgic for him to have a gun that resembles his issue gun, and I get it. But it's still going to be like a $1,500 build that's deliberately an obsolete configuration. And it has a 16" barrel instead of a 14.5", so it still fails the "all or none" test. But it's his money, ya know?

@TKD-II, @Tigwelder1971, @BerlinVet, you guys are all correct. The NV settings in the first batch were too bright and there is concern that they would burn out the center of intensifier tubes over time. Our latest micro dots have the exact same problem. However, the micro dots we are able to repair here in Houston affordably and quickly. The full size ones are a sealed unit, very difficult to crack into and repair and then seal back up correctly, so we decided not to attempt a repair job on them. The existing inventory will soon (very soon) be sold off as factory "blemished" product-- the only thing "wrong" with these blems is the night vision settings, so if you don't care about running it in conjunction with night vision, an opportunity to snag one at a crazy good price is coming up.

The new batch of upgraded full size versions won't be here until mid year. When the blemish sale happens, it will be everyone's last chance to get one for a few months, at any price. This isn't some BS "false sense of urgency" deal to drive a sale, in fact we are not happy about it at all. It sucks to have a new product listed on your site but not available for customers to buy.

@as556 I wish the tech was there for us to offer full size red dots and etched reticle scopes with the 50k battery life everyone loves in the micro dots. Unfortunately, the math says no. To project a 2 MOA dot of the exact same size, but in a full size red dot instead of a micro dot, takes a much larger emitter due to focal length. If the emitter has to be four times more powerful, it's going to drain a battery four times faster. If you have a solution to this issue, please send us a resume! But, you know, we are improving all the time, each generation has real improvements. This one has a lifetime warranty and a battery life of 14,000 hours at a medium setting, that's still 19 months. That's 4,000 hours more than the actual Aimpoint M2 I compared it to in this post. The older full size ones we did had a 1 year warranty and 3,000 hours battery life. Is it "as good as" an Aimpoint? Nah, but we've come a long way and we've worked hard on our products.

We do not design our optics to be compatible with Aimpoint parts (like lens caps or anti-reflective devices), nor our flashlights to be compatible with Surefire parts (like tailcap switches).

This results in 100% less being sued by other companies for cloning their products.

Now I have to go back and do the rubber smell test...

Jesus. Don't do it man.