Does the dot bloom?  Could it damage the NV?

Yes and no

it’ll make a hot spot and will leave a black dot on your tube/image. if its for really short periods of times, 5mins max maybe, and then leave the tube on for awhile afterwards it should go away.

As expensive as night visions are how come they are so shitty that a red dot can damage it?

Really?!?!

You have these answers reversed. It will damage the tube

Since we are in a tech forum, I'll answer:

True 'night vision' works on image amplification. Like a guitar amplifier, they take exceedingly small amounts of light, and gain them up until you have a very usable image, way past what a human eye could discern under similar conditions.

Now, take that very sensitive input and force feed it a very narrowbanded in wavelength, eye-bright, small dot. If you hold your mouth really close to a cranked-up PA mike, and barely whisper, you can blow speakers.

Some higher end equipment can turn the gain down, but that is really more for broad energy sources, for intermittent periods of time; not continuous point sources of light battering one small area of the sensor.

So, they are not 'shitty'. And, making all that stuff happen in a footprint of a couple of containers of carmex comes at a price. That's why they are 'expensive'.

Happy to help!

you should educate yourself before you open mouth and insert foot.