If you’re planning to put an RMR on it anyways, I would skip the IR laser entirely, and go with an X300-series, possibly the X300V if you want IR illumination.

IMHO, the RDS is far and away the better solution for IR aiming with a pistol, and integrated units like the ones you’ve listed simply add cost and complexity—both mechanically, and from a training standpoint.

~Augee

Not much more to tell, hahaha, to a certain extent, it's just my opinion--but then again, while the market has embraced Class I IR lasers, IR pistol lasers don't exactly seem to be a "runaway hit"--I would almost even venture to wager that more X400Vs end up being used on carbines/PCCs (or a "technically-a-pistol-because-it-has-a-brace-not-a-stock" pseudo-SBR) than on pistols.

As always--to be fair, what I'm about to say will apply primarily to "tactical" users, if you're swatting field mice at 25 yards with your suppressed .22 Ruger, what I'm saying might not apply quite as much, and your experiences may in fact be the total opposite, so there's that.

Nevertheless, I think there are a couple different things that are coming into play when we talk about pistol mounted RDS versus IR lasers:

First, as others have pointed out--even for guys that still rail against passive shooting of long guns using NV compatible optics, the general consensus seems to be that assuming you have a red dot on your pistol--you should use it while shooting under NV, even for guys who insist that NV is a lasers-only game when it comes to carbines.

With that, cost comes in to play--in a basic context you can: buy an RDS which many believe will improve your shooting, night and day, or you can buy an IR laser device which will may only be useful at night when you're shooting with NODs, which sadly, is not when most people, even those that own NV, shoot.

Obviously, I've been a proponent of passive NV aiming regardless, so it's perhaps natural that this would appeal to me as well, but shooting through a pistol mounted RDS, as others have mentioned, now at the end of your hand, not tucked into your shoulder alleviates much of the "conflict" between equipment and weapon that can make it difficult to execute with a long gun, at which points, you have all the other benefits of passive aiming, namely no active IR emissions, and consistency in presentation day/night--you only need to develop one set of reflexes, if you learn to shoot a pistol with a red dot during the day, you shouldn't need to "learn" to use it at night, because the first time you bring that pistol up  the dot will be there in front of you. Again, I've been advocating more people try their monoculars over their dominant eye, but even if you're still on the non-dom train, the whole "two images merging" thing will take care of you, especially at pistol engagement distances.

On top of that, there's the whole self-fulfilling and cyclical question of ancillary support, namely in the case of pistols--holsters.

The X400V? Okay... there are some holsters out there for 'em, DBAL? Have fun with that, brother.

Yeah, so, if no one uses them, no one's going to make holsters for them, but no one is going to use them if no one makes holsters for them...

Yeah, you can roll your own, or maybe get someone else to make one for you, but not everyone wants to/is willing to go through that, and not everyone necessarily trusts home-folded Kydex holsters for duty use. Concealed carry? Sure--the Kydex holster market is perfect for that, but for duty use? Except, if you're wearing NODs... you're not exactly being sneaky in the same way as when you're carrying concealed, though I suppose they're both sneaky in their own way.

So then why/how do a lot of "duty" holsters get made? Well, kinda because someone is actually using them, and by "someone," I mean someone big enough to get the Safarilands of the world to actually make a holster for that specific combination. So who's that and what's it mean? I'll tell you straight up--I doubt things like the "Roland Special" would be so popular had it not been for the Safariland 6354DO, and that holster wasn't just made because Safariland decided "hey, you know what we should really do? Make a holster for a 9/40 Glock, but with a little pocket for a dovetail mounted Docter Optic..."

Which, and I'm not usually a fan of this kind of "appeal to authority," but it begs the question: if pistol mounted IR lasers were so good, where are all the holsters for them? We're talking, after all, about guys that pride themselves on doing almost everything under the cover of darkness these days. Sure, they've used things like Crimson Trace IR units that don't need a special holster, but again, for whatever reason, all these seemingly "purpose built" IR pistol laser systems never seem to have much staying power in the market.

Anyways, exiting off that detour again--how do most people like to shoot in the dark if they can? Suppressed--lordy lord, if you thought it was tough finding a holster to accommodate your gun and a DBAL, have fun finding one that will let you carry a suppressor, too. I dunno, but I wanna say if you're not shooting a 9/40 Glock and happen to be right-handed, and therefore can use the Crye GunClip, you might just be SOL.

So... the laser's not really any better functionally than just using the RDS, plus you've added extra parts and extra switches, plus you probably have to account for much more mechanical offset, plus you can't really carry the thing, especially not suppressed, unless you want to put a sling on it or something, or hold it in your hands the whole damn time, which is not what most people want to do with their pistols, even if they're not planning on shooting anything else.

Meanwhile, the OP in this particular case has even already said that they're considering putting an RMR on it anyways, so it's not even like I'm trying to convince them to get on the pistol RDS train and using NV as a cookie--they're already most of the way there, at which point, if they're already ready to spend the money to buy an X400V or DBAL-PL, may as well put that money towards the best RDS and mounting job they can get and get daylight and NV effectiveness in one.

~Augee

May I ask why?

I get that some people still get a little squirrely when you say "battery powered optic," but you also started out by asking what battery powered laser you should use in conjunction with your battery powered NVD, both of which I would consider quite reliable--but probably have a higher battery failure rate than actual optics do.

Plus, you can install cowitnessed iron sights, so that if your optic does shit the bed, you can always pop on the white light (assuming those batteries haven't failed too, I guess) and engage "the old fashioned way."

Trijicon does some great things with fiber optics and tritium... but again, there's a reason everyone jumped off the Trijicon Reflex train years back, and on to the battery powered RDS train.

~Augee

I want to clarify that I’m not saying that the devices in question suck or won’t work for the intended purpose.

They work fine, and without an RDS on your pistol, they’re about your best option, and while pistol RDS have gotten very popular, I know that there are still a lot of people who aren’t ready to make the move to red dots on their pistols, whether it’s a matter of not thinking they’re effective, not trusting the optics that are out there for a handgun application, or simply cost, which is honestly what I think is the largest driving factor—a lot of people like Glocks (e.g.,) because they’re relatively cheap, and some guys don’t want to go spend another $600 or so to add an optic to one, once you add in slide milling and suppressor height sights, you’ve more than doubled the cost of the weapon.

That being said, there are a lot of parellels in daylight/VIS aiming that could equally apply to NV aiming. Some years back, a lot of folks were advocating the use of VIS lasers on handguns, citing the advantages in speed and target acquisition/engagement, especially in low light use. Since pistol mounted RDS have become more popular, you basically never hear anyone advocating for VIS laser use in low light (but visible spectrum) engagements as a better option over having an RDS on your gun, why would this not apply to NV engagements as well?

The reality is that under most circumstances lasers are slower than weapon mounted sights because you need to acquire and track the laser dot in three dimensional space and align it with your target, whereas with a weapon mounted RDS, you remain target-focused, and until the dot appears in your field of view, if you’re focusing on where the dot is, you’re doing it wrong.

With long guns, there’s been the obvious hardware conflicts that have made IR aiming lasers the more preferred option for most, and it’s worth considering that for the most part, excepting “one-off” situations like Son Tay, that the use of IR lasers with NVGs actually not only predates the general use of weapon-mounted RDS (of which earlier ones that saw military use like the Aimpoint 3000/5000 were not NV compatible):



...but also date from the heyday of the AN/PVS-7 which presents its own significant obstacles for aiming through a weapon-mounted optic, to say nothing of the relative impossibility of trying to use iron sights with an NVD. From there, there’s a certain amount of “well this is how we’ve always done it” that kicks in, though it’s obviously not the only factor, even as optics and NVDs become more sophisticated, along with IR laser aiming modules.

Again, the point is not, and never has been that IR lasers don’t work, or that they suck—to a certain extent I was initially responding to a single user-specific inquiry: “I have a suppressed 229 that I’m also thinking about putting a red dot on,” but I do think that using an RDS is the superior solution for most “fighting gun” applications for use with NV.

~Augee