Three friends and I have been testing several different optical sights on our AR carbines for past several weeks and we have learned what works best for us.
I have a Bushnell Compact holosight (very similar to EO tech), Aimpoint ML (3 moa dot) and Tasco PDP3 (4 moa dot), one of my friend has a Trijicon Reflex2 with the triangle dot and another has a Leupold 2.5X scope. Each sight was mounted on a flattop AR carbines of various manufacturers including BM (2), RRA, Colt and Eagle. All were mounted so the dot or cross hair was just centered above the front fight. Also, they were all mounted without rear sights so we would be depending on the optical sights only.
Course of fire was to shoot 2 rounds at each of 4 targets (8 ”x 10” cardboard) placed 2 yards apart from 10, 15, 25, 50, 75, 100, 150 and 200 yards. We each shot the course several times to get an “average” time for each sight and distance.
First thing we noticed was that everybody shot his fastest time with the Bushnell holosight from 10, 15 and 25 yards. Second was that at 200 yards everybody shot his fastest time with the Leupold 2.5X scope. Aimpoint and Tasco consistently had the fastest time at 75, 100 and 150 yards for three of us while the forth guy found the Bushnell to be fastest from 10 to 50 yards then the Leupold to be the fastest from 75 to 200 yards. Nobody got the fastest time from any distance with the Trijicon Reflex2. In terms of accuracy and speed, none of us found the Aimpoint to be any better than the Tasco.
We all agreed that the holosight was the fastest at close range while 3 of us found tube red dot sight (Aimpoint and Tasco) were fastest at mid range. Beyond 150 yards, the 2.5X Leupold was the best for everybody.
Please understand that this was no scientific research and out time keeping was just to calculate average time with no great record keeping or analysis (another words it was just for fun
). My friends and I are only weekend shooters with no extensive or serious military or SWAT training in use of rifles for CQB. However, we do shoot almost every weekend and we do shoot a lot (300-500 on a weekend for each) at ranges up to 440 yards with our AR and AK rifles.