Archive for February, 2016

We have been a Vortex direct dealer for almost 10 months now and one thing we are often finding is that many people still believe that running a red dot means you are stuck with what you got and have to get a new optic if you want any type of magnification.    People look at the cost of the Eotech or Aimpoint magnifiers and don’t understand what you are paying for, and in my opinion, you’re probable just paying for a better mount, but not necessarily a better optic.   The magnifier is really another optic and you have to realize that when shelling out the money, but magnification isn’t just for taking those longer shots, it’s also about target identification.

Even if you are not using any of the Vortex Red Dots on your Carbine,  I would still highly recommend getting the Vortex Magnifier product code VMX-3T for $199.99 which if mounted properly, using loctite, can be a very solid platform.  The Vortex magnifier will incrase the clarity of your red dot optic (green dot if you have a Vortex Strike Fire II) which can really make things easier to hit see and hit.  This flip to side optic can be left in the open position for CQB and flipped over whenever you need it.   Another major selling point of Vortex is there outstanding lifetime warranty.

There is a lot of changes taking place in the red dot market and between Trijicon MRO, Vortex StrikeFire, Aimpoint Patrol Rifle and Burris Fastfire III, there are a lot of great products coming out that have slight differences in durability, features and preferences.  I’m more of a fan of smaller red dots because I find it really annoying to shoot at 300yd-600yd targets and have my red dot obscure the object.  There are things you can do to hit targets at long distance like power down your red dot sight to the lowest setting so you can actually see through the dot and see your target but if speed is important it’s hard to move a faint dot around quickly especially on two feet.

Vortex has a few very hot sellers with us, namely the Vortex Strikefire II and the Vortex Sparc.  The Strikefire II is very close to the Aimpoint Patrol Rifle Optics in size but we have seen so many tests to show that there is hardly a difference in durability and yest a $224 price difference.   The night vision settings, battery life and waterproof depth differences are all I could really argue about but not everyone is concerned about that.  The biggest difference is the Vortex Strikefire II 4 MOA Red dot and the Aimpoint 2 MOA dot.  Since we’ve seen a growing trend towards green reticles and green lasers, Vortex does have the option to change the dot from red to green if that matters to you, but you really can’t go wrong with either of these.