 Hey there friends, thanks for checking in. This video has to do with red dot versus non red dot on handguns. For years I've battled this. I used to watch people with red dots shoot incredibly well and I always took the attitude, you know? I don't need that thing. I'm good enough with iron sights and that red dot seems more like a hassle, but the older I got and the more that my eyes started to fail me, I began to appreciate a red dot on a handgun. So those are a couple of questions you have to ask yourself, you know, are you willing to pay $100 to $500 additional above and beyond your gun, your holster, your ammo and everything else to put a red dot on there and if so, do you have the confidence when shooting with a red dot? So I came up with some advantages and disadvantages with a red dot versus a non red dot on a handgun. Here are two Springfield Hellcats. Here we have the OSP model with the Shield SMSC, okay, Shield Micro Sight Compact and over here we have a non OSP model with iron sights and that is a Tritium front dot and this still has the front dot as well. But the first advantage to having a red dot is that it is easy and now if you're a rifle shooter or, you know, carbine and you're used to red dots on rifles or even shotguns, this should come a little more natural to you and I'm pretty well experienced with red dots on rifles and so it comes natural. The hardest part is trusting the dot and that's actually number two as an advantage. You have to trust the dot. Conventionally, we, both these guns are unloaded by the way, okay, let me go ahead and do that. Conventionally, we know we have to align our rear sight with our front sight focusing on the front sight but if that dot is off to the side and it looks like this, you have to trust that dot and if you can trust that dot and you haven't sighted it in that's where it should impact the target where that dot is and that is a learning curve because I learned all these years to trust my sights now all of a sudden I have to trust a dot on a handgun it takes practice to just change that mental mindset that we have when aiming a pistol or, you know, at least aligning up the sights. I will mention that moving while shooting is easier with a red dot. It's easier just to focus in on that target. Once again, you trust the dot, you're moving, you have this big window here to look at your target versus these iron sights that are much smaller. So moving is an advantage in my opinion with the red dot. Now with the red dot, especially with this set up, I could also use my iron sights. So I basically get the best of both worlds. I can shoot with the red dot and if for some reason that doesn't work out, I could always use my iron sights and that will work just fine on this Hellcat. Now a lot of handguns it may not work that well or shall I say a lot of red dots may not offer that. You can see this one here has an indentation there that allows the rear sight to be used with the front sight. One thing that a red dot offers is that it's actually brighter. It's brighter than your standard night sight in and with this set up you're getting two for the price of one. You actually have two sights that you can work with and that's an advantage. Now you want to practice one way and do that, your self defense or your target shooting or your competition one way. That is the best way to do things however if one way doesn't work you can always go back to the other way. And another thing that's an advantage is that you kind of feel like you're cheating. You know when you're hitting your target and you're not even doing what you normally do like align the sights, you just put that dot on target and you pull the trigger and it hits, then that's certainly a good thing it feels like it's cheating. Some disadvantages, remember I gave you this scenario, you have to trust a dot but sometimes you have to search for that dot. That holds true for rifles or anywhere that a red dot is used, you have to search for that dot. Now if you align that pistol right up with your eye sight it shouldn't be a problem. If you don't then you may not find it right away. You shouldn't be shooting at anything that you're not sure of anyway so that goes without saying. It requires practice, I'm telling you it requires practice. Every time you get a handgun you practice with it. This requires practice as well. The docking go out but in this case I already mentioned you can use your iron sights but in other cases you may not be able to do that and this is a battery operated device and so the battery can die out and then you have to deal with your iron sights if you can see them through the glass. The lighting may change the intensity of the dot depending on your environment, you know it's great at night or shall I say lower light situations that dot's going to come out nice and bright but sometimes you may not feel that way in the daylight. Now in the daylight the dot's actually going to intensify because it needs to because you're battling all that light and so it's kind of a cool thing but it also could be a disadvantage. As far as holsters are concerned a holster for a red dot has to be different so if I had a holster here for this Hellcat it's going to work but the one with the dot will not work as where this one will work universally with both. So that's a kind of obvious thing and I will mention this, sighting in a red dot can be difficult it's not like a rifle because you are using human error. Now a laser sight helped me a lot that actually helped quite a bit that Strikeman sight that I reviewed that helped a lot and that got me to where I needed to be but pinpointing it in with a rifle it's simple even though with even with a ventrest you know when you're sighting this in it can be difficult but once it's sighted in you should not have to change it and to add to that a red dot you're focusing on one dot as where with iron sights you're focusing on the rear and the front sights many times three dots opposed to one dot which makes it a little quicker to acquire the target so those are my advantages and disadvantages I will mention also that if you have eye issues like I have a stigmatism you know the eyes are set at different powers it's hard to align a red dot really does help a lot and in terms of one-handed shooting I'm gonna call it a tie you know I this I had to keep real tight because even a little bit of shake moves that dot around a lot but this I'm more comfortable with cuz I've been doing it longer and as far as accuracy shoot shooting goes you know for distance I'm gonna call it a tie too because I can't say that I've really done a lot of distance shooting with this but I have seen other people do it and they've done very well so those are my thoughts of red dot versus non-red dot and I hope you're able to gain something from it if you like videos like this please subscribe and share I always appreciate thumbs up button thanks for watching and you guys be safe