Customizing your pistol with an aftermarket slide can make it easier to mount the best pistol optics for sporting or self-defense shooting. Modern pistol red dot sights give your custom handgun better accuracy and precision, faster target acquisition, and tens of thousands of hours of service life before a battery change is needed. That’s a lot of shooting. Here’s how adding an aftermarket slide and optics can take your shooting experience to a whole new level.
Aftermarket Slides Offer Plenty of Benefits
We’ve discussed elsewhere the benefits of adding an aftermarket slide to your Glock pistol. One key benefit is that it can make it easier and cheaper to add premium optics. Unless your OEM slide was pre-milled at the factory, it could cost hundreds of dollars to get a Glock-certified gunsmith to customize it for optic mounting. In the process, you risk voiding your warranty or damaging your gun. Pre-milled aftermarket slides fit the best pistol optics, are easy upgrades for all skill levels, and retain your OEM slide and warranty for reinstallation if you decide to sell your gun at a later date.
Choosing Your Pistol Red Dot
When you start looking for the best pistol optic for your gun, you’ll quickly find there are a lot of options on the market. Many gun owners find so many models and their range of features confusing, but you can find the perfect pistol red dot for your needs by winnowing out the options that don’t work and then matching the remaining products against your shooting needs.
Common Pistol Red Dot Features to Consider
- Mount Pattern – Optics-ready slides are pre-milled with a specific mount pattern your optic should match. This provides a stable connection between your slide and optic. Matching footprints make installation a snap, but adapter plates are available if the two are different.
- Reticle – The best pistol optics have a reticle that lets you place your shots accurately round after round. Your pistol red dot reticle design might be a small dot for precision, a larger circle for more rapid acquisition, or a chevron to help you better gauge range.
- Color – Red dots don’t have to be red. Green illumination is popular in brighter environments where it is easily seen. Red illumination is better for night vision as the eye structures that sense red don’t lose as much of their night acuity while doing so.
- Brightness – The best pistol optics have adjustable brightness so you can fine-tune your illumination for your ambient lighting conditions. This increases performance and helps decrease battery drain when you’re free to dim your emitter.
- Lens Size – Smaller lenses are better for concealed carry, and you may be more comfortable with them. Larger windows give you a wider field of view for faster target acquisition, which is handy in both defensive and competitive situations.
- Battery Life – Modern battery technology combined with the energy-saving features of the best pistol optics can provide tens of thousands of hours of service between battery changes. This can ensure your pistol red dot won’t leave you without a precision optic when it’s needed the most.
- Ruggedness – Make sure your optic is built for the real world, where the environment doesn’t always support tactical necessities. You want a tough red dot with a strong frame, durable lens, and resistance to water and shock damage.
- Open vs. Closed Emitter – Open emitters offer a wider, less-obstructed view of your target and surroundings, but closed emitters are better all-weather red dot sights.
- Other Features – While the above are all common specifications you should factor in when deciding on the best pistol optic for your gun, the list is by no means exhaustive. Be sure to read and understand the full description of an optic before placing your order.
- Price—The pistol optics market offers a wide range of price points. Low-end models from unpronounceable third parties only sold through “budget” retail sites may not cost very much, but you’re also not going to get the performance and reliability you want. Expensive top-tier models can cost nearly a thousand dollars or more and may be rated for everything from jumping out of a plane to using them underwater. In the middle, you’ll find “blue collar” optics for a few hundred dollars that have the toughness and quality you need without breaking the bank.
Our Best Pistol Optic Choices
When we looked for reliable optics that were built for real-world use by everyday gun owners, Gideon Optics was the clear and obvious favorite. This brand is generating a lot of buzz with both their pistol red dots and a new line of prism and LPVO scopes for long guns. Their red dots can go toe-to-toe with the best pistol optics designed for the civilian market and leave more money in your bank account thanks to the efficient designs that don’t raise the cost by giving you more optic than you need. Don’t mistake that for compromising, however. Their YouTube channel includes videos of professional destruction attempts, but their optics just won’t die.
Best for Concealed Carry
The Gideon Optics Rock gives you big performance in a small package with a 3 MOA aiming dot. At just 32mm wide and 26.4mm tall, its small stature makes it less likely to snag on the draw and minimizes the bulk you have to hide under your clothing. Its shake-to-awake energy-saving feature combined with eleven brightness settings means you have up to 50,000 hours between battery changes– or a little over 5½ years. A tried and true RMR pattern makes mounting this optic on a Glock or other compatible slide a breeze.
Best for Competition
On the flip side of the Rock, the Gideon Arms Omega hasn’t skipped any meals. The large, round lens measures 22.3mm tall and a full 27mm wide and comes with your choice of a 3 MOA dot or a 3 MOA dot surrounded by an acquisition-friendly 65 MOA circle. It offers the same battery-extending technology and is perfect for use on the range or at your next shooting competition. It also features the RMR mounting footprint.
Best All-Around
If the Rock and Omega are two extremes, the Gideon Arms Alpha splits the difference as the best all-around pistol optic. Sharing many of the features, including shake-to-awake and the popular RMR footprint, the Alpha strikes a balance between size and concealability with a total height matching the Rock’s diminutive 26.4mm but a lens that is just as wide as the Omega’s 27mm monster window that supports a 3MOA dot or 45/3 MOA circle dot reticle. It’s a good choice when you need use-case flexibility in your build.
Best for Slimline
Gideon gives slimline Glocks and other subcompacts some love with the RMSC patterned Judge Red Dot Sight. With a 3 MOA green or red dot, the Judge keeps things svelte with a 16mm X 21mm lens. You still get all the features as its full-sized cousins but in a smaller-frame, carry-friendly package.
Best All-Weather
Closed emitter pistol red dots may block a little more of your field of view, but they also better keep out rain, snow, and debris. The Gideon Optics Mediator is your classic “Death Toaster.” It features a blocky design, bright red or green reticle, and easy installation on the ACRO footprint or an RMR-patterned slide using an RMR to ACRO adapter plate. Its multi-reticle design offers either a 3 MOA dot, 38 MOA circle, or circle-dot combination.
Order Your Optics-Ready Slide
The Revelation line of slides, including both the G26 Revelation and the Sig Sauer P320 compatible Revelation p320, come pre-milled with the RMR pattern, which makes it easy to install the best pistol optics on your handgun. They also feature deeper serrations for easier racking and handling and cutouts to help you keep weight down and show off your high-performance gun barrel. Make sure your pistol is ready for a red dot sight that helps you shoot better. Order your optics-ready aftermarket slides from Patmos Arms today.