So did you kill an elk?
Printable View
Rain and mud caused our USPSA match to be cancelled. With rain threatening here, my wife and I decided to do a longer hike. I left the 43X/RMSc at home, and grabbed the Acro on a G4 19. It was off in the safe, turned it on, dot looked fine and we headed out. Part way on the hike, I pulled the Acro and the dot was very dim. Adjusting intensity, it was clear the battery was failing. Replaced it at home, but this is very un-Aimpoint performance. I sure hope they have an Acro with a bigger battery at SHOT.
Range day today. Several of us at the "Action pistol bay" shooting at steel and paper. One experienced shooter was there with a G19.5 with an ACRO. My first chance to shot an ACRO. It was fine - however, personal preference, I like my SRO 5.0 better.
Just a question... Why doesn’t Aimpoint have “shakeawake” technology? Given the consistent battery issues with the ACRO it would seem like they would develop something similar.
One of my guys T&E’d a Holosun (507C I think) with that technology...it also has a solar panel. He ended up buying it at half price. So far no issues.
Motion sensors could be finicky. We know Leupold's has issues. I had an interesting conversation with a bunch of European engineers a year or two ago. Somebody decided to add motion sensors to our outpatient heart monitors, to see if their arrhythmias occurred at rest, peak of activities, or after. After a couple of months of reading these, I came to a conclusion that my patients were barely alive, or paralyzed, since almost no physical activity was recorded. Either calibration was off or sensors were made in some garage in Poland, since this is where those engineers were located. No engineer, but I presume Aimpoint is avoiding that for simplicity and robustness reasons.
There are three approaches to achieving acceptable battery life in a pistol red dot.
1) use a large battery.
2) have an auto function, so the dot dims in reduced light, reducing battery draw.
3) have a sleep function, so the dot turns off when no motion is detected.
The large battery, especially when combined with an auto function, and the ability to turn the dot off, seems like the preferred choice. Unless people override the auto function (no names being mentioned, YVK) the RMR can last well over a year. The Acro problem seems too small a battery, since we don’t hear complaints about the T1/2 series. I personally wouldn’t trust a dot for EDC use that relies on a motion detector. I have had multiple motion sensor failures with the DP Pro, a recent MOTAC failure with a Sig Romeo 3 Max, and Talionis may have had a motion detector issue with his Romeo Zero contributing to six weeks of life against a claimed battery life of five or ten years.
I think the RMR arrangement of on/off, and auto intensity with manual override is optimal for EDC. All that is needed for an ideal PMO, leaving aside the small display with too much of it obscured by the emitter housing, is the ability to replace the battery without removing the optic, and in a perfect world, a closed emitter design. Hopefully Trijicon delivers us something on January 8.
The interesting thing about motion sensor equipped reflex sights is that no one focuses on the thousands and thousands sold that work exactly as they should.
Some people are unlucky I guess.