Live the Magnified Life
In my perpetual quest within the AR world towards perfection, it is inevitable that I ascend to optical perfection. I understand the fact that, in the words of Thomas Sowell, “there are no solutions, only trade-offs” perfection is an impossible task, I still remain undeterred. Whatever the line is right before true perfection I don’t know, but I intend to find it. This brings me to red dot sights, and in particular red dots with a magnifier. I can hear them now, “What about LPVO’s?!?!?!” What about LPVO scopes? Big, bulky, heavy and expensive. It’s the Rolls Royce of optics, not because it’s the best or nice, but because it portrays a certain status upon the others around you. The “I have more money than sense” kind of reputation. Who wants an optic that isn’t a true scope and not a true up close red dot, but somewhere in the irrelevant middle. Sure a Rolls is nice, but it’s also over priced and quite delicate in use or quality.
Now that we all agree a red dot is the preferred optic for a fighting AR, enter the recent Palmetto State Armory daily deal of a SIG Romeo5XDR w/ Juliet 5 Micro Magnifier that I just could not say no to buying at $229. It is backed by SIGs lifetime warranty and some other fancy symbolisms on their website. Which, if I’m being honest, actually makes me think twice about their quality the more guarantees and warranties they add. This used to be the pinnacle of German engineering and perfection just a decade ago. The quality of a SIG product in 2005 was never even discussed. The sky is blue and SIG goes pew. But this is not a SIG review, not specifically. This is a dive into the mind of a guy with a high limit credit card and a decent internet connection.
One thing is absolutely true about a red dot + magnifier setup and that is it looks sick AF. Super tactical, Delta level type of drip. You feel this drip, as much as euphemistic drip can be felt, when you look through the magnifier. Don’t want/need the magnification just flip it out of the way. Tactical boi. There is some fitment with eye relief with the magnifier, but that’s easy enough. Basically put the magnifier to the rear of the receiver and of course the red dot goes to the front of the receiver. The magnifier does not have to sit right behind the dot on the pic rail. One of the best features of the SIG magnifier is that it tilts out of the way to the right. This clears the way for you if running Nods as well as opening up your primary field of view.
After zeroing the dot at 50 yards, during which the magnifier was used to see impacts, I moved back to 100 yards to really let the magnifier shine and shine it did. An 8 inch gong at 100 yards is tough to see through any red dot but the magnifier made 100 hits easy as pie. Flip the magnifier out of the way to open the field of view and a 66% torso is easy to see and make hits with no issue. Wanna smoke the torso in the dome? Flip the magnifier down and bingo son! Simple. Did I mention how tacticool I look? Drippy AF.
Downsides? Hell no there ain’t no downsides. Why not use a red dot + magnifier if you want magnification but don’t want to dedicate your AR as a scoped rifle? It beats the LPVO in that besides what I pointed out above, you can dump the magnification off if need be quickly with the allen tool you should be keeping inside your pistol grip. So ditch the LPVO and get the dot + magnifier setup and go full Delta SEALs just like I did.
