I have had my Holoson SCS mounted on a Glock 45 for just shy of a year and a half at this point and I thought I would make a few quick observations.

Now just to clarify a couple things.

-By NORMAL shooter I mean that the gun lives in a dark safe the vast majority of the time and the lions share of my shooting is indoors. I also don't shoot tons and tons of ammo through any one gun so the G45 gets shot now and then.

So how has my experience been? In short stellar. The sight has always worked, never lost zero and seemingly works exactly as advertised. I do, however, have a routine I generally follow. Every 2 weeks to a month or so I will make sure the sight gets sat under a very bright, warm spectrum, shop light for a day . This is more my OCD if you will then an actual need. Assuming the literature is correct that more that replaces the energy used. If you were to take out in the sun it would charge like 10 fold what it used.

I got to thinking even if 10 years from now the internal battery has degraded and only holds a charge for say 1000 hours vs. 20,000 hours+ when new, my simple charging routine more than handles that and keeps the sight completely viable for my needs. I have an IPHONE 4s that still works, holds a charge etc. and that battery saw far more abuse in charging etc.

As for the simplicity of it all, I love it. The auto brightness works great and the fact that I can just tap a button and go full brightness is awesome for my plebian needs. I totally realize there are folks who want to tailor their sights very specifically to their needs but I just want a bright aiming point to put defensive rounds accurately enough and the SCS gives me this in spades and if need be I can quickly go super bright if the situation arises but I have found that's rare in practice for my uses.

I dig green dots over red so I have no issues here.

I am always arguing with my inner luddite but after a year and half the SCS is doing exactly what it said it would and I am very happy with this little piece of tech for my needs. Now will it be completely useless 10 years from now? I dunno, maybe but I am betting that it will be useful for a long time to come even with internal battery degradation as the dot uses less power then it gets in the vast majority of situations.

I still stand by the fact that pistol red dots are not the paradigm shift rifle optics were. That said there are absolutely tangible benefits to pistol dots in both speed and accuracy. They are certainly not the end all be all everything else has been rendered obsolete that some folks would have you believe but they also aren't completely useless, fragile toys that bring nothing to the table that others would have you believe. Like most things the truth lies somewhere in the middle. If you have the desire and means they are worth playing with to get a feel for personally IMO and you might find them more useful then you imagined, that said I certainly don't think it's some kind of death sentence to run irons either.

Anyway, long story short I like the SCS alot. I like its simplicity, I like its lack of battery changes, I like its features and I am happy to say it seems to be a product doing what the company said it would do and frankly that in and of itself makes me happier then it really should.

Take care, shoot safe,
Chris

Totally agree on the SCS. Now I just wish the ones for the CZ P10 would finally become available.

Nice write-up, I appreciate the long-term feedback. I've been intrigued by the SCS since it came out, and your original write-up when you first got yours made me even more interested. Glad to hear it's holding up well after a year and a half.

Although they've released several different variants of this optic since its release, and for different platforms, I still don't have one because they're all the wrong platforms for me. There is one for the P320 now, but the deck height is so high that it lacks most of the benefits of the Glock version, and just isn't compelling enough for me to make the investment. I actually toyed with the idea of getting a Glock at one point, just to try one of these out, but decided that would be crazy lol. I'm currently having a P226 slide milled for an optic and at one point considered asking if they could replicate the MOS cut on that slide just so I could use one of these, but ultimately decided the P22X guns are complicated enough to mill as it is, so I opted for a 407k instead.

If they ever come out with one for the factory Beretta RDO slides that can co-witness with the standard irons, I'll be first in line!

Nice report on the SCS, very interesting. A side question on the 45....did you use the factory mounting plate or an after market to install the optic ?

quote:

Originally posted by Genorogers:
Nice report on the SCS, very interesting. A side question on the 45....did you use the factory mounting plate or an after market to install the optic ?

The Glock version of the SCS is built to direct mount to the MOS cut with no plate needed. It's also thin enough to use standard irons.

quote:

Originally posted by cslinger:


I still stand by the fact that pistol red dots are not the paradigm shift rifle optics were.

This is the thing I find most curious.

How?

When you look at all the big kid units that are in the shooty thingy business, all without question run MRDS.

When you look straight down Practicescore, times/accuracy/hit factor are always substantially higher in carry optics and open. Pick a classification from GM right down the card. So much so to make it “fairer” they invented carry optics to give iron sights a chance in production/SSP.

Seems like a pretty big shift to me.

The Glock version of the SCS is built to direct mount to the MOS cut with no plate needed. It's also thin enough to use standard irons.[/QUOTE]
I did not know this, thanks.

Apologies for the delay. Life and all.

While I know most top tier units and PDs are moving to pistol optics they are also, by the very nature of their job, supposed to "run towards a gunfight" so to speak.

The other side of that coin is my first and foremost "job" is to avoid/evade the fight so to speak.

Now keep in mind I am not skilled or talented to the level of most. On rifles the normal engagement is likely to be at a greater standoff distance making optics far more of a game changer IMO. Also when compared to a pistol a rifle is simply a more stable platform optics or not and in my use makes optics a far greater force multipliers.

Pistols, even with a dot, are inherently more difficult to shoot and are typically employed at very close distances very quickly and at least in my (again untrained/unskilled/untalented) experience with little actual sight picture vs. a flash type picture. Do optics help, yep. Do they seem to make a vast difference to me in the close range stuff? No. Helpful yes.

So it comes down to cost/maintenance/additional failure points (mounts/batteries/electronics etc.) and how those things weigh on the performance gains.

Now all that said. I run optics. I truly do think they bring an absolute, documentable, benefit. I also think they are a great training aid. I also concede that you don't pick your fight it picks you and while the vast number of self defense encounters are bad breath distance and fast there certainly could be a perfectly legal/ethical 50 yard shoot.

I am not a luddite, I am not a PISTOLS DON'T NEED GIZMOS BLAH BLAH FUDD. I just feel that for me personally, while they bring an absolute benefit they don't bring the same level of benefit rifle optics do for me.

Take care, shoot safe,
Chris

I've been using the SCS on a Gen5 G17 for a year and I couldn't be more pleased with the results. I wanted to put one on my PDP, but I have an early Gen1 slide so no joy there as that SCS only seats on Gen2 slides. I also have the SCS on a P320F and it's also been pretty effective on that pistol, though not quite as much as it has been on the Glock because the lack of a plate on a Glock meant that I didn't have to readjust that ingrained decades-old Glock muscle memory that I have. Whereas with the SIG I have no burned in muscle memory to overcome because with that carnsarnit grip (angle) they still point low the first time drawing every frickin' time .

Doing away with the adapter plate is the right direction. One less point of failure, and no need for changing out the irons for cowitnessing purposes.

I just put one on my Walther PDP. Mounts without plate and allows co witness with stock PDP sights. I love it so far.

My less than 2¢:

How big is the difference in Steel Challenge?

Could there be an age/experience difference between shooters who gravitate toward optics?

(EG Open used to always be the toughest division, because it tended to attract the most experienced shooters.)

Personally, I always shot steel faster with irons than with a slide ride optic.

A frame mount let me transition quicker but my first shot was still always slower.

I’m not tactical at all, but my Secret Squirrel buddies mostly worried about their first shot times.