This thing is tiny! - Burris FastFire III Reflex Red Dot Sight

I bought this optical sight to mount on a Ruger 22/45 LITE I had just purchased. Since the gun is polymer and aluminum, I wanted a small and light sight to go on it. I examined both the FastFire lll and also the earlier version, the FastFire ll. The lll seemed a bit smaller, and I liked being able to change the battery from the top, without having to dismount the sight from the pistol. And this sight weighs only nine tenths of one ounce! The Picatinny mount, by the way, does fit a Weaver rail as well as a Picatinny rail. But you need to mount it carefully to avoid having it grasp the Weaver rail in a less than perfectly flat position. Wikipedia says this common when putting Picatinny mounts on a Weaver rail.

I was a bit concerned about the comments some people had made about the red dot being fuzzy or odd-shaped. One person even said he didn't get a dot, but rather got a red haze across the screen. I suspect I may know what they are talking about. If you have myopia or older eyes you may be used to seeing a halo around headlights on cars approaching you at night. When I set the FastFire to its brightest settings in low light, I get a similar effect. Because the iris of my eyes are wide open, the brightest dot produces a halo on the screen, almost like what I see in a supermarket when their laser scanner accidentally hits my eye. Step it down to a low brightness setting and that completely goes away. And outdoors in bright light, with my irises contracted, I get a perfect dot image with the bright settings. That's why they give you five brightness settings, so you can get excellent results in both low light or bright light situations. I keep mine set to lowest brightness because I shoot mostly on an indoor range.