I was iffy at first - SIG SAUER Romeo5XDR 1x20mm Red Dot Sight

so the Romeo XDR is a great red dot, (or in my case green dot), but I'm going to be honest, i sat on the fence for a good month before I finally decided and got it, and the only real reason it did beat out it's competitors was probably the fact that SIG won that new big army contract and had an epic sale to celebrate. that combined with a 15% off code for red dot sights in stock and i ended up getting a romeo XDR for just a little over the price of the regular romeo optic. the reason why I aat for so long was the reticle. i really wanted a green circle dot, between colorblindness and nearsightedness it was the ideal reticle setup for me. but SIG had to be different... and this triangle reticle seemed kinda gimmicky at first, and it's a little bit of a rare piece, noone local to me had ot in stock for me to see in the flesh before I actually put the money down. but when the sale and the discount code hit together it kinda became a "f- it" and I'll try it out...
it's actually not that bad; and might be worth for some people to try out.
1st off the reticle at the"normal" (level 6 brightness that the battery life is quoted on) is literally day-glow toxic avenger radiation green. it's awesome. you'd have to be fully blind not to see this thing, especially in the dark. it's so bright in a full dark no lights on house at midnight you can see the teenage mutant Ninja turtles ooze colored glow coming out of this thing. definitely a mission accomplished on the "can i see it?" front.
2nd this thing is tough, and designed and built equally thoughtfully. the adjustment turrets are countersunk and just a scant bout a millimeter or two below the actually body of the optic, whis is amazingly machined out of just one big block of aluminum. that machine work is noteworthy too, one odd little thing that you'll notice is it's got alot of angles coming off the sides of the body, kinda has almost a coffin shape when you look at it from the front lols. but those steep angles handily explain why there's YouTube videos of this optic being shot with a shotgun and not only surviving perfectly intact but also retaining zero and being amazingly good to go for what it's been through. almost wanna say between looks and feel this is like the F-22 raptor of red dots. i hate to say it but i did briefly and accidentally dropped it but it shrug it off without even a scratch on the paint and to make it worse it was a cement floor with real tiling and it's on the back of an AR10... so once again a serious win.
lastly the MOTAC is some of the coolest black magic in this business, literally. 2 notes i can share in case you're wondering about how"good" it is.
firstly it doesn't actually have to move to turn on. playing with it i found that apparently, I'm kinda guessing here, but if anything that's a "ground" in electrical terms makes contact with the body that alone will turn it on. touching with just a paperclip in my hand turned it on. also blowing really hard will do it to, not sure exactly how this voodoo works but it does kick a__.
lastly is the reticle.... i had to try really hard to be open minded and I'm actually glad I was. if you're one of those people who don't like the circle cause it's too big, this is the happy medium you've been looking for. it's kinda interesting but you can get a really good blend of speed and accuracy, but you gotta kinda rework your brain for it. if you run just the triangle it's big and bright enough that you'll never loose it, and the hollow section of the triangle measures about 12moa at the widest spot, and you can easily still see the background and the target and still make a nice tight lock onto center that's going to be precise. running the triangle with the dot makes it really busy, but here's the irony: i originally got this to make a G28/MK110 style scope setup, with a red dot on top of a main precision scope, with the romeo mounted far forward and on triangle with dot mode it actually looks like a trijicon solid triangle reticle, like what alot of the RMR's use. so depending on mission context you might actually want to take advantage of the busy-ness.
so it's not what I had in mind, wish SIG would've just been normal and done a green circle dot option, or maybe have the green and the red get a circle dot/triangle/just dot setup, that seems like it would let everyone find their own Goldilocks reticle, small, medium, large, right? but despite this I've actually gotten quite fond of it and i loved the way it made my gunsmith do a double take... I'm THAT guy!!!