Chrome
Firefox
Edge
It’s somewhere around 2005, or 2008. The debate has begun: Do you want an Aimpoint or an EOTech for your duty rifle? Aside from advancements in diode technology and battery life, the aiming solutions these two top players bring to the table have remained relatively unchanged since then… and, yet the answer to this question has become perhaps more convoluted. In the video above, we take our Aimpoints and EOTechs to the range to shoot guns and spin our own debate about why you might choose one over the other.
Aimpoint is what Henry runs on most guns. He has EOTechs, but he typically uses them for his clone guns, AKs, and such. This may be a confidence factor with the brand from his time in the military when they ran a lot of Aimpoint CompM2s and CompM4s. It’s an optic he is very comfortable with, specifically on rifles setting a 200-meter zero. Between that, the good battery life and the ease of use, he’s loyal to the brand. Josh has spent more time bouncing around between many different optic brands and models, including the Aimpoints and EOTechs.
Back in the day, the thought process was, and to some extent still is, that the Aimpoint generally has a smaller overall window and a refined single-dot aiming point, whereas the EOTech generally has the larger, boxier window and the famous donut-of-death-style reticle – which some people will argue they are faster with. After shooting both types a ton, we are convinced that this is more an issue of personal preference than it is about which has the better reticle. But that was one of the key debates from the beginning, and some still feel they shoot the dot-and-donut better or faster. Others say they prefer the longer battery life of the Aimpoint.
In the modern market, optics on both sides are developing smaller footprints. Newer optics are more durable, lightweight, and easy to use. The EXPS-style EOTech is much smaller than the EOTech 512 was. Aimpoint has the Micro T-2, which has a much smaller footprint than the Aimpoint CompM4s.
But perhaps the most significant point in the Aimpoint vs. EOTech debate is that in the 15 years since the original debate, other companies have combined the feature sets we found most attractive in these optics into different variations and offerings available on the market today. And we’ve seen a drastic reduction in the price of those optics as those companies compete against each other. On the other hand, both Aimpoint and EOTech are just getting more expensive. It could have to do with military contracts and things of that nature, but to go out and get an Aimpoint T-2 today, you’re paying a premium. If you’re okay with going to different brands, you can pick up a Holosun 503 for roughly 1/4 the price of the T-2, which has some of our favorite characteristics of both the EOTech and the Aimpoint optics.
We talk more about this in the video above, so check it out and, until next time, we’ll see you on the range!
--9-Hole Reviews
