Vortex StrikeFire Red/Green Dot Optic Review (HD)

Welcome back everybody. You guys asked me a lot to go over some of the lower cost optic options out there on the market. That's what we're going to do today. We're going to go over the Vortex Strike Pry that you see here on my rifle, 30mm red dot optic. We're going to go over some of the features of it, how it works, basically some of the things that people have talked about and been concerned with since it's come out, and then pretty much what I think of it at the end, but that's what's coming up today guys. Here's everything that comes with the optic once you get it in. You get your box here, which has all the fancy specs on the side here. It also demonstrates the red and green to let you know that that is the model that you have, that is the model we're reviewing here today. You get your magnifier here, this is a 2X magnifier. You also get your instruction manual, your lens cleaner, and your installation tool. So moving on to the actual optic itself, we'll get all that stuff out of the way. Basic specs of it is, it's going to be a 30mm tube, so any 30mm mount out there, it will work just fine on there. Basic operation of it, there's your power button there, just hit the power button and your red dot appears. Once it's already on, you can switch back and forth from red to green, as you guys can see there. Here is your brightness mode, turning it down, and you can turn it up here with the button up front, on top I should say. Here is your night vision button, so when you actually hit that, it goes over so it's only compatible with night vision devices. Turn it back on to daylight, you just hit it again. And the power button, if you forget to turn it off, it will automatically go off after six hours, and to turn it off, all you do is press and hold that power button, and it goes off. I think it takes about four seconds to go off. On the rear of the optic here, you do see the flip cap, we have flip caps on both the front and the rear. They're not bad for what it is, obviously it's a budget optic so you can't complain too much about it, they do work, they will keep the dust out of there. Your adjustment points are going to be on the top and on the bottom now, each click is a half MOA, so roughly a half inch at 100 yards. You can see they're very easily defined, if you guys are new to red dot optics and you don't know how to zero them, check out my red dot optic zeroing video and it will apply to this red dot as well. But it definitely lets you know which way you're going, it has nice positive clicks and you can use either a screwdriver, a quarter, whatever you may have on hand to actually make those adjustments. You can actually use a car key, I believe that's what I used when I was first setting this one up. Here's your battery compartment, it is o-ring sealed. Speaking of that, the optic claims to be waterproof, I don't know that I would actually personally submerse it, but you can have it out there in rain, so if you're out there hunting, maybe with that magnifier, you can have it out there and it will not get foggy like some of the lower end optics out there, so it will keep that moisture out. Battery there is powered by one CR2 lithium ion battery, relatively common, most Walmarts out there will have them, if not, you can go on Amazon and get it, and it does actually come with a battery, so not too bad there. The battery life on the optic is 2000 hours, and like I said, it does have the auto shutdown feature. Overall weight of it, without the mount, is 7.2 ounces, not sure exactly with the mount what it comes in at, but the overall length there is 6 inches, so comparable to some of the other Aimpoint Comp M3, Aimpoint Pro, etc., so relatively in the same ballpark as those. One thing a lot of folks out there aren't going to like, I guess you could say, is that it is made in China, really not a big deal to me, because any kind of budget optic that you see out there, it's going to come in at this price point, is probably going to be made in China, there's just no getting around that. I realize many of you are already familiar with this optic out there, it's been out for a few years now, and now, actually the reason I'm reviewing it is the Vortex 2 has just came out, so that one is actually driving down the cost of these ones, because these ones are still being produced, the Vortex 1, which you see here, Strikefire 1, and nowadays you can find these generally from $100 to $120, so the price has come down about $20 to $30 from what it used to be, even a year ago, so making them even more of a budget friendly optic, if you will. A few things that you're giving up, though, over an Aimpoint or Eotech, let's say, it is not parallax free, it says it's parallax free beyond 50 yards, and it probably is, but within that, you're going to get about a 1 inch to 1.5 inch shift, for those of you that are unfamiliar with what parallax is, quick explanation, so, when you bring a rifle up, if your eye is not centered behind the red dot, where it should be, like say you're off to the side, or if you're in a funny shooting position, and you're kind of just looking through the edge of the optic, you may have a shift in point of impact over where that dot is within 50 yards, so it's not going to be a huge shift, but an inch or so, so you're giving that up. Also, you're going to give up battery life versus the Aimpoint, no surprise there, and another thing I kind of don't like about it is just the interface, the user interface, so a lot of people, myself included, have accidentally turned this optic off by hitting the button on the side, if you rested against the wall, which is exactly what I did, it went off, so it's just something to keep in mind, that button can be relatively easily bumped to turn it off, or to turn it to green, you can actually, a lot of people have hit that night vision button as well on their gear when you're carrying it if it hits something, so the interface has been improved on the new ones, but on these Strikefire 1s, it's just something to be concerned with, but all in all, for the money, it's definitely decent, the mount, the mount itself is pretty good, now the screws in there seem to be of some sort of soft metal, when I was actually using the provided tool with it, it seemed to sort of like strip them out a little bit more so than what you'd see with your average screws, that said, if you're just going to mount it once, you're not going to have to worry about it, or once or twice, or whatever the case may be, if you're going to take it on and off, you may want to look into replacing those screws, but all in all, solid mount, it works, it gives you that lower 1 third co-witness with your iron sights that a lot of folks out there like, but for the money, it seems to get the job done, a relatively clear dot, 4 MOA dot, so not too much to complain about there, if you guys have any questions though that I didn't cover about this optic, or anything else, you can always post below in the comments section, you can also post over at my Facebook page, but as always guys, thanks for watching, thanks for subscribing, and I'll see you in the next video.