Sidearms & Scatterguns RMRHD Running Review

[NFAJohn]

I recently picked up a RMRHD after some input from others here https://www.snipershide.com/shooting/threads/red-dot-dilemma.7215163/ and thought I'd do a running review of the optic. Couple of disclaimers, I'm a regular dude who A didn't receive this thing for free (be cool if I did tho) and B I'm dealing with a sample size of one. There is the chance my optic is an outlier either good or bad, we're gonna see. I'll try and keep track of round count, issues encountered ect ect.

I decided to chase down doing a red dot on a pistol after slowly coming to accept that I can't hit shit with irons at 25 yards anymore. My eyes just don't pick them up like they use to. My personal exposure to pistol mounted red dots is that I've shot them a handfull of times and it just seemed slow or hard to pick up. I'm pot committed at making this work now because my irons look like shit to me.

What's in the box: It was kind of hard to find one in stock at this time, but I stumbled across one of the 3.25moa ones at a local gun store and got it out the door for 625 cash. Box has all the typical stuff, sticker, instruction book, two sets of mounting screws with a little blue locktight on them and battery door tool thingy.

The host pistol is a G19 Gen4 that has about 5k rounds on it before it was sent off to be milled. I choose to use a pistol that has a track record of being dead bang reliable for me. The pistol was milled by Mod 1 Firearms. http://mod1firearms.com/ Some guys commented that the milling lacked bosses, or that the bosses are in the wrong spot or that bosses are good or that bosses are bad, some guys have pistols done by Mod 1 and no issues. It's the internet you decide if you like bosses or not, this pistol has bosses at the screw holes and came supplied with screws. I attached the optic with a little blue lock tight and torqued to 12 inch pounds, we'll see how she holds.

Initial impressions of the optic are all positive. The dot is easy to pick up, I like the eotech style reticle, top load battery seems like a massive improvement over the previous style, not having to use a sealing plate is nice and most importantly to me the auto brightness is FAST. When you turn on a surefire X300 the reticle almost instantly is bright and doesn't wash out. Soon as you kill the light it's right back to dimmer, pretty impressive and kinda of a no shitter moment that the sensor should be target facing.

5/10 Fired my first 150 rounds and I'm impressed. I found the optic easy to zero, but I did have a dipshit moment on the range. I couldn't get the damn brightness to a setting I like, the auto brightness feature I was so impressed with was no longer working. I figured out in my range bag some buttons got pushed and it was in manual. Ok now what? I fished out the like 40 page instruction book and was able to get it back to auto and lock it in auto. Def a user error, but I'm going to have to at least familiarize myself with the manual as I plan on running this under nods. Not the optics fault at all, but be prepared to do some reading, there are alot of modes and features you can set intentionally or unintentionally.

As far as firing it, groups looked pretty good once zeroed. Next range trip I'll rezero at 25, apparently that's mo betta, but I'll check and see how it held at 15 first.

Started at 15 leaning on my range bag
5, 2, 3. Felt pretty dialed in so 1, felt like any error there was most likely me induced so shot a 15 round mag of my carry ammo (Winchester 147+p) at 4. Seemed pretty locked on minus the one low one from me getting cocky and being stupid.

Top two targets were back to range ball trying to come from low ready to one round each. Left to right just trying to track the dot.



Rounds fired as of 5/13 165, no issues to date.

 

[NFAJohn]

Just got back from the pasture, red dots on pistols rock under nods. I run an eotech on my carbines, the reticle on the RMRHD is basically the same, the transition was very easy. The night vision settings work as advertised and were crisp. Fired 152 rounds from 15-50 yards and by the end I was picking up the dot really easily. I tired to get some pictures of the reticle through the nods, but that was basically impossible. Next time I go out I'll put the pistol in a hog saddle and try to capture some pictures looking through the tubes. I didn't find myself wishing for additional IR illumination, but we have a pretty big moon tonight and I was shooting a full size ipsc target painted white. As far as practicality I'm not entirely sure shooting a pistol under nods is anything other than a novelty for me personally, but it is fuckinggggg cool. Maybe one day I'll be knee deep in spent brass killing pigs and need it, but I doubt it. None the less its cool as shit to be able to ring an ipsc at 50 in total darkness. Side note there is a huge difference in muzzle flash between range ball and the two rounds of my carry ammo I fired. Much much less muzzle flash with the 147gr +P Winchester than the White box 115.

I've carried the pistol around the farm some and did get caught in rain last week feeding cows. I got pretty soaked and when I pulled the pistol out of my IWB holster at the house everything was drenched, but the reticle was still clearly displayed on the glass. I'm guessing because of the orientation of the gun in the holster water didn't accumulate on the emitter.

Overall the switch to the red dot has been easier than I anticipated it being. I've been working on drawing and so long as I keep my eyes focused on the target I find that I can catch the dot pretty easily as the gun punches out. I'm still way way faster at catching irons, but I don't think it will be long before I get there with the dot. I think the larger window of the RMRHD is more forgiving than the sig romeo and rmr that I messed with previously, but I also didn't put nearly as much effort into getting the hang of a dot with those two.

I will say when I went to switch the optic from auto adjust to manual I had to reference the instructions to take it out of locked. I'm going to have to set the instructions ontop of the oval office to study, because there are a shit load of settings and options on this optic. I could do without the feature to have just the center dot auto adjust and the outer ring locked. It's a user issue, but the number of options and sequences to lock/ unlock and select features is a bit much....it's a gripe, but it can be overcome with spending more time reading the instructions.

Rounds fired as of 5/19 317, no issues to date.

 

[NFAJohn]

Went down to the pasture this evening to shoot a little, my intended goal was to work from an IWB to target about a zillion times.

Noticed something interesting as I left the house, optic was completely fogged over….it’s 90° 99% humidity outside and 70° in the house.

The picture doesn’t do the reticle justice, it was clearly displayed against the glass, but the glass was essentially frosted. Well that’s fucking interesting was all I could think. I sat the pistol infront of the AC vent on my center console so my first few shots it would be fogged up.

I got down to the steel, painted it, exited the truck, holstered the gun and drew from 15 and just kind of sent it into the center. Optic was fully fogged out but the reticle was displayed clearly on the fogged glass. The double tap was within 6” of where I intended. The optic was 80-90% opaque, but it didn’t seem to matter.

I spent the rest of the next hour or so from 15 to 50 plinking and having a few cold ones. No issues to report other than the fogging, I’ll probably run the glass with some cat crap to see if it fixes the cold to humid/ hot fogging. https://tnvc.com/shop/tnvc-field-cleaning-kit-cleaning-kit-accessories/ I run it on my nods and it really helped with going from a cool truck to a humid field.

So far the screw hole bosses seem to be holding zero just fine. I’ll fine tune the zero at 25 eventually but so far 15 seems to be working out. I’m not quite as fast with the dot as compared to irons at 15, but I’m significantly more accurate.



Total rounds fired as of 5/27 567. No issues, but the optic does heavily fog going from cool to humid/hot. Could 100% see this being an issue going from an ice cold patrol car to the street on a sleepy Tuesday morning about 0300 as some future rocket scientist robs his local 711. Going to hit optic with cat crap to try and mitigate and will report back. 100% don’t miss the rear irons and don’t see needing them in the future.

 

[NFAJohn]

Clocked 800 rounds this weekend. Coated the glass with cat crap and experienced no fogging going from the truck to pasture this outing.

Started off with the redneck ransom rest at 25 yards- note this was with the 15 yard zero. Gun was consistently high.

Rezeored at 25- I figure those groups are about as accurate as I'm going to get with WWB and a stock barrel. POA was the top of the black triangle, bottom was shot with the gun off the tripod.

Spent some time shooting our plate rack and by the end of the afternoon I was definitely faster with the 19 and RMR than my 34 with irons. Accuracy past 25 it's not even a question, the optic is the way.

As far as the RMRHD itself I have zero complaints, it's been carried, flown with, shot hard, used to rack the gun, sweated on ect ect ect. Going to be sending in a 19Gen5 to have milled and outfitted the same...the old one is none and two is one mentality.


Also had a chance to get oldest a few shots on steel. Her deer rifle is a 12" grendel with eotech and magnifier, the MK18 is the perfect training gun for it. Not a bad little 100 yard group she has going off the tripod.

I'll keep documenting rounds, but I have a feelings it's going to be pretty boring. Overall if your on the fence about going to red dot, just take the leap. The learning curve isn't nearly as steep as I imagined it would be. The RMR optic itself has ticked every box for me to date, will be purchasing another one.

Total rounds fired as of 6/23/24 1,367

 

[Jedi54]

awesome report on the RMR HD.
it's the red dot I've been eye'ing for my Springfield Echelon so good to hear more positive reviews.

now to just find it in stock. I would say on sale but not sure I've ever seen it below msrp

 

[NFAJohn]

awesome report on the RMR HD.
it's the red dot I've been eye'ing for my Springfield Echelon so good to hear more positive reviews.

now to just find it in stock. I would say on sale but not sure I've ever seen it below msrp

With any luck maybe something with pop up this week for the 4th, I'll keep my eyes pealed.

 

[NFAJohn]

Swapped the reticle from the eotech style reticle to the dot this weekend.

At this point I'd clocked 1300 rounds and change with the reticle so I just wanted to see if I had got acclimated enough to swap to dot alone and it was as game changer. I was much more precise and able to be more target focused. I don't know how to describe it other than that sensation when your a kid and you ride a bike without training wheels for the first time and you mentally go "holy shit I get it".

It was that kind of epiphany, the dot just appeared and blam the plate is down. I do think using the eotech reticle was great for retaining my brain...kinda hard to miss a 55 MOA reticle on the draw, but swapping over the the 3.25MOA dot only I really saw an increase in precision and speed.

The auto brightness with just the dot was just as easy to pick up and adjusted just as fast.

200 more rounds clocked, total round count now 1,567.. time to hit up SG ammo for two more 1K rounds cans.