As I find myself growing older, I have noticed, not surprisingly, my eye too are aging. And, like most folks, I’ve come to accept this and figure out work arounds into my daily routine. But, it has created some challenges for my main hobby, shooting. I’ve learned to deal with a choice of a blurry target or a blurry sight picture. (FYI I recommend the blurry target.) It has made shooting at distances over 10 yards far more challenging than it used to be some years ago. So, when I was at the Gun Owners of America’s range day this year and picked up my first pistol with a red dot (“RD”), I was surprised and pleased to see (pun intended) that I could clearly see the red dot AND target. As a result, I started exploring incorporating red dots into my shooting and into our reviews. So … here we go:
The first red dot I have ever put on one of my guns was a Vector Optics Frenzy SCRD-64. Why? Well, they sent me one to test and it hit all the things I was looking for. Although, as a new red dot shooter, I’m still trying to figure out what exactly some of those things are. But, I did like the features and the price point so let’s get into the specifications first.
Specifications:
Features:
Price:
These come in at right around $170.00 at the time I’m writing this. Which is one of the more budget friendly optics with these features that I’ve seen. One of the main reasons, I’ve held off on using RDs is I don’t like the concept of spending $350.00 to put optics on something I just spent $500.00 plus dollars on. But, it doesn’t really matter about the price point if the thing doesn’t work. So, I put it on my STR-9 and took it to the range to see: did it work? SPOILER ALERT – like a charm!
Range Time Impressions:
I found SCRD-64 incredibly easy to zero. I had a chart/target which let’s me zero for 25 yards at 5 yards and it took less than 5 minutes to zero (with the help of a laser bore – you can see the video at our YouTube or Rumble channel). The RD and laser were a bit off but with 12 audible clicks the left, I centered up the dot with the laser bore and began shooting.
In regard to the intensity of the dot, I thought I would like the RD on it’s brightest setting but actually found one of the lower settings (4 or 5) worked best for me. The dot was clean and bright enough to be very visible – even against a red bullseye. The controls for the intensity of RD were very user friendly and allowed me to find a brightness and clarity that I found most comfortable to shoot with.
Using a rest to test the accuracy, I found that I could get sub 1” groups out to 10 yards and 6” groups at 25”. Also, it was very easy for me to acquire the dot, even when moving to different targets. Moving on to normal shooting, I still found I could get very nice groups, much further out and much faster than I normally could with iron sights. Having struggled with vision and shooting for the last several years, I don’t think I can adequately express how nice it was to shoot with this RD and be able to focus (again pun intended) on the mechanics of shooting as opposed to just trying to see.
Final Thoughts:
While I haven’t had tons of time shooting red dots or tons of experience with different models/brands, I can honestly say I really enjoyed shooting the FRENZY-X 1X19X28 GENII and would recommend it. As always, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts or feedback on both this article and our video – which you can see at our Youtube channel shortly.