I was told by manufacturing engineers for industrial electronic tools, the AA battery is the most ubiquitous form of portable electrical power supply in the world. You can find AA batteries in Upper Volta (or Burkino Faso) or Outer Mongolia, and AA batteries are carried in the one store operated in Antarctica. So maybe that impacted Aimpoints thinking.

50000 hrs = 5.7 years. Literally the span of WWII, almost exactly, of continuous runtime.

"Why is my knob loose?" A question I ask myself every day.

Three ball bearings: One is broken, one is missing, and one is pregnant.

Isn´t combat two way hunting.

“Why is my knob loose?” “I haven’t been beating my knob” Best quotes in the video

A SWAT team tested the Comp M4 and found it to be the most durable red dot, far superior to the EOtechs. They went to far as to strap a flashbang grenade to the side of it, set it of, and there was no loss of zero. They really are amazing sights.

I was willing to put up with the Eotech because I liked the reticle over the plain dot. My unit lost a helicopter a decade ago & most of it’s crew. A year later the M-4s were returned to our unit. One of the burned M-4s had a Comp M-4. You couldn’t see through it but the red dot was still glowing bright.

NVG's, CCO's, PAS-13 thermals, PRC battery adapter modules, etc etc It took decades, but yes, we finally discovered that just universally using goddamn AA's was the right answer. We pack a foldable Goal Zero 20 watt solar panel and some rechargeable AA's in a charger attached to the roof of my vehicle specifically so we don't have to rely on the batteries coming out of Supply being fresh and holding a charge. The SDC issues like the grocery store, old stock first.

A work year is roughly 2000 hours. If you kept the red dot on for 8 hours a day 5 days a week, you wouldn't have to pop in a new double A for 25 years. That's crazy talk.

The sharper dot especially like the M5 has really shows up with a magnifier behind it, since you're magnifying the dot as well as the field the quality of the dot makes a difference. Point well taken about older Aimpoints still being viable. I have one of the original adjustable base style Aimpoints like in the first picture that I used at the 1986 Steel Challenge on a grip mount, and it still works just fine.

The M4 has been used by the military for years (as the CCO M68) and has always used a single AA battery.The M4S relocates the AA battery to approx. the 4:30 position (from the perspective of the shooter) vs. the M4 where the battery is at 1:00. I acquired 2 M4 units 7 years ago. When I got them, I left both of them turned on at a mid level brightness and one killed the Duracell in a year while the other was still going strong. Still, 1 year is an impressive run time.

The Comp M5 was specifically designed in cooperation with the U. S. State Department's Diplomatic Security Service, actually. They really knocked for the fences on this one. Small details like the switch durability fit, the lens covers and the alkaline battery extreme life. The point of having the objective cover opaque and the eyepiece cover clear permits immediate employment of the sight as an occluded eye gunsight at ranges out to about 100 yds or so in a pinch and still have the lenses protected. Just great all around design and engineering. Fine size for use on all sorts of platforms.

I appreciate the deep dive in depth analysis - the "why" behind the higher cost - cool guys! Thanks :)

Desert Brutality 2019 will have a 200' Zipline into 8 feet of water. To test your optic :)

I own two Comp M2s and one Comp M4. These red dots are absolutely my favorite workhorses and work flawlessly!

I have Holosuns, I have rebranded Holosuns as Primary Arms, and I have an Aimpoint T2. There is a noticeble difference in quality. The question is do you want or need the difference. That's up to the user.

I'm genially surprised with joke about ball bearing. It is known joke in Russia. About Russian person :-) Like, "Frenchman, German and Russian have been given two ball bearings each...»

50k hours is almost 6 years running always on so you can basically turn it on and leave it. On a related note, I've got Mitutoyo digital calipers (10micron resolution, cheap ones are usually 100microns, which to be fair is good enough for calipers: it's not supposed to be a micrometer) that promise something like 25k hr battery life *when in use* (from a CR2032 cell) and storage battery life is basically the same as the self-discharge of the battery. Compare this to this to the el-cheapo ones that run down the battery in a month even when not actively used. The mitutoyo also keeps absolute zero when not powered on and other nice things (like not getting confused if you open it too wide too fast). Of course there is a major premium to pay, like ten times the price... but so worth it having a tool you know you can always trust to do exactly what it's supposed to.

Solid video! I found the reason as to why they started with a 30 mil tube fascinating. I am so glad I learned that. Keep up the good work!

Comp M5 durability testing by Sage Dynamics scratched the body and bent the adjustment knob. The optic was still completely functional and adjustable. The impact test also showed the importance of having a good quality mount.

Two notes on battery’s 1 lithium batteries are different from Lithium ion or lithium polymer batteries. As such, they don’t catch fire. 2 AA and AAA are form factors, so you could use lithium (the not catching fire ones) or NI-MH rechargeable.

The French Army just chose the Comp M5 for their new HK416 F rifles. So far they have been issued with iron sights only.

I got the M5s for my Scar 17s because I needed an optic that can take the forward and rearward jarring recoil that the Scar has been known to break. In fact the first scope I bought for my Scar 17 was a Vortex PST Viper which broke the etched glass reticle out of place. Which I sent to Vortex to repair then put it back on and broke again, lol. But also glad to hear other reasons I paid over $1k for a red dot.

Good stuff. Aimpoint makes great stuff. This was a great video to help explain what sets the Aimpoints apart from other red dots. I had a chance to discuss their sights with the folks from Aimpoint and they can get into not just the technology that goes into these things, but the user interaction with the optic that absolutely blew my mind.

8:55 There's three ball bearings in the room: one's broken, one's stolen, and the other has jizz stains on it. ;)

Aimpoint with a circle-dot when?

Be careful buying used Aimpoints. There's a lot of counterfeit optics out there. Also, some of the sights from airsoft guns are sold as the real thing. I saw a fake Aimpoint that had the laser inside the tube, taped in place with black electrical tape.

I wish aimpoint would add more than just dot reticles. They're so precise and nice you can push the ranges with them far beyond anything sane, especially with a magnifier. If they'd do a T dot or anything to give you a little side to side and vertical referencing, it'd make them so much more useful at extended ranges. I don't think it'd compromise it either. I'd prefer to run one over my acog, but that referencing is so incredibly useful for me that it makes it difficult for me to drop my acog.

I hope Aimpoint will eventually make a true red dot scope that flips from 1x to 4x, that is fairly compact. Something in the same vein as the Elcan.

Imagine what will happen when other illuminated sights that use very small and efficient LEDs. Will probably be a revolution for those sights.

Thanks for the work that you put into In Range.

Great video. The deep dive into the hows and whys of the Aimpoint development was fascinating and much appreciated. Good work as always gentlemen.

I love when you guys dget optics reviews and show us the sight picture through the camera! Maybe you can do a quick comparison vid to show us how “crisp” the dot is compared to other RDS?

Always happy to see a nice product from my adopted home town of Malmö!

Very very outstanding video men. Clean language too. Thanks. Keep up the good work. Thanks a lot friend. SC Navy vet. 1965. 🇺🇸😊

If you don't want to pay full freight, both the Aimpoint PRO And the Carbine Optic are excellent sights also. You can leave them on continuously as battery life is one or two years respectively. Still better than any EOTEC which always seem to have dead batteries when you go to use them.

Next: photodiode for automatic brightness adjustment. It still amazes me that this is not more prevalent in military optics. Walking out of a dark house in to a bright environment and suddenly your dot just goes poof.

Fantastic perspective. Clearly I don’t need one of these Aimpoints, but it’s great to know WHY they cost more.

"This is cool... and it makes a dot" Ooooh boy you've convinced me there, I'm buying one :D

I don't care WTF the military is doing about alkaline batteries vs. other types. With fully HALF the old partially-depleted Alkalines I've ever seen sitting around for any amount of time... RELIABLY putting out corrosive leakage: there's no fucking way I'm using alkaline batteries any more, in anything of ANY value (let alone THIS expensive), that has to sit un-used for any longer than a couple of weeks. Lithium-whatever type batteries catching fire? Apart from Samsung phones I read about last year (and Boeing 787s before that), I've only ever encountered that phenomenon ONCE in my life personally. That was a battery pack in a friend's cam-corder(?) in the analogue era. Three bloody decades ago. Corrosive Alkaline leakage destroying things? LITERALLY ALL THE DAMN TIME.

Curious if you guys will delve into the Holographic RDS's? They seem very effective and come with a lot of cool reticles (i.e. EOTech's "donut of death"). Of course, the Holosun with the etched ACSS reticle on their micro RDS's are amazing too. Mike, AKA Garand Thumb mentioned a lot of things Holographic RDS's offer in ways of say parallax shifts when shooting awkward angles and such. Plus very NV capable with the window they provide.

I didn't want gimmicky motion sensors, nor solar power. I wanted a red dot that is always on and ready to go the second needed which is why I went with Aimpoint for my AR. Got a T-2 and it has been one of the best purchases I've made. Now for my AK, which isn't my primary, life dependent, defensive rifle, I am considering an MRO, or stepping down to a Holosun or something.

As others have said, great video because you explained the what and the why. I don't think the folks at Aimpoint could have had a better pair do so, especially without the underlying gun guy machismo you get with almost every other gun and review channel out there.

Great video, or excellent detail. This video offers more info than the manual that came with my Comp M5. I really like it, upgraded from the PRO. I like the fact that the controls are in the same place, it's just smaller. I just wish there was a way for them to put the battery compartment inside the mount. Make the body and mount a one piece design, use a spacer to make it 1/3 co--witness. It would make the body smaller, and the shooter's peripheral vision just a bit less obscured. OTOH, if they did that I'd probably keep my current M5.....

"Why is my knob loose?" - Karl Kasarda, 2018

Please more optics reviews, if possible.

Weight like always can be improved. It'll be interesting of they try and go to integrated magnification. The mil requests which forced them to become so excellent are now slowing their development down .

I wonder how well the new Holosun Military-grade 7075-T6 IPX8-rated HS515CM will hold up? They were recently on-sale at Midway for $275. The lower-end HS515CU is 6061 and IPX-7 rated (Sig ROMEO series look suspiciously similar BTW) , which also has a 50K-hour battery life, so they probably now use the very same technology as Aimpoint. I would love to hear Ian's & Karl's further thoughts on that!

Aimpoint: Buy once, cry once

The comp m4 has been around for quite a few years

Love these guys

During basic training I had that issue with my M68. Everytime I shot it turned off and I'd have to smack it to turn it back on. I ended up using my back up irons that day and qualifying with someone else's rifle. Hearing that they worked to fix that problem with the electronics package is a kind of a relief. It may not be something that would normally happen in the civilian world but having lived the nightmare of your optic failing I never wanted to use a product of theirs again.

I've never understood people dismissing the large tube. I use both eyes, but why wouldn't I want better vision of the target with my dominant eye? A large tube can do that.

I've always been a sucker for the M4s

Love the video and the information. The halo jump 40 mph slam into the ground for Desert Brutality killed me haha

Aimpoint Micro on my KT Sub2K in my go bag. Go bag stays in truck locker in hot or cold temps. 5 years on and the red dot is flawless. The first battery still works.

Wow tons of new perspective

The comp m4 is actually 80,000hrs with a AA. I own one and the last time I replaced a battery was 8-10 years ago. I just keep it on the dimmest setting that I can still see inside the house.

👍🏼 *GREAT* info‼️ I really want a PVS-14

Set a F-18A next to a F-18 Super Hornet. The size difference is astounding. Not the same plane. Marky

I bought a used compM4 back in Dec 14, put a battery dated Sept 2013. Here we are 6+ years later. Battery still good to go, but replaced it anyway. I can vouch for battery life on the compM4!

I have a primary arms red dot here that is similar to the Aimpoint micro that sells for 700 bucks but I paid 89. on the last black friday sale. It works great, I leave it on all the time. It's hard to pay an extra 600 dollars for a red dot. I still prefer the Eotech laser holographic red dot and circle and no one can imitate those yet, but if you have a lot of guns, the 89. dollar red dot is a very nice option if you only ned a dot. My favorite is still the ACOG 5.5x with the RMR on top of it, but now you are talking over two grand with the mounts. Just make sure whatever you get, "looks cool", that's the most important thing.

There are very few optics I would buy used that are beat to shit from deployments, and Aimpoint is one of them. I've found a used Comp M2/M68 CCO and Comp M4s on eBay that were absolutely beat up and got both for under $300, but they work just like when they were brand new. They may not look pretty, but they will continue to work when I need them to.

at around 12:00 the discussion about the water ingress rating and the high velocity water, that isn't really meant for dropping your scope out a helicopter into the high seas, but for when you want to pressure wash your rifle, scope attached because you wouldn't want to re-zero that. obviously. sorry I'm late to the discussion

@8 minutes and 50 seconds, you mentioned the saying about a marine and a ball bearing, and I think you’d like the original version of it. If you lock a marine into a room with three bowling balls and left him alone for an hour, he’d break one, lose the second and get the third one pregnant.

The only thing I could request on the aimpoint is an eotech style ring around the dot.

"Why is my knob loose?" - Karl, 2018

I wonder if the Primary Arm's micros that now also have a 50,000hr life, are piggybacking directly off of Aimpoint's LED tech, or if they head to go a different direction to avoid some kind of patent infringement? Also, another aspect of LED efficiency that they didn't address is that they are not on constantly. They cycle off and on at a rite faster than our eyes can perceive, they are actually flirting with the line where they are off equally as much as they are on. There has also been LED tech which in a laboratory environment, have been shown working at greater than 100% efficiency, which itself is kinda mindblowing

It’s funny to hear CR123 or 2032 as “specialty”

I think Militatries look to things like Science fiction & these days video games for inspiration. In the future your Aimpoint might be able to know the difference between enemy & friendly soldiers. The friendly soldier will have some kind of chip woven into his uniform that the Aimpoint is able to register and display on scene for the user. The possibilities are endless as technology gets smaller & smaller.

Aimpoint, the Glock of sights?

Continuing to make them a certain way just to maintain compatibility with existing platforms reminds me of how Ford kept making the Crown Vic *long* after you could buy one at a dealership because it was such a popular fleet car, and if they redesigned anything all the companies that made accessories for them would have to update things.

Will my available anti reflection device still work with the upgrade m4/m5? tnx. Great vid.

Great Review! Thank you.

Well, well. It was the battery life that I was worried about with the switch to AA. I've got an old Comp M2 with the double battery housing that hasn't been turned off for 3 years. They made them MORE durable? Dude, they get much more durable and they're doing to become literally bullet proof. The joke I know about Marine privates is that if you lock six of them in a room with three anvils, you come back an hour later and one anvil is broken, the other is pregnant, and the third is missing.

Yeah that 1n battery or whatever was hard to find, but one time I accidentally left my aimpoint on for 10 months and I could still use it.

I actually chose the Romeo5x for the reason that it takes a AAA battery instead of the CR123 or CR2032. I pretty much always have AAA batteries in my house. I do want me an Aimpoint though…. Just out of my price range at the current time.

Love this channel. Great video

the prices of each are practically the same so if you were to choose one would it be the M4/M4s or M5?

By making the new model look like the previously adopted model, you can often avoid the threat of another manufacturer whining to their Congressional delegation and the GAO that a new contract competition should have been held. Sometimes they try to stretch too far and get caught, say with the XM8 carbine being claimed as part of the existing XM29 OICW program.

The battery numbers Aimpoint gives you are really conservative. My Aimpoint T1 is nearing 90,000 hours on the original factory battery.

50000 hours = ~5.71 years Just think a bout that. A battery that wouldn't last 1 day in an RC car lasts well over 5 years in that optic.

I love my aimpoint pro I have had ot for 2 yrs now and never shut it off and on setting 7 it has a 30,000 hr battery

I have a holosun, and every single one of the screws on the mount broke when I dropped my rifle on the ground. So if you get a holosun, I would definitely replace the stock mount if you want a reliable solution.

Very interesting stuff, thanks for sharing!

Aimpoint did it again. Thumbs up.

As for what Aimpoint will do in the future, we know the Acro is coming, and hopefully they'll take a shot at making a better Elcan.

Thank you good sir for a new video🎩

2032 batteries are everywhere in the USA like wally worlds or just about anywhere else batteries are sold. My small aimpoint that is on my AK with the 2032 lasts a long time. All of my pistol RDS sights also use it. For large aim point units I have no experience.

What I would like to have on my aimpoint would be a button that makes the dot really small just to make accuracy at a bit of distance easier.!

Comp M4s is 80,000 hours now in 2022.

Every IR tv or FW videos are such a fun to watch,, you do not need silly yoga pants to chill down 🖖🏼. I’m not from a gun country and i hear about the ‘reddot’ optics - can you make a video about the tool itself ?

Heli insertion into a 2gun stage - when? :)

Once you pass a single year continuous operation by any reasonable margin (10,000+ hours, say, about 14 months), battery commonality and longer battery life become tactically irrelevant and logistically insignificant. "Merry Christmas, Marines! The Commandant loves you so much he sent each one of you a new battery for your Aimpoint!"

This is a niche problem, but living in Alaska sometimes shipping batteries can be a problem. It's not so much getting the batteries that's a problem, but getting told that I can't buy an electronic device because it comes with a little watch battery included.

Hopefully what they will do next is significantly lower the price!

Trijicon srs or aimpoint m4 which one would you choose?🤯🔫💣

How fortuitous. I was just spent an hour last night looking at red dot options.

0:53 If they used CR2032s then they definitely weren't the only piece of equipment in the military inventory using it, almost every semi-powerful computer on the planet has a CR2032 battery in it (holds the BIOS information on the chip which is volatile without power) :P Also, is anybody going to test the lifespan? You'd literally have to leave the thing on for over 5 years lmao...