Crossbow Sights Reviews By Expert Hunters – 2015

When the time comes to upgrade from iron sights to a crossbow red dot sight, you want to do your research to find the best sight for your money. You should look around carefully, and check reviews (like the ones on this site) to find out what sight will best suit your needs.

With that in mind, what should you be looking at in a review? There should obviously be objectivity in the review, but you also want to make sure the review is a comprehensive one. In this article, you’ll find out just what we look at when we are reviewing a crossbow sight. Every crossbow sight review that you use to make a purchasing decision should cover these details, if not more. We put each and every dot sight through its paces, testing it rigorously and reporting back to you the results of that testing. Below is a list of the crossbow sights we have reviewed so far, followed by an in-depth explanation of how we write those reviews and what we look for in a crossbow sight when testing it.

Magnification

The first thing we look at is the presence (or absence) of magnification. For example, we were excited to find out the TruGlo Traditional Red Dot Crossbow Sight offered 2X magnification. This is one of the few sights to offer magnification; most dot sights are just simple see-through tubes or open sights, without any magnification. The benefit of the dot sight over traditional iron sights is just that you have a single red or green dot superimposed over where you would expect your crossbow bolt to go, instead of having to line up the front and rear iron sights.

Optics Quality

Next, we evaluate the quality of the optics in our sight review. Here, we start off by looking at whether the optics are coated, multi-coated, or fully multi-coated. What’s the difference, you ask?

• Coated optics offer a reflective- and glare-resistant coating on one surface of the lens.
• Multi-coated optics offer two or more layers of coating, for improved light transmission, but the coating is only one one side of the lens and not on all air-to-glass surfaces
• Fully multi-coated optics offer multiple layers of coating on all air-to-glass surfaces, which provides the maximum quality of imagery possible.

While the manufacturing process for performing fully multi-coating on optics has gotten much less expensive than it used to be, we rarely find crossbow sights with fully multi-coated optics. The TruGlo Traditional Red Dot Crossbow Sight only offers multi-coated optics, not fully multi-coated. The Ultimate Arms Gear Tactical CQB Crossbow Sight, on the other hand, provides fully multi-coated optics.

While we’re examining the optics, we will also look at the quality of the dot reticle. We will let you know if the sight offers multiple dots for shooting at different ranges, and if you can switch the dot from red to green for dimmer lighting conditions. Where possible, we will also advise you how large the dot is. For example, the TruGlo Traditional Red Dot Crossbow Sight offers a 2.5 MOA reticle, but all of the other dot sights in our top 5 list have 5 MOA reticles. This is important to know if you will be taking precision shots from more than 25 yards, because a 5 MOA dot will cover up a considerable portion of your target at 25 yards and further.

We will also look at the ability of the sight to transmit light, since you will often want to use your red dot sight in low light conditions. The UAG Tactical CQB sight, for example, has some of the best light transmission qualities I’ve seen in a crossbow dot sight, and I tell you that in the review, pointing out that I’ve used the sight even in the very early morning hours of deer season. Each review will also discuss the illumination settings for the dot, since sometimes manufacturers set the brightness too bright, resulting in a blurry dot at all settings.

Quality of the Housing/Body

The next section of the review will look at the crossbow sight’s housing. Our favorite sights are made from aircraft grade aluminum bodies, like the UAG Tactical CQB sight, because this material tends to be very shockproof and resistant to recoil from shotguns and rifles as well as crossbows. This makes for a nice bonus, when you can use your red dot sight on your AR–15 or your shotgun, but cheap plastic jobs (like almost the entire lineup of TruGlo dot sights) simply cannot withstand the shock of a shotgun blast.

While we’re talking about the body of the sight, we will also discuss the sight’s dimensions and weight, so you know how much bulk and weight you’re adding to your kit. We’ll round up this section by discussing any special features of the body of the sight, such as the ti-rail Weaver/Picatinny rail system the UAG Tactical CQB Crossbow Sight has for attaching lights, lasers, and other accessories directly onto the sight.

Ease of Mounting

In this section of the review, we will talk about how easy the sight is to mount to your crossbow. Some sights, such as the BARSKA Red Dot Crossbow Sight, have built-in mounting systems, so it is important to know what type of rail the mounting system is compatible with. The most common setup is for the sight to be compatible with Weaver or Picatinny rails, but a Picatinny-to-dovetail adapter is sometimes required for certain models of crossbows.

Ease of Sighting In

In this section of our crossbow sight review we will discuss how difficult or easy the sight is to sight in. Some sights, such as the BARSKA Red Dot Crossbow Sight, have multiple dot reticles, so you need to know how to determine what range the dots are configured for with your particular crossbow’s velocity. The BARSKA sight, unfortunately, does not make this easy, because the owner’s manual lacks any detailed information. You should always know what you’re in for, and sometimes you might decide that a simple single-dot sight is the best option for your shooting needs.

Ease of Use

The final section of each review will discuss how easy the sight is to use. Most dot sights are very easy to use, but sometimes there is a trick or two that you need to keep any mind. If there is anything tricky about a particular sight’s use, we’ll point that out for you (like the BARSKA’s poorly-described triple dot setup).

Summary

Each review ends with a summary, where we round up the most important plusses and minuses of each sight. We also tell you whether or not we recommend that particular sight, and under what conditions we recommend its use. If you are too impatient to read my entire review, the summary will tell you whether you should consider the sight or move on to another one.