Gear Review: Lucid HD7 Red Dot Sight (and magnifier)
So I recently built an AR-15. I don’t remember but I might have written a couple of posts on it. Maybe a video or two…
Anyway, after getting it finished, I had slapped some pop-up iron sights on it then set out to find a nice red dot sight. If you’ve ever priced a red dot sight, they’re not cheap. Ok, some of them are cheap but therein lies the problem. After dumping all this money into the gun, I didn’t have a hefty sum of cash for an EOTech or Aimpoint. I did, however, find a generic red dot at a gun show for $70. Score!
As it turns out…no…not “score”. I could not get this thing to zero to save my life. I finally gave up and said “for now I’ll just aim 2 feet above the target”. That’s not ideal by any stretch of the imagination. It looked like I was going to have to start saving a bunch of cash for an EOTech.
I was complaining about my poor purchase to TJ when he suggested I look into the Lucid HD7. I had never heard of it before but he said he loved his so I checked it out. My first stop was Amazon. The price was good at under $300 ($279 + shipping, in this case). Even more importantly, it was pretty much universally loved in the customer review section. That’s almost unheard of at Amazon. I wasn’t able to order it immediately but it was at the top of my wish list. I finally put in the order recently and now hold it in my grubby little hands.
So let’s talk about it for a moment…
The HD7 is a standard red dot sight. It’s made out of cast aluminum with a rubber coating and is waterproof, fogproof and shockproof and the whole thing weighs about 13 oz. There’s a setting for automatic brightness adjustment with 7 brightness levels. It mounts to any standard picatinny rail. It takes a single, standard AAA battery. It also has the ability to quickly switch between 4 reticle styles.
Mounting it to my AR was a snap, thanks to the picatinny rails, and it co-witnessed with my iron sights perfectly in the lower ⅓. That saved me having to spend a lot of rounds at the range getting it zeroed.
I spent a bit of time at home testing out the auto brightness and it worked great. I plotted a path through my house and darkened and brightened rooms to various levels, ending with a trip out my back door during the brightest time of the day. The sensor worked quickly to keep the reticle at a perfectly visible level at all times. The only problem was there was some inner reflection as I approached the super bright back door from the very dark room. It wouldn’t have affected my ability to shoot as the reticle was still clearly visible but there were some red streaks around the outer edges that were a bit distracting, for lack of a better term. I was only able to get that to happen standing in a very dark room looking out into very bright sunlight, mind you.
Speaking of reticles, as I said before there were 4 options to choose from. The first is your standard, single dot and a dot with a circle. There’s a bullet drop dot/crosshairs with 10 MOA dots. Finally, there’s a chevron one that I frankly have no idea how anyone would shoot with. I’ll figure that one out at some later point. Ultimately, I found I liked the bullet drop one the most so that’s what I left it set on. It’s easy to change them, however, as it just takes a turn of the large knob on the side.
One of the features I like the most, however, is that it uses a plain, ole’ AAA battery. A lot of the inexpensive sights tend to use button batteries or those weird, half sized photo batteries. Being able to go to any gas station or store and easily get inexpensive batteries for this sight is great! Heck, I have a pretty hefty supply of them at my house already just for hurricane preparedness.
I had also purchased the optional screw in 2x magnifier. It’s about a $20 option and well worth it. Once you attach it, the red dot becomes more like an ACOG style device. This makes it easier to make longer distance shots. My only complaint is that with it being a screw in accessory, it’s not meant for a “quick emergency change” type of setup. Granted, in my own little world, I can’t for the life of me think of a scenario where I would need to swap that quickly. I can think of lots of situations where military and hunters might have to. If you decide that you really need to be able to switch between the 2x and 0x setups, the EOTech flip out magnifier should work with this sight. From my own tests, the 2x magnification isn’t enough of a difference to cause significant problems if, for some reason, you had to suddenly target something closer. Just keep both eyes open and you’re fine.
So yeah, features and such are great but how does it work where it counts?
At the range, I took a couple shots at 25 yards to verify my zero and everything seemed to line up well enough. I put enough shots downrange that I felt comfortable with the new sight and it held zero perfectly. It was super sunny outside at the range the day I tested as well. The front lens is set back enough that it’s shaded from direct light so there was no internal reflection or glare. The final grouping I got was good, considering my level of skill with a rifle at this point. I’d have to say that it was the best group I’ve gotten so far since I started shooting rifles, to be honest. I think I could benefit from an Appleseed course…but that’s a different article.
I then moved the target back to 50 yards and attached the 2x magnifier. Again, considering a complete lack of skill, I’m happy with the group I got. <excuse> I should note that it was really windy when I tested and I have zero experience accounting for that. </excuse> You wouldn’t think something as small as 2x magnification would make much difference but it’s amazing how much it helps. I should point out that, after looking at the targets a bit closer for this write up, I seem to have done better at 50 yards than I did at 25. I don’t know how to interpret that.
Frankly, if someone had just handed me this sight and let me play with it for a bit then asked me what I thought it cost, I would never guess under $300. I would have put this firmly in the above $500 range of the EOTechs and Aimpoints. While I was unable to do a side by side comparison as I don’t own them, I have used the other leading brands of red dot sights and I can’t for the life of me figure out why you would spend all that extra money when the Lucid HD7 is an option.
This is an amazing device that breaks the trend of “you get what you pay for”. This, in my noobish opinion, is a bargain that borders on theft.
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