A few weeks ago, I was alerted that I had a package inbound. There was no indication from whom it was sent nor what it contained. Upon its arrival, I found a familiar address – Trijicon. That was odd as I hadn’t had any contact with the company since last year. The package contained, among other things, a new optic – just being announced today. The release is present in our wire, above.
The optic is the Trijicon SRO -- Specialized Reflex Optic. It’s not the RMR look, but shares the RMR footprint, meaning that it uses the same base. The short of the story is the wide field of view – hence the strange, round screen – manual and automatic LED brightness modes and a 3 year battery life. It fits a range of optics-ready pistols. The battery compartment is topside; you don’t have to remove the sight from the slide to replace the cell.
The SRO is said to be compatible with suppressor-height iron sights, a good idea if only I had suppressor-height irons. In addition, the new electro-optical sighting aid is supposed to feature ‘tool free sight adjustment.’
Okay.
I’d expected a new optic to arrive last month and had asked GLOCK, Inc. for an extension on the loaner Gen5 GLOCK 19 MOS that I had from last fall. It was approved and the optic hadn’t arrived. I was preparing to return the updated MOS pistol to the factory when the Trijicon box arrived.
Happily fortuitous.
The sight body is made of 7075 aluminum and it’s said to be waterproof up to ten feet. Did I mention the very large lens?
I quickly mounted the embargoed sight on the loaner pistol and picked an early morning for a range excursion. No one else was around. I found that replacing the RMR that had been on the GLOCK with the new SRO was the matter of three or four minutes. I zeroed the optic at 25 yards from a rest in 12 rounds – it would have been less, except I perpetrated an error – turning it the wrong way.
“Tool-free adjustment?” Well, I used the edge of the case head on a fired 9mm cartridge to bring the dot into line. I also set out a 10-yard bullseye to try some presentations from the holster. I found I was still suffering from “find the dot” syndrome – though a little less than with the RMR and other handgun optics I’d used before. It seemed quicker sometimes.
The wide-open ‘window’ seemed to help, but it would take a timed course of fire – preferably in a regulated environment. There was that serious matter of secrecy: the company didn’t want word to get out early.
I took the gun to a session of a retired deputies’ qualification and wore the gun under a concealing garment. Most of the old-timers present at the range were too busy catching up on each other’s age-related medical maladies for anyone to get nosy about just what I was shooting. The range dude didn’t care – as long as safe gun handling was observed.
While shooting the state mandated course of fire, I did each draw with the muzzle elevated slightly to catch the front sight, something I’d taken to doing some years back without pistol-mounted optics. I concluded that visually catching the front sight sooner in the presentation didn’t hurt me any. With the SRO, it was helpful as the dot appeared before the front sight. I had lots of time to make the hits as I just centered the dot. The terrific view and simplicity of aiming gave me time to seriously appreciate the trigger on the Gen5 G19. It’s really good.
The Gen5 series is clearly the most accurate factory Glock 9mm ever. The Trijicon SRO gave me something else: when you’re not visually-focused you have time for a kinesthetic focus and the Gen5 trigger is a joy for a plastic service pistol. Between that trigger and the longer post-ignition dwell time before the gun unlocks, the accuracy is very good.
There was one central cluster in the “Q” target with just a few outriders letting me know that I was still fallible.
I think I may have found the pistol-mounted optic that could get me to switch to that format. Easy to use, standard mounting arrangement, huge field of view and Trijicon-rugged, there’s only one thing not to like: the window projects far enough ahead of the optic body, it interferes with my favorite strong-side IWB holster. It doesn’t seem to have that problem with some AIWB rigs. The company, in the release, notes that the SRO is “ . . . optimized for target and competition shooting.” I found it to be a nice fit on the G19 except for that holster fit issue – and I think it would work fine for service use if the holster matches.
As much as I like it, I still haven’t even tried the automatic brightness mode yet . . .
If you like optics on service pistols or you compete in optics divisions, you need to give this one a look. If you are old, like me, and not yet ready to take the leap, perhaps you should still take a look at the SRO.
- - Rich Grassi