BurrisOptics Hunting Lightweight Versatile FastFire 3 Red Dot Sight, Black

This little red dot is the MVP of my shooting setup. It’s lightweight, stupid-easy to mount, and the top-loading battery means I don’t have to re-zero every time it needs juice. The 3 MOA dot is crisp and bright—auto-adjusting like it actually cares about your eyes.Downsides? The battery cap’s a bit finicky, and it doesn’t have a “shake awake” feature—but if you can push a button, you’ll survive.Bottom line: If you want to feel like a sci-fi hero every time you aim, the FastFire III has you covered. Pew pew.

I purchased this sight to mount on my Smith & Wesson M&P 9mm Full Size pistol. I do not have the C.O.R.E model so I had to purchase a mounting mechanism separately. I decided to use Sight-Mount to replace my rear sight. Sight-Mount gives you a short picatinny rail section and installs in the rear sight dove tail. It does have the rear iron sight, so if I remove the red-dot, I still have good iron sights to use. Other mounting mechanisms replace the rear sight and you no longer have iron sights to fall back on. Be advised that Sight-Mount recommends drilling and tapping your slide for a third mounting screw for a solid mount (you'll need a gunsmith for that). The Burris FastFire III with the included Picatinny mount fits on the Sight-Mount rail perfectly. Everything is very tight and secure with this mechanism, and with the gun's recoil and moving slide, it has to be.I took this to the range and had no problems zeroing the sight at 10 meters. The adjustments are very easy to make (1 MOA per click) and it holds zero very well. This model has an 8 MOA dot which is quite large (8 inches at 100 yards) and meant for close distances. I have tried this sight out to 25 yards (max at my indoor range) and the sight is very accurate between 5 and 25 yards (you do have to compensate your point of aim at different distances depending on the distance you zeroed the sight). For handguns, 8 MOA is a really good size because you are typically shooting at relatively close distances.There is a combination on/off and brightness square rubber push button switch on the left side of the sight. The sequence is ON - AUTO Bright - High Bright - Medium Bright - Low Bright - OFF. It does have an auto off feature, and if the sight turns itself off, the next time you push the button it will activate whatever the last mode you were using. The Auto setting is very good and the light sensor at the front of the sight will adjust the dot intensity pretty well. I have tried looking at the dot from a dark room and into a brightly lit room and the dot is dim but still very good. The opposite, from a brightly lit room into a dark room, the dot is quite bright, but again very good and usable. Even on the brightest setting, the dot is a whole lot less distorted than I've seen on other, even more expensive sights.This sight has the battery access from the top of the sight, unlike the previous version of this sight where you had to dismount the sight and disturb your zero to replace the battery. The cap is finely threaded aluminum that is easy to cross-thread if you're not careful. The battery that came with the sight was dead, so I used a replacement battery (CR1632 3 Volt) and had no trouble installing it. The sight is small so finding the dot for the first time took me a bit, but once you get used to the sight, finding the dot is no issue. The sight is made with an aluminum chassis and appears to be very durable, but I'm not abusing the sight intentionally to test how durable it is.The sight is really great. With my old eyes not able to focus in on the front sight post of my pistol, this red dot sight allows me to be a lot more accurate than with the iron sights. This allows you to easily shoot with both eyes open and focused on the target. With iron sights, its easy to get tunnel vision. Besides, if you are being attacked, you are focused on your attacker and probably not on your front sight. The red dot sight gives you a real advantage in this regard.The only complaint I have, is that the sight does not come with a protective cover. It does come with a big sun shade, but I would like a small cover so I can protect the sight when I'm cleaning my gun. You can easily get cleaner on the lens of the sight and it's a pain to get completely clean again. You really don't want to dismount the sight once it's zeroed so this is one drawback. I now use some plastic wrap to cover the sight while I'm cleaning it.Overall, I'm impressed with the quality of this sight. I have fired a few hundred rounds with this sight and it has held zero perfectly. The mounting is solid and handles the recoil and movement of the slide very well. The 8 MOA dot is easy to pick up, and the sight provides me a more accurate sight picture than with the iron sights. I'm happy with this purchase and can recommend this sight to anyone.

I spent a half day sighting in and plinking at golf balls at the range and I am VERY happy with this red dot reflex. I'll provide a more complete review when I've spent more time testing it with a sand bag rest at longer ranges; right now, the variations in shot placement definitely reflect the quality of the shooter and not the sight!This package includes the rail mount base plate with thumbscrew and hardened alignment pins (perfectly tight fit between my flat top AR and the Fastfire III); Torx mounting screws with captive external tooth lock washers (no Loctite needed, with 1 spare screw/lockwasher thoughtfully included in case you lose one); Torx wrench to install the 2 semi-permanent screws; jeweler's screwdriver (nonslip matte finish tip, swivel top plastic handle, much better than needed for adjusting windage and elevation); battery; dust cover/sun shield (not pictured, nice bonus); soft fabric storage pouch for the sight + base + cover; and very minimal mouse-print instructions that experienced shooters won't read anyway. Get your reading glasses and take 1 minute. Before you tear up the battery cover like I did.Things I'd do differently next time:1. Don't bother with a bore sight. I suspect the factory settings were just fine because I spent most of the day undoing the elevation and windage adjustments I'd made at home based on an admittedly cheap bore sight. Ammo is too expensive and rare to waste like I did.2. Buy a Flat Top Riser Scope Mount. This sight is SO low profile I couldn't get a good cheek weld with muffs on, the red dot seemed to be at the very top of the lens. At times I thought I'd accidentally turned it off, or maybe the battery had died. No, just shooter error. Use plugs alone, or raise the sight about ½” -3/4" with a riser rail.3. Do NOT use the tiny jeweler's screwdriver to reinstall the battery cover. Yeah, it comes off with one... Use a big fat tip screwdriver that fills the slot. Or maybe a penny or nickel. The body of the sight is hardened aluminum; the battery cover may or may not be hardened, but you will definitely tear up the screwdriver slot on the battery cover if you get so excited about your new toy that you just can't bother making a trip to the garage for the correct size screwdriver. Buddy, listen to me, there is NO SENSE reading this review then repeating my mistake. You just spent $250, now treat it like a quality optic worth at least that much. Thank you.The soft rubbery black rectangular pushbutton on the left side is nearly flush with the sight and rotates through 5 settings: Automatic brightness, Hi, Medium, Lo, and Off. The pushbutton does not give any audible and only minimal tactile feedback, so watch the dot. I was shooting on a bright sunny day, standing in both shade and full sun, shooting in the afternoon toward the Sun and was able to find the dot even on the lowest setting. The Automatic brightness setting seemed to provide an even wider range of brightness than the manual settings, if that's possible. The bonus dust cover/glare shield cut the dot brightness just a bit (as expected) so you might experiment leaving it on if you find the dot still too bright for dim light as other reviewers on other websites have claimed. The dust cover has a generous relief cut to fit around the pushbutton but my fat fingers couldn't always press the button far enough with the cover on. I may take a Dremel to the relief cut to make the opening bigger, I suspect most of you won't need to.The elevation and windage screws seem to have a very wide range of adjustment. They do not have audible or tactile clicks, which should be unnecessary anyway. You cannot adjust these with bare hands (i.e., without a small screwdriver like the excellent one enclosed) but I cannot imagine needing to make frequent adjustments. NOTE that if you max out one adjustment screw all the way up or down, you cannot move the other. Don't force the second adjustment screw, just back off the first adjustment screw a tiny bit. Then use plugs not muffs. Or buy a sight riser. Because you didn't need to max out the elevation screw in the first place.I've owned a cheap (<$150) red dot reflex sight before, with plastic body and cheap mount. Don't waste your money on a lesser sight. This is a very high quality optic designed to withstand 1000 Gs, with hardened aluminum body and mount. If you need something even tougher, buy the optional Burris mount that surrounds and protects the entire Fastfire III.

This is my first RDS ever and I mounted it on my steel frame 9mm pistol, I like it far more than the iron sights. Zeroing took a while, I recommend starting up close at 10yd before trying a 25 yard zero, because you might not even hit the 25 yard even with a sandbag with the RDS in stock config. After zeroing I was hitting consistent bullseyes, It really amazed me how accurate I could be with this thing sighted in. Apparently I have a slight astigmatism and it shows up as flaring / starbursting on the red dot. I've learned this is very common and isn't something to worry about too much, but I would say that is my only negative about the sight. I am looking into green dots to alleviate this in the future, and some online say that higher quality red dot emitters or holographic sights can reduce starbursting. Nevertheless, I shoot bullseyes with this thing even though it starbursts on me, and the auto-brightness setting is AWESOME and does exactly what its supposed to and does it promptly. For the cost this could be the best RDS.