Good morning, everyone, this is John with gun.deals, today we're going to be taking a look at one of the largest pistol dots on the market, this is the Vector Optics Frenzy Plus pistol red dot.
Full disclosure on Vector Optics, they send me a lot of products to review including this one so I did not pay for this, they did send this out to me for free. On top of that, I also have a discount code, it is 10% off, and then 5% affiliate. Do not feel the need to use it, but in full disclosure that is there.
Getting into basics of the Vector Frenzy Plus, this has a couple different models, his is the base model. They also have a slightly upgraded version that has a solar panel on top as well as a multi-reticle system. This version is the cheaper version, it's about 200 bucks, and has a 3 MOA Dot, and no solar panel on top. The solar panel on top, plus the multi retical system, which is a 2 MOA dot plus 40 MOA Outer Circle, that one there is only about $30 more expensive, coming in at about $230. These are ACRO compatible footprints, so we have an RMR2 ACRO adapter plate, and then the Frenzy Plus mounts to the adapter plate on my Gen 3 Glock 17.
In terms of the body itself I believe it is 6061 T6 aluminum, you have rubberized buttons on the left hand side, you have eight daylight settings and two night vision settings, you have recessed windage and elevation that have very nice tactical clicks, I believe they are 1 MOA increments, which personally for handguns that's perfectly fine, more than precise enough. On the right hand side of the body you have a 2032 battery tray, which is rated for 50,000 hours, Auto on/Auto off, after 2 minutes the 3 MOA dot in this case will automatically shut off.
There are a lot of things that I like about this optic, but let's get some of the cons out of the way that are fairly obvious. This is the biggest and heaviest pistol dot that I know of on the market, it is very, very large. Most of the other enclosed style pistol optics that I've used will still work in a lot of my red dot holsters. However, this is so big that the only one of my duty holsters that it fits in is a cut, one that I literally just ground off the front hood of, this is a Blackhawk L2D, so for all the footage I was using this modified holster because I'm not going to cut my Safari Land or my Alien Gear Holsters to fit this huge chunky red dot.
When it comes to concealed carry style holsters there are some that will fit it, as long as they're cut for optic, however I just do not think that is an ideal use case for this optic as it's just overly large and kind of ruins the footprint of any handgun that it's on in terms of concealed carry.
The other downside to that is that the window size is only 18x20mm, so it is almost a perfect square, and as far as a ratio of glass to body, this is about 60% body, 40% window. The window on the optic, even though it is a huge body, is just about the size of a K size optic or a compact optic has about the same window as like a 407K, a 507K, something like that. I know that that sounded very negative and is going to be a turn off for a lot of people in a lot of scenarios, however, that's about it because everything else I really like about the optic.
Talking about the glass quality itself there is a very slight noticeable blue notch filter, certainly not the worst that I have seen. The glass itself is very flat, there's very little warping or magnification. There is some which you will find a lot of in these very small pistol optics, or medium size pistol optics I should say, but the image itself is still very pleasing.
Talking about the dot quality, this 3 MOA dot is one of the nicest dots that I have seen to date, it is very, very crisp, very concentric, I do have a slight stigmatism in my left eye, not in my right eye, and in my right eye it looks absolutely perfect, no issues whatsoever. The refresh rate on the emitter is very good throughout the entire brightness range, which is very nice, so the actual sight picture through the optic is fantastic, I just wish there was more of it.
I am using this currently on a Gen 3 Glock 17, currently with a factory Glock barrel. However, I also use it with a ported Glock barrel as well, and the recoil is fairly easy to control, so I'm not really losing the dot, however, in a bigger window it would be easier to find and easier to track through recoil, which is a downside of something like this.
When it comes to actually using it I was still able to use it perfectly fine out to about 80 to 100 yards on this specific handgun, which is not the best handgun on the market in terms of accuracy because this barrel is basically burnt out and I'm not the best pistol shooter on the market either.
At this point in time I have done drop testing on this optic just onto dirt and rock, so not the hardest drop testing in the world, but so far it is held up perfectly fine, zero retention is good, though that is always going to depend on your plate mounting system. If I had a slide that was actually cut natively for ACRO that would remove a whole layer in between the optic and the gun, and make it a little bit better, but as it stands right now, the dot is very, very durable, the thick aluminum hole and this is going to make it basically bulletproof, so it is a very, very tough optic.
However, I don't really recommend it all that much for pistol use. However, for rifle or shotgun or offset use on a rifle I think it actually makes a lot more sense, and at this point in its life it's only spent about half of its time on a handgun, the rest of the time is on a rifle as either a primary or an offset dot, and that is because it's a little bit smaller, like an Aim-Point T1/T2 with about the same window size, 18x20 versus a 20mm Circle, so the overall window size is very similar to what you're going to get on like an Aim-Point T1/T2, Sig Romeo 5, something like that, but the dot quality is very good for the price, the glass quality looks very nice, and so this actually makes more sense as either an offset or a top mounted with an LPVO on a rifle or even as a solo dot on a very, very lightweight setup. I have a 9-inch 5.56 Bullpup PDW video coming eventually, and I think this is going to be the primary optic for that.
While it does work on a pistol it's so large that it stops working with a lot of holsters, so that kind of complicates things, you can't use it for concealed carry because it's half the size of the slide almost, but on a rifle, full shotgun or a sub-gun, those size constraints are minimized and I think that's where the optic can do really well. Keep in mind that this base optic really only cost about 200 bucks or less than with the plethora of discount codes floating around. It's a tough inexpensive good-looking dot that doesn't make all that much sense on a handgun, which is its intended purpose, but can flex into something else where it might work even better.
