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The Clone Wars Have Begun - Gideon Optics Mediator
Updated
4 months ago
Good morning, everyone, this is John with gun.deals, today we're going to be taking a look at the Gideon Mediator/a half dozen other optics because there's a lot of plagiarism going on in the industry right now.
Full disclosure on the Gideon Mediator is that this was sent out to me by Gideon Optics, I actually met with Mike at Trigger Con and he went ahead and sent me out the Mediator.
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Currently, it is mounted to an AR-9 pistol, at some point in the future I will have it mounted to an actual pistol, as it is designed to be used on a pistol as an enclosed pistol red dot. However, the plates, the ACRO plates that I have do not fit to this optic cuz this optic requires a slightly different cut than the plates that I currently have on hand, an easy fix that will be resolved at some point in the future.
Getting into the basics of the Gideon Optics Mediator, this is a pistol-style closed emitter red dot, and this is utilizing the ACRO footprint, which is very popular for mounting optics, closed window optics specifically, onto a slide. As we'll get into a little bit later on, this may or may not be compatible with all aftermarket ACRO footprint slides and adapters. As far as construction goes, this is made out of 7075, which is a nice upgrade from 6061, it is about twice the strength the weight ratio of 6061 so it is nice to see. In terms of size and weight, this is about the same size as an ACRO, coming in at about 2.5 ounces, and the window size is only about 16x16 mm. It's a pretty small window, but unfortunately, par for the course of this style of red dot.
Getting into controls on the Mediator, we do have protected windage and elevation that are in 1 MOA increments, and very nicely, they do have very tactile clicks, unlike some other red dots in this price category. In terms of the illumination we have two rubber buttons on the left-hand side of the optic that go up and down, that will also control our reticle selection, which we'll get into a little bit later on. You have 10 total illumination settings and two night vision settings, so eight daylight, two night vision, and at maximum brightness it's not quite bright enough when you're using the full reticle, though we'll get into that in just a minute.
Getting into battery life it is rated at 50,000 hours of service life, though keep in mind that that is comboed with their Shake Awake feature, everybody calls their thing a little bit different. Anyway, it's a Auto on/Auto off, it will automatically turn off after about 4 minutes, and then it will automatically turn back on once it sens its motion, as of right now I have not had an issue with it so far, and I have had it for several months. Parallax is rated at 33 yards, which is pretty decent, and this is a pistol style optic, though you can use it on long guns if you so desire.
Getting back to the window size, it is only 16x16 mm, so it is a very small, tight window, but you are getting a very small compact optic that can fit on handguns, and it's not the worst I've seen for a pistol style optic, but it is very small and there's a lot of larger windowed red dots available. However, it does work, especially on long guns, you're really not going to lose the dot during recoil or anything else like that, but keep it in mind if you're putting this on a smaller snappier gun or you just don't control recoil as well you are probably going to lose that dot quite a bit during recoil.
Getting to the dot itself, this is the red version, and they also have a green version as well. In the center you have a 3 MOA dot, and you also have the option for an outer, 38 MOA outer circle for rapid target acquisition, and for some reason a lot of these emitters have a setting to where you can disable the center dot and just use the 38 MOA outer circle, which is borderline useless. Very interestingly enough, when you're using the combo reticle, which is the 3 MOA center dot and the 30 MOA outer circle, the reticle does not quite get bright enough, it's about one or two settings lower than what I would personally like, so when you're in a very, very bright environment, the reticle kind of gets washed out and can be very difficult to find quickly, especially depending on your specific circumstances. If you're looking directly into the sun or you have a very brightly illuminated target, you can lose that reticle very quickly.
When you turn off the outer 38 MOA outer circle it brightens up that center dot quite a bit to where it is, what I would consider to be, very usable, still not the brightest dot on the market by any means, but much more usable in the 3 MOA dot without the 38 MOA outer circle. That is probably an issue with the wiring or the way that they're controlling the battery life and the voltage with the emitter, I'm not sure, I'm not an engineer, I have no idea how all of that works, but there is something going on here that could probably be resolved to give it a little bit more brightness and to be more consistent between the different reticle options. Basically, what I would recommend, if you're going to use this optic, is that you would probably just turn off the 38 MOA outer circle and just use the 3 MOA center dot, which does look quite good and works just fine.
One other minor complaint that I have is that the Mediator is only compatible with ACRO footprint slides and plates that are undercut on both sides, so other aftermarket plates that are not undercut on both sides, this will not fit on. For instance, I have a Viridian RFX45 that is also an ACRO footprint, however, those are only undercut on one side so I can't use any of those slides or adapters that I already have, which means that I haven't been able to mount this on a pistol yet, though I will be doing that in the full review on my personal channel once I get the new plate in.
I did do some drop testing on the optic, but it was borderline worthless because the rifle that I had it, or the SPR that I had it mounted to was an AR-9 that for some reason, with the ammo that I had that day, was shooting like 8 inches at 25 yards, so while the groups didn't appear to shift much, it's basically worthless because the groups were so bad to begin with, so I will do more testing in the future, just unfortunate that that ammo out of that gun for some reason performed very poorly when in the past it was shooting about 2 inches at 25 yards.
When it comes to value this is about 250 bucks with a Picatinny riser, and that is all right value. There is a lot of competition in the marketplace and there are a lot of rebrands. This is essentially what appears to be a Swampfox Kraken, remade with a slightly different skin, and a slightly worse feature set, if you ask me personally. Overall, I'm not a huge fan of this style of red dots with the very small window, though they are very, very durable, that is their claim to fame is that the body is just very, very tough, and for not all that much money.
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I do have a few minor complaints with it, that being the reticle not quite getting bright enough and the fact that you need the double undercut mounting plates, so it doesn't fit with the ones that I have on hand, however, that's not the biggest deal. If you're really looking for this style of optic, and the price is good, compared to the other options that you're looking at, I think it can work, however, this style is just not my personal favorite. That's about all that I got on the Gideon Mediator.
