Good morning, everyone, this is John with gun.deals, and today we’re gonna be taking a look at the Lucid Optics HD7.
Getting into full disclosure on the Lucid Optics HD7, this is the Gen 3 version, is that we paid our own money for this optic and we have absolutely no relationship with Lucid Optics whatsoever.
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Product
Price
Store
MPN
UPC
Lucid Optics Optics Red Dot Hd7 Gen3 34Mm Black L-HD7 850341002016
$182.20
Shooting Surplus
and 1 more store
L-HD7
850341002016
LUCID OPTICS RED DOT HD7 GEN3 34MM TAN
$249.95
GunStuff TV
LHD7TAN
850341002085
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Getting into specifics on what the Lucid Optics HD7 Gen 3 is, this is basically a red dot, this is a very large red dot that looks kind of ACOG-ish, if you will. That is basically all that this optic is, it is a red dot designed to look like an ACOG with some very interesting features.
Cost on the Gen 3 versions, they do actually have a Gen 4 out, the Gen 3 versions, I believe map is like 199, so they’re gonna be around that 200-dollar price tag, and then the Gen 4s are gonna be a little bit more expensive than that.
Getting into the specific features of the HD7, this is a one-piece aluminum body, on the Gen 4 version is cast 6063, so it’s either cast 6063 or 6061 or something like that on the Gen 3 as well, but it is, again, a one-piece aluminum body, which will help it be durable.
Talking about the body for a moment as well, it is also coated in this rubberized kind of overmold on the entire optic body to prevent scratches or provide a little bit of cushion from falls.
All that being said, as you can tell this is a very big red dot coming in at 13 ounces. 13 ounces on a red dot, on just kind of a basic red dot, puts it up towards the heaviest red dot on the market, very similar to like the SIG Romeo 8T and some of the Eotech’s as well, around that 13, 14 range is about as heavy as you can get in a red dot.
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This one here is powered by a single AAA battery that is mounted into the mount itself, which is quite nice. In terms of the battery life, reticle and feature set, it only has seven brightness settings, it does get bright enough for sure, it is not night vision compatible, and I could not find the brightness or the battery life, the rated battery life on the optic. However, since I had it, for the last month or so, I’ve been just turning it off.
Because I don’t have the exact manufacturer quoted battery life on the optic I really can’t talk about it too much, I’ve only had it for a month or so and every time I use it I turn the optic off, after every use hasn’t been an issue so far, but I really haven’t had it that long and I don’t know what their rated battery life. It does not have any sort of shake-awake technology, so you do need to manually turn it back on if you want to use it.
The controls are very simple, you have the power button for turning the optic ON and OFF, you press it once to it on, hold it to turn it off, and then you have your plus and minus buttons, they’re rubberized, very tactile buttons, they feel good to cycling through your different brightness levels.This is a daytime optic only, as it is not compatible with night vision, and interestingly enough, on this optic, is it also comes with a multi-reticle system. Unlike SIG or Holosun’s multi-reticle systems, this one here actually uses a physical dial to switch between the different reticles.
That is a very old, kind of outdated design because that does introduce some error between the different reticles, so basically you have a physical dial that physically rotates the emitter into a different position to actually give you the different reticles versus having something like a SIG or Holosun that, as you hold down the minus button or however you adjust the reticles on that specific optic, it will just turn on and off different pieces of the same emitter, so the emitter itself does not move and therefore does not shift zero when you’re cycling between the different reticles.
However, this is a physical operation that moves something within the optic body, meaning that, for me, when I was cycling through different reticles on the range, I would actually need to re-zero when switching between the different reticles.
That can be an issue, however, most people are probably going to set it to their favorite reticle and then never touch it again, and then they’ll never have to worry about re-zeroing it, just know that there is some point of impact shift when switch between the different reticles, which is not preferable if you plan on using all four of your reticles.
Getting into the reticles themselves, you have a very simple 3 MOA dot, which for a basic red dot sight is perfectly fine, you have a slightly larger 5 MOA dot, which is again fine, it’s still definitely usable inside of two, 300 yards, not really a big deal there, then after that you have a very interesting arrow reticle, which is basically, I believe it’s a 5 MOA dot, and there’s a 6 MOA gap and then you have a 3 MOA dot below that, and then you have a 16 MOA drop and then a 3 MOA dot below that, as well as two kind of vertical lines or not vertical lines, they’re kind of at a weird angle, pointing up towards the center, kind of like an arrow. In theory, you can use that as kind of like a wind hold or a little bit of a high hold at like 350 or so.
The 6 MOA drop is pretty good for 400 yards, generally if you have like a 5200 zero, it’s about 6 MOA at 400, and then at 500 it’s somewhere between 9 and 12 MOA, so the 16 MOA is more like a 5 or 600 yard hold, so it doesn’t really make much sense as a BDC, you could make it work as a BDC, but as we’ll get into a little bit later on. This doesn’t work very well as a BDC because it’s very difficult to actually get a magnifier behind the optic.
And then your last reticle, which is what I would probably recommend most people use, is a 3 MOA dot, which is plenty precise, and then a 25 MOA outer circle. 25 MOA circle is pretty tight, for instance, even on Holosun’s micro optics, it’s a 32 MOA outer circle, and unlike an Eotech or the bigger full-size red dots you’re getting a 65 MOA circle, so there’s a lot of space around that very refined point of aim versus a 25 MOA circle there is space, but it is a little bit tighter than what you’re gonna see on other optics, it might be a little cluttered for some people and some people might like it a lot.
Talking about adjusting the zero quickly, you do have capped windage and elevation, they are in ½ MOA increments. The caps themselves are captured, but they’re captured together, so as long as you’re only adjusting one at a time you’ll never lose your caps, but if you take them both off at the same time, then, of course, you can still lose them, however, they are tethered together so it makes them much more difficult to lose. It’s a nice, little thing and it’s much more of a set-and-forget style.
Zeroing the optic doesn’t really matter if you hold zero. Fortunately, the mounting design on this is a fairly simple, robust system, you have two very substantial half inch hex heads where they might be 13-millimeter hex heads, I believe, is what they say on the website, either way, you have two substantial hex heads crossbolts, which are very nice over a very large clamping surface as well as the crossbolts themselves are squared off, meaning that they act like recoil lugs.
Recoil lugs basically increase the contact surface between your optic and your upper receiver, they also provide a hard stop during recoil or sharp impacts, which we’ll get into in just a minute, in theory allowing you to hold zero and retain zero better over a longer period of time or harsher instances.
Getting into the durability of the optic, this is, fortunately, a fairly durable optic, so it is a one-piece aluminum body with a very substantial mount. On top of that, the entire thing is coated in this kind of overmolded rubber thing, so it is a heavy, bulky optic, but it is at least giving you some durability.
We did a double drop test on this optic, basically we had a small steel at 100 yards, I did a 3-round control group, dropped the optic fro shoulder height, right on top of the optic onto rocks and dirt, and then did another 3-round group, repeat the drop, do another 3-round group and, fortunately, during the drop test period, it did not break or have any sort of failures with the optic itself, and it also retained an acceptable level of zero.
Getting into actually using the optic, and I know a lot of people really like big red dots, myself personally included, I do like to see little bit larger of a window, as it’s just kind of a personal preference thing. However, when you look at this optic you might think that it obviously has a very big window, which is going to be very nice shooting in odd positions or just preferable for some shooters.
However, the field of view, if you will, on the red dot, is incredibly tight, while it might look like it has a big forgiving window. Unfortunately, there is a section in the middle of the red dot that really tapers down, so it kind of looks like you’re looking through a standard 20-millimeter micro red dot, so there’s really no advantage in terms of field of view or window size, and in effect performs much similar to a T1, T2 style optic.
The next downside that we need to talk about is that I was not able to use this optic with a magnifier on this optic because even all the way forward on the very rung of the last Picatinny rail section of the upper receiver, I could not fit a magnifier behind it, there’s simply just was not enough space on the upper receiver and that’s going to go for every AR-15 upper receiver on the market.
So, if you did want to put a magnifier behind your HD7 and actually utilize that weird sort of BDC thing, if you will, you would either have to have it on a gun that has a much longer monolithic upper receiver, so something that has a much longer section of Picatinny so you can move it forward and then actually fit a magnifier behind it, so we’ll talk about why that’s also an issue in just a second, and then if you wanted to put it on like an AR-15 you would actually have to bridge the gap between your upper receiver and your rail, so you’re using just like a standard Picatinny rail, not this plastic fantastic from Magpul, but if you did have it on like a normal gun with a normal Picatinny rail up front, you would have to bridge the gap between two different pieces of aluminum. Not necessarily the most ideal way to mount your optic, but that is what you would have to do if you wanted to use a magnifier behind this optic.
Another issue with using a magnifier behind this optic is this has a center line height of 1.75. Now, 1.75 is a very comfy height, so if you’re just using that it has a very natural head position, you can definitely be straight up. Anything between 1.75, 2.1, 2.2, for me, is very comfortable to shoot with.
However, that is an odd height because it’s taller than lower 1/3 co-witness, so not a lot of your magnifiers are going to line up perfectly, and if you have a little bit of OCD that could be a bigger issue actually getting a magnifier to line up well behind the HD7, on top of the fact that it is a very big red dot and you need to move it very far forward to actually fit a magnifier behind it in a first place.
At the end of the day, using the optic was perfectly fine, I’ve heard that some of the other versions did not get bright enough, so over again, on the Gen 3 version on maximum brightness, which is what I was generally using it on, it was definitely daylight bright, definitely very usable, the reticle itself is precise enough, the glass quality is fine, nothing exceptional, but definitely fine.
So, using it is fine, but if I was to recommend this versus virtually any other budget red dot on the market, that is a very tough sell. So, this optic is for a very small group of people, people that like the look of an ACOG, however, they want a red dot, and that is basically exactly what this optic is, it has some fairly gimmicky features, it’s missing a lot of other features that other optics in the same price category are going to have.
If you’re looking for a big red dot you can get the SIG Romeo 7, excellent red dot. That’s gonna have that 2 MOA dot, 50 000-hour battery life, it’s going to have auto-ON/auto-OFF, be very durable and have a plethora of aftermarket risers available for it because it is a Cope M4.
The Lucid Optics HD7, the Gen 3, Gen 4 version, whichever one you have, is basically a red dot designed to look like an ACOG, you buy it because you think it looks cool, not because it’s practical. If you buy it you have it, you like it, you use it, that’s awesome, just know that it’s not the most practical red dot out there and the reason people are buying this is because they think it looks cool, not because it is the most practical or most usable thing on the market.
