With pistol red dots becoming more popular seemingly by the week, the choices have expanded and the prices have come down. Competition is a wonderful thing. But the best of the micro red dots — those that are the most durable with the clearest view, free of color distortion, and stand up to abuse — are still relatively pricey.
The best of the bunch cost nearly as much as most people spend on their pistols. That’s been more than a lot of daily carriers have wanted to invest in a red dot.
Bushnell’s new(ish) RXS-250 was designed to bridge the gap between first rate features, performance, and toughness and the kind of price point more people would be willing to pay.
The Bushnell RXS-250 is advertised for use on pistols, rifles, and shotguns and comes equipped for all of those jobs.
Bushnell ships the RXS-250 with a Picatinny rail mount so it’s easy to mount on on a length of standard rail on your rifle or turkey gun. With its small size, it would be perfectly at home on an offset mount on your AR-15. That said, I expect a majority of these to be used on pistols.
The RXS-250 has a standard Leupold DeltaPoint Pro mounting footprint, so there’s no shortage of optics-ready slides or systems that will easily accept it.
Bushnell ships the RXS-250 with a full compliment of accessories including a hood, the Picatinny rail mount, a mounting tool, an adjustment tool, and a microfiber cloth.
I mounted and shot the Bushnell red dot on an AR-15, but most of the testing was done with the red dot on a FN 509 LS Edge pistol (above).
There are 10 different brightness settings (adjusted with rubberized buttons on each side of the housing). The lowest setting is night vision compatible. The RXS-250’s zero adjustments are 1 MOA detent clicks on the elevation and windage screws.
The sight is designed to give you access to the battery compartment from the top. That means you won’t have to remove it to change out the 2032 battery. Not that you’re likely to have to do that often.
The RXS-250 is rated for 50,000 hours of battery life at a medium brightness setting. It also has a (user-cancellable) auto-off feature that shuts the sight down after 12 hours of no movement.
One of the features of cheaper or poorly coated red dot sights is a noticeable tint (usually green or orange) when looking through it. That’s notably absent in the RXS-250. As you can see above, holding it up to a white background shows a very slight bluish-greenish tint. But when using it either indoors or outside, any color shift is undetectable.
The RXS-250 is also built to take some punishment. While the red dot is feather-light (only 1.4 ounces) the housing is made of aluminum to protect it if you knock it around. That’s exactly what I did.
While I didn’t drop the sight while mounted on the gun, I hit it with the heel of my hand and with a rubber hammer, giving it some pretty good swats. I then checked it for accuracy. None of the shots I gave it affected the zero.
The reflex sight is IP67 rated. That means it’s dustproof and you can dunk it in three feet of water for a half hour. I did just that, then I just wiped it down and it kept on ticking.
If you see someone shooting one of these sights in the wild, you’ll be excused for mistaking it for one of its much more expensive (and more waterproofed) competitors. That’s probably not an accident, but form follows function and and there’s a reason the RMR is so popular…and has a sterling reputation for being darn near bulletproof.
Like the RMR, the RXS-250 has a relatively smaller target view than, say, the Leupold DeltaPoint Pro or even the Vortex Venom. But most people these days are using micro red dots like the RXS-250 on their EDC guns, which means they will be shooting them (or should) with both eyes open. A window the size of the RXS-250 (or RMR) gives you plenty of peripheral vision with a good sight picture that’s big enough to be more than effective.
The kicker is, the RXS-250 does all of that for anywhere from $100 to almost $300 less than the other leading models. The Bushnell isn’t rated as water and dust-resistant as some of the others and, because it’s new, it hasn’t accumulated the track record the others have yet. But it handles all of the water and dust that most people will ever encounter with it attached to their daily carry pistol.
In short, the RXS-250 is an impressive, full-featured red dot sight at an even more impressive price.
Specifications: Bushnell RXS-250 Reflex Sight
Reticle: 4 MOA Dot
Length:1.8 inch
Height 1.5 inch with Pic mount base, 1.1 inch without base
Weight: 2.3 oz with Pic mount base, 1.4 oz. without
Lens: Multi-Coated
Magnification: 1X
Objective Size: 1 in.
Parallax: 50 Yds.
Mount: DeltaPoint Pro compatible
Battery Life: 50,000 hours
Battery: CR2032, top-loading
Brightness Settings 10, night vision compatible
Auto Shutoff: 12 hrs (user-selectable)
Made in: China
MSRP: $249.99 (about $210 online)
Ratings (out of five stars):
Overall: * * * * *
I tried to find something this red dot sight doesn’t do well. In the end, I came up with nothing. The Bushnell RXS-250 is solidly built, gives you a clear view of your target, plays nicely with night vision, sips battery power with the best of its competitors, is water resistant (enough) and does it all for an incredibly reasonable price compared to the competition.
