Make Solar Panels Great Again - Holosun SCRS

Good morning, everyone, this is John with gun.deals, and today we're going to be taking a look at the new Holosun SCRS.

Full disclosure on the internally battery fed solar charging SCRS is that we did pay our own money for it, I don't have any relationship with Holosun. I do have access to dealer pricing on these optics through a third-party distributor so I didn't pay full retail price for it, but we don't have any sort of relationship with Holosun and I did pay my own money for it.

Wikiarms.com Search Engine Results

Want to see your products here? Click this link.

No deals found for this data entry. Try other filters.

Powered by Wikiarms.com

Getting into the somewhat novel basics of the Holosun SCS RD -2, this optic interestingly enough does not have a removable battery, it has an internal rechargeable battery that is hooked up to a solar cell on top that can in theory charge the optic over a long period of time. Very importantly, most 2032s that optics are powered by, or at least most optics are powered by, are not rechargeable so most of the solar cells on Holosuns are much more of an emergency feature and they're not going to passively charge the optic because the batteries can't physically be recharged.

On the SCRS they remove that issue by installing an internal battery that is rechargeable. On their website they still claim up to 50,000 hours of battery life. I'm not sure if that 50,000 number is for the internal battery on its own or if it is the internal battery plus the solar charging system. If it doesn't include the solar charging system then that number is going to go up, every time you get enough sunlight to actually charge the battery it will go up. However, the internal battery is still going to die at some point, say in the next 5 to 15 years, depending on the quality of the battery. So, while having that extended battery life is nice, the battery life internally isn't really going to be much different than like a standard 2032 in terms of how long it can actually last because the batteries themselves will degrade over time, and to replace the battery you're going to need to send it to Holosun in the next 10 to 15 years or however long that battery lasts.

And keep in mind that that is combed with the auto on/auto off technology that Holosun puts into their red dots. So, in theory the battery life should be however long that internal battery can actually hold a charge. Whether or not that's any different from a standard removable battery I'm not really sure and I might not even be around long enough to find that out.

Moving on from the battery and getting into the design of the optic itself, this is a rifle sight, however, it is definitely what I would consider to be a micro rifle sight, so this is not using the standard AimPoint T1/T2 footprint, this is using Holosun’s 509T footprint, which is about 30% shorter. With that shorter length you are actually saving a little bit of weight, this comes in at 2.5 ounces while still retaining your 20mm window, which effectively gives it a wider field of view because it's a shorter tube, but it doesn't make that much difference, but it does look nice to look through.

Getting into the materials, this is 7075, which is an upgraded material choice versus the much more standard 6061, so I like that right there. In terms of controls on the optic on the left-hand side you have the plus and minus button for adjusting your reticle brightness, you have 12 settings, eight daylight and four night vision settings, and I've heard the night vision performance is actually pretty good. On top of the optic we have our ever so slightly recessed and exposed elevation, we also have our solar charging panel on top as well, on the right hand side we have our windage. Windage and elevation are in 1 MOA increments, which for a red dot is perfectly fine, though there are more refined red dots on the market.

Getting into the mount on the SCRS itself, it is 509T compatible, so it should in theory fit with any standard 509T mounts plates or aftermarket mounts and adapters as well. However, this is not recommended for use on a pistol, though you could do it if you really wanted to. At first look it kind of looks like the Acro footprint, however, they are not compatible.

Getting into the lower 1/3 mount that comes with the SCRS, it looks kind of like a mini Geissele or a mini Reptilia mount, it has a really strong crossbolt on the bottom. Unfortunately, it's not squared off and there is no recoil lugs on the bottom of the mount, which isn't a great thing and is going to decrease the total amount of possible surface area, so maybe it's not going to hold zero quite as well or have the same return to zero if you were to take it on or off, but the rest of the mount is designed quite well. In terms of total contact area between something like a 509T versus an AimPoint T1/T2style mount you do have a lot of reduced surface area, however, so far in testing the actual hold up the lock up betweenthe optic and the mount so far has been fine.

Talking about the modes briefly, this does have an automatic mode that uses a light sensor to determine how bright the dot should be. That will really help to conserve battery life combined with the rechargeable battery combined with auto on/auto off, however, since we're dealing with a battery life of somewhere between 5 and 15 years I personally feel no need whatsoever to use the auto settings, plus if you use the auto settings and like a white light or something, especially a very bright white light indoors, that auto setting will almost never be smart enough to actually keep up with changing lighting environments, so I just use it in manual. I have had some optics that have done really well. With auto brightness, however, for the most part I prefer just to set it and forget it at whatever I'm comfortable with.

Talking about the dot, this is the 2 MOA only dot version, they do have their multi- retical system as well with the 2 MOA dot and 65 Outer Circle, however, for me personally the 2 MOA dot is perfectly fine and, I am very happy to report that the dot itself on the SCRS looks very good, it's one of the best looking dots that I've ever seen and so it's very crisp, it's very concentric, it looks very round, and I don't have any sort of like aberration or issues with the dot itself, no overly noticeable color shift, just a good looking dot, decent glass, and a battery life that will last you basically forever. When you combine all that together, good glass, good dot, with the shorter stubbier body, giving you a slightly larger field of view, it's actually really nice to use and it comes with almost no size or weight penalty. The optic itself is not going to hold you back in any way, even when compared with other much more expensive red dots of similar quality, fantastic dot, decent glass, the body style works really well, and you get almost no size and weight penalty.

When we move into the durability, as far as the body goes, this is going to be an extremely tough optic. We have the same 20mm window size so the window's not going to be any more fragile than any of your other AimPoint T1/T2 style of optics, the body is even shorter and it's made out of 7075, so no issues there. The one issue is going to be the 509T footprint to their mount because there is a lot less surface area than something like a T1/T2 that uses four bolts versus one singular crossbolt, so that connection point is going to be the weak point. However, in our current testing it's held up just fine, I did do a shoulder height drop onto the frozen tundra of where I live here in South Dakota, and it exhibited no shift in zero at 50 yards, the optic held up just fine, the mount held up just fine, though we will continue to evaluate this optic, eventually it will meet an AR500 steel plate, and we'll see how it does then.

Why would you buy something like the SCRS? Well, it is a very small, very lightweight optic, and that is going to appeal to some people right there. It does not have a removable battery and some people are really, really into the gimmic of solar panels, and I think that's going to save them versus the near infinite amount of other things that are going to be much more important than that, but even with that Snider mark out of the way, the SCRS does represent a really good value, it's not very expensive, coming in at somewhere between $220 and $270, depending on which model you go for. I think that the performance is quite good, but you can use this as a top-mounted dot, an offset dot or a standalone dot, and you can use it in all of those roles, and it's going to perform quite well.

I don't really have any issues with it, it's not necessarily the highest value dot on the market cuz it's going to be about 100 bucks more than like the 403B or the Sig Romeo 5 that are going to do most of the same things, even though they're a little bigger, they're a little heavier, they don't have the solar rechargeable battery, there really is a lot to like about the SCRS. If it came in at a price of like $400 then I wouldn't think that it's worth it, but at just a little bit over 200 bucks, and if they go on any sales or anything else like that, I would not be surprised to see these at like $199 at some point in the future. At that price point they're pretty hard to argue with. If you're fine going with that 509T footprint, which we'll see how well that holds up in the future, but that's about all that I got for you on the review, guys.