Vortex AMG UH1 Gen2 Review

Good morning everyone, hope you are having a wonderful day today. Today we’re gonna be talking about the Vortex AMG UH1 Gen2 also lovingly referred to as the Huey due to its nice boxy shape.

The Price

We paid our own money for this optic, I believe we picked it up from Bowtech for 540 dollars, I believe. Usually the MSRP is like eight hundred bucks, eight, nine hundred bucks, something like that, but street price is around six hundred bucks usually and a little bit less than that on sale. You might be thinking that’s very expensive for a red dot, but this is a holographic style optic like the EOTECH’s. When you compare it to EOTECH’s especially the EOTECH XPS 3’s and EXPS 3’s it is very appropriately priced a very competitively with those optics.

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The Features

Getting into some features and specifics on the AMG UH1 Gen2 this one here is, of course, Gen2 version which has some minor improvements over the original Gen well and some major improvements as well. We have a little bit different design of an optic body, a little bit more material removed, a little bit lighter, a little bit better, a better stitch emitter situation and a few other improvements as well. When it comes to size and weight we have an optic that’s about four inches long about three inches tall, the central line on the reticle itself is 1.63 for a lower one-third co-witness out of the box which is actually quite nice it’s at a very, very comfortable height.

Size and Weight

In terms of size it is definitely large for a red dot but again when we compare it to EOTECH’s like the 558 or 512 it’s a little bit smaller than those but larger than EXPS and XPS series. I tried to find specifically what the material was, whether it was 60-61 or 70-75, but because I couldn’t find the specifics, I’m going to assume it is 60-61 which is a little bit cheaper, a little bit easier to machine, a little bit less strong, although when we’re talking about even, this is a big optic but smaller compact optics like this with a thick aluminum hole, they are very, very tanky optics. Weight is

11.6 ounces, which for its size is not that bad though it is quite a bit larger than a lot of your micro style red dots.

Optics

Externally, on the Huey Gen2 we do have, of course, have our windage and elevation which are built into the optic body itself. They are not capped in any way, but personally I like that because they are still very easy to access if you need to but they’re assessed into the body so you’re not gonna be accidentally knocking them. Everything is O-ring sealed on this optic, we do have IPX8 certification, which is, I believe, 10 meters for 30 minutes or an hour or something like that so if you wanna go diving or something with this optic you can totally do that. Moving to the back we have very simple buttons for adjustments, we have up-down and, of course, our night vision settings. This does come with 15 different brightness settings four of those are night vision. At this time I have not tried any of the night vision settings.

Moving over to the other side, we have a very slick battery compartment, this is powered by a singular CR123A battery and there’s actually a little lever on here that allows you to very easily adjust it, you just flip out this little lever and then you can pull it out and, of course, it’s also captured as well by a little wire. We have a single CR123A that came with a Panasonic battery, totally fine there. Probably a Duracell will be a little bit better, but as far as the battery go just make sure you’re getting that works for your environment and, of course, once you get it nice and sealed back up you can just flip that lever down and then it’s very nice and compact. We also have an external QD lever which is very robust and on this gun very tight which allows us to take it on and off quickly.

The body is aluminum, I believe it is 60-61, if it was 70-75 I believe that would be more of a selling point and they would be putting in on their website, though I tried to find what the exact material makeup was and I couldn’t find it on their website in the product manual or in other reviews as well so I do believe it is 60-61. It is finished in a very nice matte anodization, however, something I do note about the finish itself is that it’s pretty weak and pretty thin so it will come off. I had it set up in a 3 just for some B-roll and I noticed the finish it just started to come off just like rubbing up against the wood. So, the finish might be a bit weak, but for me, it’s not really a big deal, it’s just an aesthetics thing if you really care about it. The meat and potatoes about this optic is that it is a true holographic style optic like the EOTECH’s does have some advantages. The main advantage to that is basically a perfectly parallax free red dot. Almost all red dots on the market will have some shift-in impact If you have your head in the wrong position.

Most of them are fairly minimal like something under two inches or so. However, with this holographic style of optics I believe the EOTECH’s have actually been tested at zero parallax, which means that as long as you can get your head behind the very, very generous size of glass whatever you put that dot is exactly where that bullets are going to go. So, on top of that with the Huey Gen 2 it also comes with their CQB style reticle which gives you a very, very fine 1MOA dot aiming point, that is very crisp, very easy to use especially when you’re using a 3X magnifier or 4X magnifier or so on and so forth. Personally I prefer holographics, especially when you combining them with a magnifier, they tend to be a lot more crisp a lot more sharp versus like a regular red dot LED emitter, which, when you get it under magnification the dots can start to look a little bit funky and not quite so perfect but the reticle on the Huey Gen2 is very nice very crisp, it kind of does the EOTECH donut of death though not quite. It does have a hold for 10 yards and in so you have a built-in height overboard if you’re shooting very close range at very small targets or you wanna make sure that bullet goes exactly where you want it to you do have a hold for close range. On top of that, the inner part of the donut of death is still 65 MOA of the average dude’s height at the 100 yards so that means obviously they fill up the entire reticle 100 yards if they fill up half of reticle 200 yards, so on and so forth, so it’s sort of a built-in raging feature. Now, another byproduct of having that outer sort of donut of death like an EOTECH is that for me anyways, it really helps me to pick up that center dot and get it onto target very, very quickly. If I’m shooting at closer targets trying to move as fast as I can saying like a competition or a 3 gun like that, when I’m up close I don’t need to worry about even where that center dot is, I can just put that reticle on the target inside of say 5, 10, 15 yards and I know I’m gonna putting hits where I want them.

Not only that, is a very fast reticle with a built-in CQB hold and, of course, auto-ranging features in the reticle itself, it’s also very crisp and very precise if you wanted to take a longer range shots with a magnifier. Now, I taken this optic out to 400 yards with a magnifier just using Kentucky windage, holding up about the target and using a very crisp 1MOA dot, it’s a lot easier if you have say another say cheaper red dot where it’s blooming out or that dots like oblong so you’re kind of just holding that dot somewhere above the target but again with this holographic style reticles, they are very, very crisp so it’s kind of the best of both worlds. Now, some people when they look at these for the first time they’ll say ‘Oh, they look a little bit fuzzy’ and that is true, they look a little bit fuzzy if you stare directly at the reticle. What you’re supposed to be doing is looking at the target and then transposing that dot onto the target versus actually staring at the dot itself. So, there are some cons to them, some people don’t like the look of holographic style of reticles, personally I do think they have an advantage, I do think they’re a little bit faster and especially with the emitter technology that’s going into them they’re kind of the best of both worlds except when we talk about battery life.

Vortex AMG UH1 Gen2 for Sale

Battery

The battery life is not really listed on their website, from what I heard it’s anywhere between one and five thousand hours depending on battery and settings that you’re using. Something that I should mention is that this does get extremely bright, brighter than you will ever need and whatever scenario you could think of it does get extremely fire-bright, hard to look at sort of bright and then, of course, on top of that it also has 15 different brightness settings, four of which are night vision. Currently, short battery life is a downside of these holographic style optics and while it is a downside and you do need to be aware for it, for the intended application of like police, military, that sort of thing I think it does make a lot of sense because you’re not necessarily concerned with battery life, you turn it on when you need it, when you know you’re going to be doing something, for that sort of rule it makes a lot of sense. Maybe for a home-defense scenario it doesn’t make that much sense because, you know, you don’t want to check the battery every day to make sure that it still holds enough charge when you wake up in the middle of the night, but for competition, for military law enforcement, that sort of thing, when you know that you’re going to be doing something for a set amount of time they can be very, very good because, again, in my opinion they are still the fastest siding system especially something like the Huey which we’ll talk about in just a minute. We have chunk of very, very good glass that you’re looking through and personally that is something that I like. We do have a window that is, I believe, an inch tall and 1.25 inches wide which is a very, very large viewing experience, slightly larger than your standard EOTECH’s, I haven’t looked through all EOTECH’s but definitely slightly larger than your standard EOTECH’s because this does not have a hood around it, it is actual aluminum hole that is holding your glass versus an aluminum hole around the aluminum hole that is holding your glass. So, this might be a little bit more ultimately strong though I don’t have any doubts about the Vortex’s durability.

The glass itself is very good, it’s very crisp, it’s very clear, there is zero distortion, sometimes with certain red dots, you’ll hold it up and there’ll be like a little bit of warp or wobble if you move it around in front of your eye. This glass is perfectly clear, perfectly flat, perhaps a little bit of blue tint versus the EOTECH so maybe there’s a little bit of tint there, but in terms of its crispness clarity light transmission is basically perfect. On top of that you have a huge viewing window which, if you like me, I know it’s not a big deal because, of course, you’re shooting with both eyes open so you have 180 degrees field of view or around there about but for me personally a big optic window is more fun and a little bit easier to shoot with, again that’s a personal preference thing, I’m not saying that, of course, you can’t shoot just as fast with aim point T2 but personally having a bigger window helps me out and it probably also helps out with the light transmission because , of course, these are also designed to be very capable with night vision devices.

One knock that I will say on the Huey Gen2 are specifically a lot of Vortex’s red dots have this issue, their LED emitters and also on the Huey is the refresh rate which is the amount of times per second that that image is refreshed on the glass is just a little bit lower than on some of the other options on the market and what that means is if you’re moving it really fast it does not look like a solid continuous laser beam, you can see how it is refreshing so often every second. When I’m actually shooting it outdoors I never noticed it whatsoever. In the five or six hundred that I’ve been testing this over the last couple of weeks I have not noticed that in shooting whatsoever. That is only something that you’re gonna notice if you’re playing around and doing this sort of thing inside. When it’s actually mounted to a gun even if you’re transitioning very, very quickly you’re never going to notice that. Something that we briefly mentioned earlier is actually the QD mount itself and this is actually very well designed so we have a QD lever that, of course, locks down.

Importantly, the QD lever itself is actually locked in place via a detent that you actually that is spring loaded that you need to press out of the way and then you can unlock the optics so while you have this on your gun, this isn’t accidentally going to work its way free because, of course, it cannot work its way free. There’s another button that you need to depress and then you can actually un-QD it from your rifle. So, the way to adjust the tightness is on the opposite side, here we have a very nice squared-off cross bolt which will increase the contact surface between your upper receiver and your optic and that will, of course, help to provide a rock solid zero. In our testing with DI AR-15s in 556 we never experienced any issues with that sort of thing to tighten the actual QD method for different rails because, of course, different up receivers can have a little bit of different tolerances on the Picatinny rails. You just use a flat-head screwdriver or a case rim or something to torque down this steel nut on the backside of the cross bolt and that, of course, adjust the tension to your specific rail. In terms of its overall mounting system you have a ton of contact surface on this side and then the actual locking block on the other side is fairly small though it’s very similar to like how EOTECH holographics mount up and those are also well regarded for having a rock- solid lock up to your rail. So, overall for the feature set that you’re getting with this optic for, let’s say, 600 dollars, it is very competitive with EOTECH’s, it is made in the USA though I believe the reticle emitter system is made in the UK so for a 99% made in the USA optic, 600 bucks, great glass, night vision settings, if you need that sort of thing or if you’re into a competition and you want one of the best 1X optics on the market this will absolutely do that and, of course, if you’re not just into competition if you’re sort of serious application military law enforcement civilian, you know, anything like that. It has a lot of features built for that sort of hard use. It is a very tanky construction, it is a little big, it is a little heavy, but with that size and weight you are, of course, getting a rock-solid optic.

Something that I haven’t mentioned yet is they actually have a anti-reflection coating on the front pan of glass so right now the reticle is on, it is more than bright enough for the current circumstances and when looking at this optic from the front there is absolutely no visible red Huey. Sometimes with red dots and other holographics even EOTECH sometimes when you’re looking at that from the front you can see a little bit of a red glare, which could, in theory, give away your position in a dark environment. However, with the anti-reflection coatings on the front of the glass there is absolutely no visible light coming from the front of the optic whatsoever. So, overall I don’t think that the Vortex AMG UH1 Gen2 lovingly referred to as the Huey is the right optic for everyone because it is gonna be a little bit more specific, if you have a specific application for it you’re not worried about the battery dying on you because it’s not necessarily something like a home-defense or a truck gun or something you’re not necessarily checking every single day to make sure that that battery is at proper level. If it’s something that you just want to set and forget you’re probably going to be going with an LED emitter but for dedicated hard use applications, for competition, something like that, this is an excellent top tier red dot near the top of the stack and for me personally is at par with similar offerings from EOTECH, I believe I paid like 475 for this on a Black Friday and this one here 540 so in terms of price normally these would be very, very close to each other and this is again 558 which I personally like, it gives you the lower one third QD night vision settings but double A batteries which gives you two and a half thousand hours of battery life which is two and a half times what a EXPS or XPS will give you so I like that about 558 but overall the UH1 is a worthy optic if you’re looking in that same price category in a size and weight category as an EOTECH, it is definitely something to look at If you have a buddy who has one. I would definitely try and look through one, get a feel for it, see if that’s something that you would like, but it is still going to be a very, very good option. If you pick this up over an EOTECH or pick an EOTECH over this I think you’re going to be very happy either way.