If you’re in the market for a red dot sight, you can get overwhelmed by all the choices.
Two leaders in the red dot space are Holosun and Eotech.
In this article we are going to look at how they stack up to each other, and which one is ultimately going to be the best buy for your build.
Holosun 510c vs Eotech 512a
Ease of Use
While the actual use of both sights is relatively similar, we’re going to include installation in this category, since that’s where the differences become most obvious.
Both sights can quickly and easily mount to MIL-STD-1913 or Weaver rails, and come with robust mounting hardware. However, the Holosun can also mount to Picatinny rails without the use of any additional tools.
Winner: Holosun
Battery Life
The Holosun uses a single CR2032 wafer battery, which gives it an amazing potential of 50,000 hours of sight time. There are also 10 daylight settings, and 2 night vision options, which can help you stretch those hours even more.
The sight even includes what Holosun calls Shake Awake, which is a motion-sensing technology that automatically turns the sight on and off based on your handling of the weapon. Additionally, the Holosun incorporates a small solar panel on it to take the place of the battery in daylight settings, as well as act as a backup power source.
The Eotech seems to fall behind the Holotech at every turn here. While the Eotech includes 20 daylight brightness levels, there are no night vision options, which can be a dealbreaker for some. You’ll also only get about 2,500 hours out of the batteries, and since those batteries are 2 AA cells, they will add considerable weight and size to the sight.
Winner: Holosun
Weight and size
The Eotech comes into this category with a distinct disadvantage since it needs to house 2 AA batteries, which causes it to weigh in at 11.5 ounces. This heft is contained in a sight that is 5.6” front to back, a full 2” wide, and 2.5” tall, which gives it considerable size without being too ridiculous.
The Holosun weighs in at just over 4.9 ounces with the battery. The sight itself is only 3.3” long, 1.8” wide, and 2.3” tall, making it noticeably smaller than the Eotech. Compared to Eotech, Holosun gives you more than 2” of additional real estate on your rail.
Winner: Holosun
Durability
The Holosun is a durable red dot sight, with an aluminum housing and anodized coating to keep it weather-ready. To keep the weight down without compromising on strength, the protective hood for the lens is machined from titanium. The adjustment points for windage and elevation are mounted flush to keep them safe from accidental adjustments.
The only downside is that the Holosun features an open style sight, so the emitter has some degree of exposure which has the chance, however small, of getting blocked or disrupted by some dirt or other debris.
The Eotech also has an aluminum-housed, weatherproof construction that makes it highly durable. The adjustment points are recessed which makes accidental adjustments nearly impossible, and the shockproof design means you can use it with any caliber you like.
The one point where Eotech differs from Holosun is the reason it takes the win in this category, the Eotech is a closed style, so the emitter is fully enclosed and protected from any dirt or crud that could interfere with it and diminish the image quality.
Winner: Eotech
Image Quality
Both the Holosun and the Eotech are designed with crystal-clear lenses, and even though they both feature a special coating to prevent lens damage, neither sight shows the stereotypical bluish tint that many other sights are cursed with.
The Eotech reticle image has a 1 MOA red dot, with a 68 MOA ring reticle surrounding it. This is frequently called a circle dot reticle, and the clear image and bright projection combine with the large size to make a reticle that your eye acquires instantly.
Holosun sports a reticle of similar size and quality, while also integrating some additional features. The red dot is technically twice as large, at 2 MOA, and the ring measures 65 MOA. While the larger dot may dissuade some, there’s definite usefulness to it.
The Holosun gives you the option between 3 separate reticles as part of their MRS, or Multiple Reticle System. Rather than being locked into the circle dot reticle full-time, you can also choose to project just the ring or dot by themselves. This gives you an added bit of versatility, and battery usage, that the Eotech simply can’t offer.
Winner: Holosun
Eye Relief
Both the Holosun and Eotech sights offer unlimited eye relief and are parallax-free. This means you won’t have any problem getting a clear, precise image from your sight, no matter how you’re using it. In this category, both sights are equally capable.
Winner: Tie
Warranty
The Eotech sight offers what they refer to as the “Prestige Warranty” which, at first glance, seems good. It gives you 10 years of protection for workmanship and material defects under “regular use”. Whenever a company specifies “regular use” we always get more than a little skeptical that anything will be covered, because what’s normal for one shooter may be excessive in the eyes of another.
Holosun sets a shorter warranty period, but without the stipulations of usage or workmanship defects. You’ll get 5 years of coverage for optical system damage, and 3 years of coverage for illumination and electronics damage. It’s a shorter window, but in our opinion, seems more straightforward and honest than others.
Winner: Holosun
Price
The prices of sights seem to fluctuate more frequently than ammo prices, so putting hard numbers in this category isn’t practical, but we can talk in more general terms.
Just about anywhere you look, the Eotech is going to be $150-$200 more than the Holosun, and for a sight that arguably has more limited features, that just doesn’t seem economical. If price is anywhere on your list of considerations, Holosun wins hands down.
Winner: Holosun
Our recommendation
Overall, both the Holosun & the Eotech sights are great options if you’re looking for a solid holo sight that won’t break the bank. They are both incredibly tough and should stand up to whatever you throw at them, round after round, rain or shine.
Both sights also have a super-clear lens and bright, clean reticle, so you’ll be able to acquire and reacquire your targets easily. The Holosun & Eotech each come with similar accessories, including high mounts, so you won’t need to worry about picking up anything else to be range-ready, you’ll be able to mount up and zero in, right out of the box.
That being said, in our opinion, the clear winner is the Holosun 510c. The Holosun has the awesome addition of the 3 reticle styles, so you aren’t stuck with just a dot or a ring, and you can pick the one that works best for your needs at the time. Also, while both sights are relatively close in size, the Holosun shaves off a little size without sacrificing field of view, as well as enough weight to make it noticeably lighter.
The Holosun is also far gentler on the battery than the Eotech, and while batteries aren’t a huge expense, the odds of the sight going dark during use are far lower with the Holosun. Finally, the Holosun is much more affordable than the Eotech, sometimes by $150 or more depending on where you’re shopping, and that’s not just a few bucks, that’s several boxes of ammo.
If you really don’t want the open style of the Holosun, the Eotech does have an enclosed design, but you’ll certainly pay for it. Not just in cold, hard, cash either, you’ll pay with more bulk and heavier weight, which can slow your weapon down when it counts the most.