Gideon’s Guide: Best Red Dot Sights for Astigmatism

If you’re tired of blurry reticles, then finding the best red dot for astigmatism should be your priority. Astigmatism is a common vision disability that changes the way your eye gathers and focuses light. The result for shooters with astigmatism is a red dot that can be hard to keep in focus, robbing them of their accuracy. Let’s take a look at how you can customize your gun with a practical optic for better shooting if you’re one of the millions of Americans living with astigmatism.

Facts About Astigmatism

Astigmatism is one of the most common refractive eye conditions in humans, affecting 1 in 3 adults. While some people are born with astigmatism, many more will develop it over time, and the reasons why are poorly understood. With astigmatism, the lens of the eye is shaped differently from a normal, healthy lens. While the lens should gather and bend light to focus on the retina at a single point, asthmatic lenses may bend the light to the point it focuses early then diverges before hitting the retina, focuses at a point that would be beyond the retina, or both. While astigmatism can be corrected with glasses, many adults go through their day-to-day lives with uncorrected vision.

With astigmatism, red dot reticles can appear fuzzy, blurred, or smeared to varying degrees. While some shooters with low-grade astigmatism may see only a slight deviation from normal, severe astigmatism can lead to increased distortion. The best red dot sights for astigmatism help minimize the impact of this deviation to give you practical, reliable accuracy.

Red Dot Sights

Red dot sights use powerful LED emitters to project a reticle–often a dot–onto a specially coated refractive lens. When you aim through the lens, you line up the projection of the reticle with your aiming point on the target. Red dot sights provide faster target acquisition, more intuitive aiming, and better precision and accuracy compared to traditional ironsight.

Even with astigmatism, red dot sights can offer a marked improvement over traditional notch-and-blade sights due to the reduced visual planes required in aiming. With traditional iron sights, you line the notch in the first visual plane up with the blade in the second visual plane and the target, which is in the third visual plane. Then, while focusing on the blade and keeping the two other out-of-focus lined up, you pull the trigger. Most red dots only use two visual planes, the dot and the target, making it easier to aim accurately, even if the reticle is a little fuzzy.

Choosing the Best Red Dot for Astigmatism

When you want the best red dot for astigmatism, there are a few things to consider. These will help you make sure you’re getting the best possible optic for your vision needs.

• Vision Changes – If your astigmatism changes regularly or it’s only recently been diagnosed and you don’t have a history to go off of, you may need to “future-proof” your optic by selecting features that will keep your red dot relevant if your astigmatism continues to worsen. On the other hand, if your astigmatism has been stable for several years, you may be safe fine-tuning your selection for your current astigmatism level.
• Corrections – If you wear prescription glasses or contact to correct your astigmatism, any optic can be the best red dot for astigmatism…as long as your eyewear is on. It may benefit you, however, to consider a red dot that will work better for you even without corrective lenses. After all, tactical situations are dynamic and unscheduled, meaning you could easily lose your glasses in a confrontation or need to check out a noise in the kitchen at 3 A.M. when your contacts are in their cleaning solution in the bathroom.
• Color – When choosing the best red dot for astigmatism, it might not be red at all. Green dots are increasingly popular because they’re more visible at night and in most lighting. That’s because the eye is more sensitive to the bandwidth of the color green, and that can make it easier to see and focus with astigmatism.
• Reticle Shape – Your red dot may also not use a dot. Other reticle patterns, like carats, crosshairs, or circle-dots, may help improve accuracy by offering ancillary shapes and structures your brain can use as reference points while aiming to mitigate blurring.

• Reticle Size – Larger reticles may offer less potential accuracy than their smaller counterparts, but the larger size can help shooters with astigmatism place their red dot for better accuracy. That sounds counterintuitive until you think about it mathematically. While astigmatism that adds 1 MOA of apparent blur to a 3 MOA dot decreases the precision of the reticle by 33%, the same 1 MOA apparent blur on an 8 MOA dot only decreases accuracy by 12.5%.

• Lens Size – Larger lenses can help shooters keep their reticle centered, even with significant blurring or smudging. This helps limit parallax error but also better locates the reticle for improved accuracy.
• Prism – Prism optics are different from most red dot sights because they use prismatic lenses to bend the light, sharpening the image they take in before projecting it to the shooter. They commonly also feature etched, illuminated reticles, which minimize the impact of astigmatism on aiming. These scopes are often considered to be the best optics for astigmatism.

Our Picks for Best Red Dot Sights for Astigmatism

The Granite MOS Comp

The Granite MOS Comp gives you a big lens and big dot for fast target acquisition and accurate aiming, even with astigmatism. This red dot has a large lens and a large dot for easy, intuitive aiming in shooting competitions, but for shooters with astigmatism, those same features help you find the accuracy and precision you’ve been missing. It features adjustable windage and elevation, comes with either a red or green reticle, and uses shake-to-awake technology to give you a long battery life. The MOS footprint mounts easily to any compatible slide or adapter plate for trouble-free installation.

The JudgeXL

One of our newest optics, the Judge XL is our embiggened version of the RMSC footprint Judge that made waves in the slimline Glock and subcompact pistol communities. It’s fully featured–just like the Granite MOS Comp–and lets you make sure your smaller concealed carry pistols have one of the best red dots for astigmatism mounted when you need to make sure every shot counts.

The Advocate 1X Micro Prism Scope

The Advocate gives shooters with astigmatism a red dot that checks all the boxes for accommodation. Its prismatic lenses create a sharp, clear image. The etched reticle uses a sharp circle and triangle design, and the illumination comes in red or green to let you choose which is better for your needs. It mounts using a 1913 Picatinny riser or directly to a T1/T2 mounting footprint. That means with the help of adapter plates when necessary, it’s a flexible optic that’s ready to sharpen your aim to a razor’s edge.

Order Your Astigmatism-Friendly Red Dots

Our practical sights are meant to give every shooter a quality optic that leaves them more money for ammunition. Get big-name features without the markup. Order the best red dots for astigmatism from Gideon Optics today.