I know I’ve seen a lot of people asking about quality of red dots etc etc so I figured I’d post about my experience with Vortex’s Strikefire (gen 1).
First off, I know it isn’t an aimpoint and I’m not saying take it to war with you. This post is not a “its as good as” post. Just a little thread about my sample of one with a red dot.
First some background on why I picked up the Strikefire. I knew I wanted an aimpoint and the Aimpoint PRO Patrol Rifle Optic seemed like a great site for a great price. But I wasn’t sure if I’d mind the size of it. I also knew I’d want to have an optic for simunition training classes as well (aka its going to get beat to crap). So after talking with a vortex rep I got in writing that their lifetime warranty did cover damage from sims/utms and the size was similar to the aimpoint so I could see how the size worked.
After shooting it in a few classes and range trips I decided the size wasn’t for me and I liked a micro size more. I moved the strikefire over to dedicated sim work. I ran it on my personal gun some times (BCM carbine length 14.5 with pinned A2X) and swapped it around to other supplied weapons. It also got loaned out to others to use during sim work and at the end of the day tossed in a gear bag and ignored. Over all it has around 96-120 hours of sim training and abuse under its belt. I’ve counted 3 direct hits to the front glass with UTMs and countless strikes all over the housing. Each time I’d wipe the glass off and carry on.
Fast forward to a fun shoot a while back where I found myself in need of another optic so I dug the Strikefire out of the gear bag to see if it would still hold a zero. I took it out to the range, put it back on the BCM it was originally zero’d on and started at 25. Happily it was still dead on at 25, 50, 100 and finally 200. It held zero for the duration of the fun shoot and used it out to 500 yards with no problem. Well no problems besides my own abilities that far out.
Here are two quick pics where you can see the paint from sims still on the edges near the front glass and how dented/scratched up the casing is from abuse and sim rounds.
If you push hard enough the flip caps still close despite the dented sides 
