Leupold DeltaPoint Micro Review

Leupold finally came out with something new in the micro red dot world, and I was fascinated by the design.  They received a lot of hate from both keyboard warriors, and actual warriors, but I don’t think any of it was justified at the time.  Folks were hating on the design simply because it looked weird.  That was exactly why I was interested.  Leupold went outside the box, they came up with some new interesting designs and I knew I had to get my hands on one, no matter what kind of “LOOKS DUMB” comments were online.  So That’s what I did.

Kenzie’s optics was the first to get these in stock, and I ordered one immediately.  They only had the Glock model at the time, which is fine because I have an old police trade in G17 that’s bone stock (have this for students to use).  Received the thing a few days later.

First impressions:

            Not great. Yes, it’s a novel design, and has some cool factor, but there were several red flags upon getting the thing in my hands.

1. There were some spots on the anodize with low dye penetration, just kind of milky gray but not black. Not a big deal to me, all my gear gets abused anyway.  Might bother some folks though.
2. The battery cap threads are ROUGH.  Feels like there’s sand in there while threading and unthreading.  Closer inspection shows they were not deburred very well, and the threads had some damage.
3. The mounting system- kinda lame.  I get that the idea is to avoid milling, but they could have done something to locate the sight.  By that I mean the only thing positioning it are 2 screws.  Anyone with a modest knowledge of machined assemblies knows that fasteners are not good enough to keep something located, a minimum of 2 points of contact (pins, recoil posts, etc) are required to have something go to the same spot every time.  This is why any company that mills slides without recoil posts needs to dust off their Machinery’s Handbook and get their shit together.
4. The adjustment screws are trash.  There are no clicks, which I guess would be acceptable if there were ANY tension on the screws.  You could put the allen key in and the weight of the allen would turn the screw.  Nothing about it feels solid or reliable, and I would be very surprised if they hold zero over time.
5. You have to take the battery cap off to take your slide off.  Honestly not a huge deal but seems like an oversight.

I mounted it on my Glock 17, did some dryfire in the garage and it seemed fine.  A little weird, but fine.

 

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So I took it to the range and after I finished my morning class, I took it for a spin.  I zeroed it at 7 yards which was pretty quick, and again the loose adjustment screws really dug at me, but I was able to get it on in 4-5 rounds.

I’m going into some philosophy here, so bear with me.  There are a couple advantages to having a red dot on a pistol:

1. Target focused.  Your eyes are focused on your target instead of on a front sight.  This allows you to see what your target is doing.
2. Speed.  Most people (myself included) are faster with a red dot.  You have to process less information and you are able to act faster.  Might not be true for everyone, but it is for me.
3. Field of view.  You can see more of your target and what’s around it than you can with iron sights.

The DeltaPoint Micro eliminates all those advantages.

1. Maybe it’s just me, but I couldn’t help but focus on the dot with this sight.  I’ve been shooting with red dots for 4-5 years, and I carry a pistol with a red dot every day.  Target focused always.  It just didn’t work with this, perhaps it’s due to the obstructed view.
2. It’s not fast, maybe with practice I could get to where I’m as fast as Irons, but I don’t think anyone would be able to employ this with more speed than they can with iron sights.
3. You can’t see anything.  It blocks so much of your view of what you’re shooting at that you actually want to peek over and around it to see what you’re shooting.  It covers more of your target than iron sights, or any other red dot I have looked through.

One bonus “issue” I noticed, that maybe wouldn’t bug anyone else:  The guts of the sight hanging off the back of the gun, it’s very clever, don’t get me wrong.  But in practice, you see it out of the corner of your eye and it looks like your slide is locked back.  Maybe you would get used to it but every time I brought the gun off target, I saw this in my periphery and took a second to think “Time for a reload already?”.

Apart from those issues, it works.  The rounds go where the dot is.  No flickering or failures or anything like that.  It seemed to hold zero through the 5-6 mags I ran through it, and I was able to make hits at 100 yards with a little bit of focus.  Honestly I like the design  in theory, but I would be more interested in seeing this in another application.  Maybe a super low profile backup red dot to run along-side a magnified optic?  Something like that.

Maybe I could get used to it, maybe not.  Might be more comfortable with it on my M&P or Sig, but I’ll never know.  I hope some of you out there try it and tell me what an idiot I am.  Bring it on.