Sutter Red Dot Sight - Germany

[capt hindsight]

Hi,

I thought I would post this review as there doesn't seem to be much about Red Dot sights mentioned on here.

Following the purchase of a new gun in .177, I decided to keep my .22 TX 200 for close range hunting and plinking. Its now got the job of defending a friends vegetable patch from bunnies and typical range is less than 20 yards.

I fancied trying a good quality red dot and ordered this http://www.sutter-gmbh.de/RedDotMult...sme::2336.html from German company Sutter via flea bay.

The quality is superb being entirely alluminium construction, I've seen a few red dots that have been very cheap looking. The item came in a nice box with instructions, a spare battery and a cleaning cloth aswell as a different size dove tail mount fittment.
When I looked on Sutters web site the size given for the dove rail suitability was 13-15mm so I thought the narrower fittment must have been added for 11mm.

Unfortunately this wasn't the case, the smaller fittment must be for 9mm as it just wouldn't quite nip up onto the rail, on fitting the wider one it was apparent that that was for 13-15mm as the clamp would not seat into the female part of the sight unit, so when it was tightened up the whole sight leant over and was no longer parrallel to the gun being held upright.

The quality of the sight is so good I decided to try to fix this problem myself so I didn't have to return it. Despite trying to space the top section of the clamp outwards with washers I got no where and ended up filing about 2mm of the fittment, this took a little time and worked a treat. The sight now sits parallel to the gun.

There are seven brightness settings, I tend to favour the lower ones but its nice to know the brightness can always be turned up on a really sunny day and four different sight reticule choices. These are simply swapped between by a thumb catch at the back of the sight. The first is a basic crosshair with a micro dot in the center, the second is just a dot - but this dot is slightly larger than the crosshair one, the third choice is a circle with a dot in the middle (this dot is even bigger and obscures the target to much for my liking) and the fourth is a games console type reticule with a tiny micro dot in the middle.

I initially favoured the first and last sight reticules as the dot is so fine it would just about obscure a rabbits eye at 20 yards. When I was setting it up though I used a small fluffy toy to replicate a live target and found the Games console type target obscured and distracted the picture of the animal. I've ended up using the single dot, at twenty yards it just covers a 20p coin and is small enough to be used on live quarry. At twenty five yards you start stuggling to see the kill zone without any magnification so that would be the upper limit of its use even on a large rabbit.

Adjustment left- right, up down, is made by clicking allen keybolts. It proved harder to set up than a scope as adjusting up or down does move the sight slightly to the side. After 1/2 hour of fettling I have it so it shoots 10p coin size groups at 20 yards, though the center of the group is slightly off the bullseye by about 2mm(though I do tend to pull my shots to the left) and any further adjustment takes the dot to far the other way, the adjustment is 1 MOA if that means anything to anyone.

So to summarise, an excellent red dot perfect for close range vermin control - turned my TX into a vegetable patch gun! But not an all round hunting sight, more of an upgraded version of open fibre optics (which personally I also like) be prepared to file the fittment down though!

[Robins Hood]

Thanks for this nice review, i went for a while looking through posts for red dot reviews and ended up on and 80's Japanese fixed scope which is working beautifully instead.

MOA stands for Minute Of Angle, this is usually set at 100 yard but varies scope to scope. There are some great videos on u tube to explain, and can really help you zero quickly and efficiently.

Nice to read something new,
Thanks.

[richness]

To clarify the MOA issue, guys:
Basically an inch at 100y
0.5" at 50y
3" at 300y
etc

[capt hindsight]

The Sutter packed up after a couple of months, I've noticed the same sight for sale unbranded for cheaper.

Replaced with a Hawk RDS25, this has performed very well and comes complete with BKL style pinch mounts so it sits dead central and has no cant. Seperate review will follow for the Hawk, but so far its been excellent, fitted on HW45.