Quick Sights for the Marlin 1895

The second issue of sorting out the good products from the not so good was not as simple, but eventually the desirable characteristics came to the surface. The first issue was parallax. Cheaply made red dot sights, particularly those enclosed in a tube, can have a good deal of parallax. They requires the shooter’s eye to be perfectly in line with a sight’s optical center, which defeats the primary benefit of a reflex sight, speed. Good red dot sights should allow the shooter to keep both eyes opened for an unlimited field of view, and whether looking from the side of the image frame or looking down the center the shooter should still score a hit. The only requirement should be placing the dot on the target before pulling the trigger.

Like products costing 2 to 3 times the price of the Burris unit, the FastFire III has a two element, multi coated front lens that reflects and then refracts light straight back to the shooter. Both lenses are multicoated outside and the narrow band reflective surface is sandwiched, protected, between the two elements. The LED is positioned closer to line of sight than in closed tube sights, and the viewing lens is angled  rearward slightly to minimize the angle of incidence of the projected and reflected red dot.

If there is anything noticeable about the optics when viewed on the bench, it is a slight blue coloration at the extreme top edge of the viewing lens. This is typically caused by the use of cast rather than ground glass optics, however, the ground glass units generally fall into the $700 – $800 range, while the Burris FastFire III is typically priced without mounts in the $225 – $250 range… which means I found the blue cast to be an exceptionally attractive feature.

FastFire II Vs FastFire III

For folks familiar with the FastFire II, the FastFire III offers some significant improvements. The FastFire III dot is now available optionally as 3 MOA or 8 MOA products rather than only with the FastFire II’s 4 MOA dot. This makes the III a little quicker on target and less obscuring of a target at longer ranges with the small dot and fast in short range target acquisition when ordered with the large dot. Access to the 10,000 hour battery has been moved to the top of the unit, rather than on the bottom side where the base has to be removed for service as is the case with the II.

Windage and elevation adjustment have been vastly improved, beefed up and no longer require a scaled wheel to be attached for measured adjustment. FastFire III increment of adjustment is 1 MOA and lock screws are no longer required. The left side power button is now multi function. The FastFire II has auto brightness control, where the FastFire III has auto and step setting; auto, high, medium and low brightness. Repeat depression of the button cycles the brightness settings. No more taping light sensors to brighten the dot as it appears the auto brightness function has been more realistically recalibrated. More general specifications: