DLO Live! Ep.31 Are LPVOs made superfluous by offset RDS?

For this show, Matt, The Everyday Marksman, and Jacob, the Pro-gun Millenial, will join me to discuss whether an offset RDS has rendered the LPVO superfluous or not. We will cover a few other related topics including a discussion of BDC vs mrad reticles.

Post show notes:
We did not get to the subject of BDC vs mrad reticles. That will have to be addressed separately, perhaps in the coming inaugural Everyday Marksman livecast.
The discussion meandered around a bit, but we largely focused on why LPVOs are there, why they give you nearly unrivaled flexibility and why it is not a bad idea to add an RDS to them, whether for redundancy or for speed.
That having been said, if you want to save some weight at the cost of a little redunduncy and long range reach, one of the modern microprisms with an offset red dot can sneak in under 10 ounces altogether.
An interesting question came up on whether to use open or closed emitter designs. For me personally, if there is no weight/size penalty, I'd lean toward closed emitter RDS, but I mostly use open emitter micro-red dot sights due to how small and robust they are.

Some of the different sights mentioned and shown:

If you want an LPVO to truly do it all, my current favourites for general purpose use are:
SAI 1-6x24 https://bit.ly/3B5zkn4
and Vortex Razor Gen3 1-10x24 https://bit.ly/30SzdPm

If you do not need 1x and simply want a red dot added to a general purpose hunting/precision scope, Vortex' new Razor HD-LHT 4.5-22x50 is a near ideal condidate given it's light weight and excellent performance https://bit.ly/30HGW2w

As far as microprismatic scopes go, the upcoming Primary Arms SLx 3x might be the one to beat in terms of what you get for the money, but is not officially out yet. The GLx 2x is out and while marginally bigger, it is better optically and seems to be damn near bombproof https://bit.ly/3b2ZZq8. Burris' RT-3 has a reticle that is on the small side, but it really works well with illumination in low light and with/without illumination in daylight https://bit.ly/3E5Be91
Vortex's Spitfire Gen2 5x is really growing on me if you want little more magnification https://bit.ly/3ju2hD4

With red dot sights, nearly any compact RDS can be set up as an offset or piggybacked optic. I have a lot of them and most are robust and capable. On balance, I prefer the ones with autoadjust dot brightness simply form the standpoint that these exist to be deployed rapidly, so I want them always on and ready to go in any light without having to press buttons.
I am really fond of Shield Sights' RMS and SIS series and have, at the latest count one RMS, one RMSc with plastic lens, one RMSc with glass lens, one RMSw (waterproof version), one RMS 2.0 (this one has a glass lens and for some reason the dot is perfectly round even with my astigmatism) and on SIS. While I do not intentionally try to destroy them, they have been through some rough treatment. I damaged two so far and Shield promptly fixed everything for me although it was my fault that they got damaged. One was dipped in caustic nitrocarburization fluids and another got smacked with rocks and flying brass which damaged the window. In both cases, only the window got damaged. The electronics kept working, I could still see the dot and point of aim did not change https://bit.ly/3G9Bvtv and https://bit.ly/3b1Prrd
Another small red dot sight, though a little bigger than the RMS, I have grown to like immensely is Holosun 507C-X2 with ACSS Vulcan reticle. I'll do a separate video on it explaining why. https://bit.ly/3B5t3I5
Lastly, if you are on a budget, consider SwampFox Sentinel that fit sin the RMS footprint. It is proving to be nicely robust and compact: https://bit.ly/3b324lW