Gear Review: Meopta Meosight III

Bigger isn’t always better. There are definitely circumstances where a 24x scope with a Horus reticle isn’t the right tool for the job, and something smaller (and cheaper) will suffice. Especially for close range targets and lightweight rifles, having a small red dot mounted on the gun instead of a scope or even an EOTech sight might be a better idea. Meopta is a European optics manufacturer who has been in the business since 1933, and they’ve come out with a new red dot specifically for those times when a scope is simply overkill: the Meosight III . . .

The Meosight III is a small format red dot that ships with a cross slot mount, but the base is removable. It looks like it was designed to fill roughly the same mission as the Leupold Deltapoint, but with a little chunkier frame and slightly better controls.

While the Meosight III looks like a Deltapoint after a week in Las Vegas, the window in the unit is actually smaller than the Deltapoint. The Deltapoint uses nearly all of its 1.7 inches of height for the glass, but the Meosight III only uses half of its 1.1 inches for the actual part you look through (17mm to be exact).  That’s because half the unit’s size is dedicated to the electronics and mounting system.

Speaking of electronics, the features on the Meosight III are a little different than the Deltapoint. The red dot is turned on and off using a button in the front of the device, and once on the sight lasts for about 40 days on one battery. The Leupold DeltaPoint turns itself off when not moving and back on again when jostled, but the Meosight doesn’t seem to do that — instead the Meosight III turns off if the function button in the front hasn’t been touched in three hours, a feature that could be troublesome if you suddenly find yourself without a dot during a protracted firefight. The DeltaPoint varies the intensity of the dot automatically depending on the ambient light, but the Meosight III has an option to either set the brightness manually (to one of eight settings) or automatically depending on the ambient light.

The dot in the Meosight III is nice and round, and as far as I can tell the sight is indeed parallax free. For those wondering what parallax is, I wrote a good article on it a while back but the basic idea is that the dot stays aimed in the same place no matter where your head is aligned on the gun. That said, the edges of the glass have a tendency to bend the way objects appear. Moving the dot across a range feels more like looking through an aquarium than a flat piece of glass.

There is one area where the Meosight III shines: ease of use. The Deltapoint requires teeny tiny hex wrenches to adjust, but the Meosight III uses a standard flathead screw. The Deltapoint needs to be removed from the gun to change the battery, but the Meosight III uses a slide-out battery compartment — no tools required at all. It’s a nice change, that’s for sure.

To test the red dot, we slapped it on the one gun that tends to kill optics more than any other: the SCAR 17S. The recoil impulse of this chunky gun is stiffer than most AR-15 rifles, and the recoiling mass inside has a tendency to create a secondary impulse that jostles most scopes out of alignment pretty quickly. With the Meosight III, every time the gun fired the red dot went out. It would dutifully re-appear in the proper place and luminosity once the recoil was over, but while firing it disappeared. I get the feeling that this is a direct result of having the battery compartment capable of being removed without any tools, as making those connections tight enough to withstand recoil would have made it too tight to remove.

As always, no product is reviewed in a vacuum — we try to compare each product to others in the same category and price range. In this case, we are particularly spoiled for choice. The two I want to use for comparison are the Leupold Deltapoint and the Redfield Accelerator. Both made by the same company actually, but different price points.

Compared to the Deltapoint, I still prefer the Leupold option. The ability to choose the light intensity is nice, but a three hour timeout and smaller field of view makes me hesitant to recommend the Meosight III. Considering that the Deltapoint and Meosight III cost exactly the same ($399 for a cross slot mount version) I’m going to go with the Deltapoint as the winner.

One would think that the Redfield Accelerator would be blown out of the water, but its closer than you think. The Accelerator also uses a timeout instead of a motion sensor (5 hours in that case) and offers fewer brightness settings, but other than that it’s basically the same feature set. The only difference is that the Accelerator is slimmer, which is a big consideration for these small sights. And it costs half as much.

Honestly, I’m not impressed. The fact that the battery can be changed easily is the only real leg up that the Meosight III has over the Deltapoint, and even then it really isn’t that big of a deal to me. The issue with the dot disappearing while the gun recoils is pretty much terminal in my opinion, and drops this sight straight out of the running for my guns.

Specifications: Meopta Meosight III

Actual Magnification: 1X
Weight: 1.29 oz.
Elevation Adjustment Range: 60 MOA
Windage Adjustment Range: 60 MOA
Price:  $399 at Amazon

Ratings (out of five stars):

Build Quality * * * *
Everything works fine and feels good.

Optical Clarity * * *
Its okay. There is some bending of the light around the edges, though.

Adjustment & Controls * * * * *
Flathead adjustment screws are a definite plus.

Overall *
When you can buy a Deltapoint for the same price, there really isn’t any competition. This is a near-as-makes-no-difference $400 red dot that is nearly out-performed on every feature by the $200 Redfield Accelerator.