The Holosun 507C: Seeing Red and Saving Green

Mini red dot sights have never been hotter. At one point, you could list all the manufacturers of mini red dots on one hand, especially when you considered professional-grade models. These days everyone’s making mini red dots, dots on handguns are the norm, and they dominate the world of optics. Today we are looking at a sneaky optic that popped up out of nowhere and made a huge splash in a crowded pool. That optic being the Holosun 507C.

Breaking Down the Holosun 507C

Holosun wisely chose the Trijicon style footprint for mounting the 507C. This opens up a massive amount of mounting options, including pistol slides, Picatinny mounts, and the like. Holosun did just pump another tough mini red dot for mass consumption. They featured filled the 507C to the brim.

First, we get the choice of three reticles. We get a 2 MOA dot, a 32 MOA ring, and a 32 MOA ring with a dot in the center. I’m all about having a multitude of choices. Holosun released the optic in both red and green illumination. This model is the red variant.

On top we have a solar panel that allows you to power the reticle with the sun should the battery die. The battery is a 1632 that powers the 507C for 50K hours. To help with battery life, the optic has shake awake technology and will shut down if it remains still for a long period of time. However, whenever you grab it, and the optic senses movement, it springs to life.

Changing the battery is easy and requires a flat head tool. The optic tray is mounted on the side of the optic, so there is no need to remove the optic to swap batteries. The Holosun 507C packs ten daylight brightness settings and two-night vision settings that allow it to power through any situation.

Intent of Use

I tossed the Holosun 507C on a Sync mount on my Benelli M4. My goal was to provide a small, compact red dot optic that would enhance my capabilities with the Benelli M4. Red dots on shotguns are tricky. You typically want something small rather than large. This way, you can port load over the top of the gun without the optic getting in the way.

Also, the multi-reticle system provides a 32 MOA ring. My idea was rather simple. Attach the 507C to my favorite shotgun, a Benelli M4, and use the 32 MOA ring to pattern my buckshot load. I wanted to pattern the gun at typical home defense distances and see at what point the pellets fall outside the ring.

Putting In Work

The Holosun 507C sits nice and low on my Scalarworks Sync mount and co-witnesses perfectly with the stock Benelli M4 iron sights. Zeroing requires a small flat head tool and takes very little time to accomplish, at least on a shotgun. The adjustments per click are 1 MOA, so it’s better for broad movements versus small and precise movements.

I’m lucky to have the pre-Trijicon lawsuit model with the massive side buttons. These make adjustments to reticle brightness and swapping reticles quickly and intuitively. Post-Trijicon Lawsuit models are known as the X2 and feature much smaller buttons.

Now that we are zeroed and installed, I paced off five, seven, ten, and fifteen yards and made marks. I set up four B8 targets and began patterning my shotgun with Federal Flitecontrol 8 pellet buckshot. With the 32 MOA ring reticle set, I fired my four rounds. At each range, the pattern stayed entirely inside of the 32 MOA ring.

Twelve yards is the absolute longest shot I’d take in a home defense situation, and I love the fact that I know that every pellet from my chosen load lands within that 32 MOA reticle. The reticle and load patterning ensure I know where every pellet is going at the longest possible range inside my house.

Blasting Away

Semi-auto shotguns are an absolute blast. I mean that in both a literal and figurative sense. I love shooting my Benelli M4, and with an optic, it’s only better. Also, what better way to test the durability of an optic than a semi-auto shotgun and some 12 gauge firepower. I stopped shooting the Flitecontrol and turned to full power standard buckshots that are a fair bit cheaper than Flitecontrol.

It’s also loaded anywhere from 1300 to 1600 feet per second and creates a fair amount of recoil. At this point, I’m over a thousand rounds deep with the Holosun 507C and the Benelli M4. The Holosun 507C ate it all, and never blinked. Rough recoiling firearms will often cause lesser red dots to ‘blink.’ The reason being the battery connections are poor, but that’s not an issue with the 507C. The 507C’s brightness settings are perfectly acceptable for daylight shooting.

The big 32 MOA ring makes it really easy to get on target and to switch from target to target. That big red ring grabs you by the eye and forces you to see it. With a red dot, I can focus on the target and drive the gun to the target, and to a second target, and maybe a third.

The thin nature of the ring keeps it easy to find targets and see what I need to see before I pull the trigger. The Holosun 507C makes it much easier and much faster to engage targets accurately.

Through the Looking Glass

Holosun imparts a bluish tint to the lens to ensure you can see that red dot reticle, and if you don’t mind a blue tint, you won’t mind the Holosun 507C. If you hate seeing these tints in your red dots, stay away from it.

Window size is a hair larger than the Trijicon RMR but nowhere near as large as the Leupold Deltapoint. It’s a full-size mini red dot if that makes sense. It’d be at home on a full-sized Glock or as a backup optic on a rifle or, in my case, the main optic of a shotgun.

Holosun is creeping into the optic market unapologetically. They started as a budget optics manufacturer but have quickly earned a place at the table. The Holosun 507C is a worthy optic for a shotgun or handgun and hits a price point that’s tough to beat.

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