Gear Review: Osight XR Five-Reticle Rechargeable Enclosed Red Dot Sight

Optics companies — and some non-optics companies — have been busier than a mosquito in a nudist colony in the last half decade or so, responding to the ever-growing demand for pistol optics. They’ve added and innovated with the myriad models on the market and given buyers more and different options to choose from. Red dots. Green dots. Enclosed sights. Multiple reticles. Different mounts. You name it, there’s an option out there that has you covered depending on your your particular preferences in a pistol reflex sight.

Back in 2024, Chinese weapon light maker Olight came up with something different. They showed off their first reflex sight — they called it the Osight — at SHOT which wasn’t powered by a traditional coin-type battery, but rather via a USB rechargeable magnetic hood.

While the Osight had a very competitive battery life rating and performed well in our tests, not everyone liked the idea of using a charging hood and having to keep track of it in order to keep the Osight running. Since then, Osight has become its own separate brand, expanding into a number of red and green dot offerings, many of which are powered by traditional batteries (see our recent review of the CR1620-powered enclosed Osight SE here).

Their latest offering, just announced today, the new Osight XR. Like the original Osight, this is another rechargeable model, but it adds a number of features the original didn’t have, including at least one industry-first.

To start, the Osight XR gives you five different reticle options with two dot sizes — 2 MOA and 6 MOA — plus a 32 MOA circle, all of which you can mix and match. Here’s Osight’s chart that shows each option with its rated battery life.

The RMR mount XR has 11 brightness settings, three of which are night vision compatible. The brightest settings are truly daylight bright. You can easily cycle between the five reticle choices by pressing and holding the rubberized (-) brightness adjustment button.

There’s a battery-saving auto-on function that’s truly instant. The XR powers down automatically after three minutes of non-use. That auto-off period isn’t programmable and may seem short, but the auto-on activation is so instantaneous that it isn’t an issue.

Another unique feature of the Osight XR is its retractable backup iron sights. You read that right. The XR has, in effect, pop-up irons for use if the XR should fail or the battery run down. Like the rest of the XR’s housing the irons are made of 7075-T6 aluminum and they’re deployed by pressing the a button on the left side of the sight (it’s the button to the right of the “XR” in the photo above).

Plenty of red dot sights have rear irons molded into them, but Osight says these are the first retractable (they call them collapsible) irons. I guess that’s a cool feature, but as a practical matter, I’m not sure how important it is to push them down into the housing (and you do have to push them down…they won’t retract accidentally). Of all the red dots I’ve used, I never thought the rear sights on those that had them were obtrusive or in the way.

As with the original Osight, the XR’s magnetic charging hood tells you the percentage of charge it has when you press a button on its left side. When you put the hood over the XR itself, the reading on top gives you the percentage of charge the sight itself has.

Osight says the hood will fully charge the XR sight five times. Given that the XR is rated for anywhere from 22,000 to 54,000 hours of use depending on which reticle option(s) you’re using, that’s literally years of use on a full charge. A small LED between the (+) and (-) brightness adjustment buttons also gives you an indication of how much power the XR has, cycling from green to yellow, to red, and finally to blinking red when it’s under a 10% charge.

Osight calls the XR a compact-size sight. If that means it’s sized for use on compact or full-size handguns, that’s accurate. It’s not small and you won’t be running it on a P365, Hellcat, Shield, or similar-size micro-compact. With any one of dozens of mounts available for RMR mount optics, it works every bit as well on an AR or other long gun.

Given those retractible irons, we had our doubts about the XR’s IPX7 waterproof rating, but soaking it for a half hour in water didn’t phase it. We tried it both with the sights raised and lowered and the XR still worked find. A night in the freezer didn’t stop it either.

In short, the enclosed XR does everything Osight claims it’s designed to do. If a hood-charging sight is something that bothers you, all of the XR’s features probably won’t convince you to give it a shot. But if you’re OK with using a USB-charging magnetic hood to power your red dot sight, the XR does everything you want a reflex sight to do and maybe a coulple of thing or two you never considered.

 

Specifications: Osight XR Enclosed Rechargeable Red Dot Sight

Window Size: .91 x .71  inch
Reticle: 2 or 6 MOA dot and 32 MOA Circle
Dimensions: 1.91 × 1.18 × 1.16 inches
Weight: 1.69 ounces
Battery: 54,000 hours (2 MOA dot only)
Housing: 7075-T6 aluminum
Adjustment: 1 MOA per click
Waterproof Rating: IPX7
Auto-On: Yes
Waterproof Raging: IPX7
Made In: China
MSRP: $299 (about $240 retail)