New Aimpoint® Carbine Optic (ACO)!

[SomeOtherGuy]

I am however surprised that they decided to offer up a dumbed down unit. Usually electronics get cheaper as time goes by and economies of scale pick up. The general trend is that last years specs get price dropped and new better units get introduced at a higher price. This seems to be the opposite. Makes one wonder what is going on behind the scenes at Aimpoint. Did they hire Sig marketing people or what??

IMO they should have kept the PRO unit and ditched some to the extras from the civie version to cut cost. Ditch the mount and flip cover for civilians, but give me a solid unit instead of a dumbed down one.

Aimpoint has a good product, but as far as I can tell they have not made or been able to make any improvements since the M4, and it's debatable whether that's an improvement on the M3/ML3. The technology is old and well proven. Like iron sights or direct gas impingement old and well proven may still be great, but you kind of expect the price to drop over time. That would obviously reduce their profits so I assume they don't want to do that.

And really, how much do you think the flip covers actually cost to make? A dollar? $1.50? Omitting those is cheap and asinine marketing positioning.

Oh, and if you think this is crazy pricing and marketing, look at what they did to their hunter-focused red dots, going from the overpriced long-tube 30mm series to the "are you out of your mind!?!?!" overpriced long-tube 34mm series (H34S, H34L) at $815.

[WickedWillis]

Except the QRP2 mount isn't very good. Many of them won't stay tight, including the one I had. It's rather jarring to get ready for your second stage of a match and find your Aimpoint flopping around loose, when it was super tight before stage 1. Maybe they don't all have that problem, but ADM/Larue/Bobro never have that problem, and cost little or no more when you compare retail prices for mounts sold separately.

I have not yet experienced this issue, but I have been looking for a faster QD mount for my PRO recently.

[mastiffhound]

We just received our shipment of these. The optic is SUPER clear (as it doesn't have the NV coatings). I think people will like that.

Come Jan. 1, the PRO will go up 2-3% (normal price increase from Aimpoint every year). So it will now MAP out at around $430. So there will be about a $37 dollar price difference. You are correct that if you are going to add flip covers, it makes zero sense to go with the ACO.C4

Thanks for the update Grant. So their keeping the PRO. $37 dollars is less than a trip to Longhorn Steakhouse with my family.

I did mention durability in my previous post, I'm absolutely sure that the ACO would be more durable than the Chicom offerings.

Battery life is positively a big deal. That's the 2 big selling points for Aimpoint optics last time I checked. Durability and battery life, Aimpoint has a reason to be proud. They make a better red dot than everyone else, period. Now take one of those away. Now make it $37 cheaper than your next best optic. Anyone here really need to save that $37? How many times have you read "I keep an Aimpoint on my bedside/HD/front door rifle or shotgun, I can leave it on and it's always ready because its battery life isn't measured in hours or months, it's measured in years!"?

This really does seem to be, now that Aimpoint has said that the PRO will stay in the line up, an Aimpoint for the "look, I've got an Aimpoint!" crowd. Talking to a buddy at work about this had him scratching his head. He thought only a schmuck wouldn't spend the extra $50 to $75 dollars. $37 is going to make him keel over. The only thing that we could come up with was that the ACO is a way to upsell people to the PRO (again we were thinking $50 to $75, it works even better at $37).

You walk into your favorite gunshop and ask for an ACO.
The counter guy says: "You do know that for $37 more you get 2 extra years of battery life, a quick detach mount, and flip up caps right?".

You say: "$37 dollars for all that is an awesome deal, screw the ACO I'll take the PRO!".
Now that conversation makes all kinds of sense to me. I've done this with car parts, brake pads are a big one.

[philcam]

ACOs are hitting retailers now for around $350 intro price.

[ScottsBad]

When I heard that the PRO was going up I bought one. Looks like they are going up on many retailers.

[Outlander Systems]

When I'm seeing these hovering right around $400, It makes me think this is the lamest move I've seen from an optics company in a long time.

$325 and I might be interested in throwing one on a beater.

As far as I see, the only thing this will do is move PROs.

[Hochsitz]

Reading between the lines here, the trade show season is fast approaching and nobody wants to go to a booth to see old stuff. I remember the first time I visited a Glock booth at a trade show and though I'm a huge Glock fan, they had nothing new and I left feeling disappointed. Aimpoint has a great product with a proven track record (just like Glock) but when they're unable to innovate new features, what choice do they have but to repackage their existing product, put it in a box with a new label and say "ta daaa!" This is what the majority of companies are doing because innovation is expensive and hard to do. Thankfully it sounds like Glock will finally be bringing a single stack 9mm to the market but one can hardly call that innovation. There are rumors of some real game changers being introduced this year, but this definitely is not one of them.

[ramairthree]

Not sure what the niche is for this product. Too close to PRO price for what you get in my opinion. You can find PROs about 350 delivered if you get lucky. If this is going to go for 250 street price then maybe some will buy them if they are trying to hit a sub 300$ market.

There are plenty that put a 75$ RDS on some of their back up guns, or maybe double that price.

Not a lot in between 150 and 350.

[friendlyfireisnt]

If I wanted an optic with a short battery life and a questionable mount, I would buy an eotech.

Bad move on Aimpoints part.

Agree with the idea of offering a no-NV version, without a mount, 3-5 year battery life sans caps for $350.

[henschman]

If this was out last year, I might have gone with it instead of the PRO. I prefer absolute co-witness on anything with a folding rear sight (which all my ARs have), and the QRP mounts are heavier than I like. As far as QD goes, a coin slot like the ACO mount has is just as good for my purposes (being able to take it off easily in the field if it goes TU is all I really care about), and are lower profile -- the QRP handle can beat on your chest when you run with the rifle slung. Hell, I am just about to replace the QRP2 mount on my PRO with a Vortex absolute co-witness ring, which is pretty much the same type of thing they are putting on these ACOs. I also can definitely do without the NV settings and coatings. One of my main gripes about the PRO is the tint, which sucks for dusk or pre-dawn low light shots. If I get NV, I won't be trying to look through my Aimpoint with it anyway... IR laser is the way to go.

Hopefully the actual street price of these ends up being lower than what is reflected by the relative MSRPs of this and the PRO.

It would really piss me off if Aimpoint went back to the "only ones" bullshit on the PRO again.