4 Best Red Dots For Ruger Mark IV in 2024 [Top Rated Choices]

If you’re in the market for a durable red dot sights for best Ruger Mark IV, I’ve got good news: you made an excellent choice when you decided to check out this article. We’ll talk about which sight out of all the optics you could choose will have the best features for what you’re doing.

Whether you’re looking for the smallest MOA precision or for quickly acquiring a target, one of these should work for you.

A Red Dot In A World Of Optics

The form and features of a reflex sight are different from the rest of the scope offerings in the optics market. Instead of having multiple lenses to provide magnification or multi coated lens, red dots just throw a circle in the center instead of a reticle and send you on your way.

The Ruger Mark IV

The Ruger is a great gun that comes in a few different configurations, including the Tactical and the IV Lite. This tactical gun comes with picatinny rails so you can slap any red dot sight that has a picatinny mount right onto it. If you buy a version without a picatinny rail, you’ll need to head to a shop that sells picatinny rails because that’s about the only way to mount an optic to your gun.

Mounting a red dot sight to your Ruger will require a picatinny mount or weaver mount. You will need a mounting plate for this. Unlike a lot of long guns, the Ruger IV doesn’t usually come ready to be mounted. Like with any handgun, don’t expect MOA precision and you won’t be disappointed.

Good For “Old Eyes”

Poor eye sight is one of the most common reasons why people move away from their irons. A reflex sight like the ones we’ll talk about are great alternatives for hitting your target at the range when irons are difficult to use. You’ll enjoy that same wide field of view, and the mounting is easy thanks to the standard picatinny mounts that most of these optics have.

1. Vortex Optics Venom

The Vortex Venom is a great choice of red dot for the Ruger Mark IV because it’s incredibly small, light, and can take advantage of the accuracy at the range that the best Ruger Mark IV gives you. You get a choice between a 6 MOA red dot if your priority is faster target acquisition or a 3 MOA dot if you want more precise and accurate shooting.

You can’t switch between the sizes on the model, though, so you’ll have to make sure you don’t order the wrong one. You get up to 30,000 hours of battery life on the lower settings as up to 250 hours on the highest.

It’s a decent purchase for the price and will work well on your Ruger Mark IV pistol for home defense or even hunting in a pinch. The single-piece aluminum housing is durable and strong. The 3 MOA circle will get you out a good amount and the brightness will make your first shot count. Combine that with a wide field of view and you have a sight that may be the best red dot.

2. Burris FastFire III

Much like the Venom, The FastFire III gives you two dot sizes to choose from, but here you get the choice between a 3 MOA red dot and an 8 MOA dot. The 8 MOA should be a perfect fit for anything under 10 yards, so if you’re shooting at a longer range than that you may want to go with the 3 MOA version.

The weakness of the Burris FastFire is the battery life. Burris claims that it gets up to 11,000 hours of battery life, it definitely seems to go through batteries faster than that, even on the lower settings. Most experienced shooters who use the Burris FastFire expect to go through a battery about once per month, which is a lot.

The Burris FastFire has an automatic brightness sensor, which may be the culprit behind the terrible battery. You can also adjust the brightness manually, but the auto is a lot more convenient. Overall this is a great red dot and you might spend more money than you’d save by trying to buy optics with better battery life.

3. AT 3 Tactical ARO Micro Red Dot Sight

Battery life on the AT3 is not advertised to be as long as the Burris FastFire but in practice seems to be longer. AT3 estimates 5,000 hours on a standard CR1632 battery. The ARO only comes with one size of red dot and that’s 2 MOA.

Conventional wisdom says that smaller size won’t give you as quick target acquisition but from what I’ve seen, target acquisition is more a matter of practice than of reticle size. I’m not saying size doesn’t matter, but when you’re using a micro best red dot sight, it’s good to keep expectations in line.

The weight is only 3.6 ounces, it’s in a tough aluminum housing, and you get six brightness settings to work with. The battery compartment is located in such a way that you don’t have to re-zero every time you need to swap it out. This is one of the best red dot sights is parallax-free for all intents and purposes, though that little 2 MOA dot will squirrel around a little bit as you move your head.

4. Trijicon RMR

The Trijicon RMR comes in a few different varieties, and by far gives you the most choice in reticle size, battery options, brightness, and just about everything else. You’ll have all the same adjustments here, but a bit more power even in the versions that are battery powered. You also have Trijicon’s battery-free illumination using tritium and fiber optics.

In terms of price, this is definitely the premium option on this list, and while it’s designed with a pistol in mind, it could also mount on a rifle or even shotguns for hunting or shooting at a longer range. You can go as high as a 13 MOA red dot or as low as a 1 MOA red dot.

Buyer’s Guide

Dot Size

You have a few concerns to think about when purchasing a best red dot sight. The larger the sight is, especially the reticle, the lower your theoretical accuracy will be, especially once you get out to fairly long distances. On the other hand, the smaller the red dot, the more you’ll have to search for it when you’re lining up your crisp sight picture.

You can always adjust the brightness levels and settings on your best red dot sight, but that comes at the expense of battery. Most of you connect the best red dot sights will have somewhere between a 2 MOA red dot and an 8 MOA red dot. Some, like the Trijicon RMR, do get larger and smaller.

Alternative Optics

Best red dot sights or reflex sights have a few great advantages - unlimited eye relief, virtually no parallax, flexible brightness settings and faster target acquisition, but when it comes down to it, they don’t have any magnification. If you’re looking for an optic that can be used to shoot (and hit) targets with shotguns or other long guns in addition to your Ruger, then you may not want to look at the best red dot sight.

Low Power Variable Optics are good sights that can mostly replace the functionality of the best red dot sight for roughly the same amount of money, but they don’t really work on hand guns. Another option from the optics world would be holographic sights. Holographic optics are red dot sights, but they are different from a reflex sight in the way the reticle is displayed.

FAQ’s

What Is the Red Dot On a Ruger Mark IV?

Red dot sights replace the functionality of iron sights without having to line up the front and rear portions of iron sights. Instead, you have a bright reticle on your sight that can be seen in various light conditions and environmental conditions, and still get on target at a reasonable speed with a single shot.

How Accurate Is the Ruger Mark IV?

Enough that the shooter will screw things up before the gun will. As long as you’ve done the mounting for your sight or optic properly and sighted in using your windage and elevation adjustments, then no matter what interval you’re firing at, the scope and handgun combo should get you accuracy within a few MOA.

“MOA” accuracy is a term that’s thrown around a lot, but no handgun will give you shots within a single MOA even if the handgun itself is capable of it because of how handguns are held. Even when held stable, most handguns simply cannot get MOA groups.

“MOA” stands for “minute of angle”. MOA is a measurement of how far something is around the circumference of a circle. If you consider yourself the center of the circle, then MOA is a percentage of how far apart your impacts are at that distance. At 100 yards, one MOA is just about one inch, so at 10 yards, one MOA is about 1/10 of an inch. 

If you’re shooting within a single MOA at just about any distance then you need to immediately try out for the Olympic team.

Final Thoughts

Red dots like the Vortex Venom and the others we’ve covered here are great optics with lots of features that can make a big difference in the speed you can acquire and hit a target.They give you the ability to make windage and elevation adjustments, have virtually no weight to them and very little parallax as well.

When looking at this type of sight, it’s tempting to try to save money by going with a cheap one, but the features and power of a cheap optic are much less impressive than the ones that cost a little more. Optics like a red dot sight give you a simple MOA dot that mounts anywhere on the top of the firearm you want.

The mounting process for this kind of sight is usually easy, they’re reasonably durable, the weight is negligible, and you get a wide field of view. Have you put any optics on handguns? Did a red dot sight work well for you? Have you ever used mounting plates? Let me know in the comments.