At its core, a red dot is a simple yet brilliant system. It's a reflective sight, not a laser projector.

Here’s the simple breakdown:

• Inside the sight's tube or window is a Light Emitting Diode (LED). This LED projects a beam of red (or sometimes green) light forward.

• At the front of the sight is a spherical mirror with a special reflective coating.

• This coating is designed to only reflect the specific red light from the LED. Your eye can see through it for everything else.

• The LED light bounces off the coated glass and back to your eye. Because the glass is curved, the dot appears to be projected at infinity, meaning it stays on your target regardless of your eye position (within reason).

This is why you get a parallax-free sight picture: the dot stays on the target even if your head is slightly off-center. You're not looking through lenses to align anything; you're simply looking at the dot superimposed on your target.

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