EOTech's holographic sight really is a recorded hologram

What you see

Looking through an EOTech Holographic Weapon Sight, a shooter sees a reticle, a ring and dot aiming pattern, that appears superimposed on the target through a flat glass window, with both the reticle and the target visible in sharp focus at the same time. EOTech's own holographic sights page states plainly, in its own heading, 'THIS IS NOT A RED DOT,' and describes the sight as delivering 'a crystal-clear view of both the reticle and target simultaneously, unlike traditional red dots.'

How it works

EOTech's page attributes this to what it calls 'GENUINE HOLOGRAPHY': the reticle pattern is recorded onto a holographic element inside the sight window, then reconstructed for viewing by illuminating that recording with a laser diode, rather than being generated by an LED shining onto a curved mirror as in a conventional red-dot reflex sight. EOTech's own company page states the firm has 'designed, developed and manufactured' its Holographic Weapon Sight line in the United States 'since 1995.' The reticle's angular size stays fixed regardless of magnification, which EOTech's page attributes directly to 'how holographic sights generate the reticle', a property distinct from an LED reflex dot's behavior.

Viewing conditions and limits

EOTech's page states the sight keeps functioning 'even when the sight window is partially shattered or obscured by snow or mud,' because the hologram is recorded across the whole window rather than depending on one small illuminated point, and that its design 'inherently minimizes the visual effects of parallax by focusing the reticle at distance.' These are EOTech's own stated advantages rather than independently measured figures, and EOTech states some models require specific battery types, AA or CR123, and separate night-vision-compatible variants with additional brightness settings.

What it is not

EOTech's own marketing distinguishes this from a red-dot reflex sight by mechanism, not just by name: a red dot reflects LED light off a spherical or aspheric mirror to create an aiming point, while EOTech states its reticle comes from a recorded holographic pattern reconstructed by a laser diode. It is not a free-space or volumetric hologram either; the reticle image is fixed to the plane of the sight window and requires the sight's internal laser illumination to appear at all, with no image visible once the unit is powered off.

• Does the sight generate its aiming point from a laser-illuminated holographic recording, or an LED reflected off a mirror?
• Does the vendor's own material explain why reticle size stays constant regardless of magnification?
• What battery type and runtime does the vendor state for continuous operation?

EOTech's own product language leans hard on the word holographic, but unlike many looser uses of that term across consumer displays, the company's technical description of a laser-recorded reticle reconstructed inside the sight window describes a genuinely interference-based holographic technique, not a marketing borrowing of the word.