ZeroTech Trace 1x28 HALO reflex sight

The ZeroTech HALO is touted as the first fully enclosed aspherical-lens sight but the design aspect that I particularly admire is its top-mounted battery compartment, which in turn results in a very thin base, a low-mounted lens and, as a consequence, some real benefits.

I mounted the HALO to a rifle and took it hunting, and then to a pistol for club competition — in both applications it worked well, showing some distinct advantages each time, but we’ll focus on the rifle here (you can read more about the pistol aspect on our website).

On a pistol, the low-set HALO allows co-witnessing of the open sights, and with the right mounting setup you could do this on a rifle, too

The HALO’s footprint is the Shield RMSc standard, but it also comes with a separate Picatinny mount that you can screw it to before fixing it to anything with a pic rail. It clamped onto a Chiappa .357 lever-gun I was testing. On a pistol, without the need for the rail mount, the HALO sits so low you can still use the iron sights on many pistols, but the extra height of the rail and mount precluded this on the Chiappa.

However, the bigger issue with using a rail and adapter on almost any rifle designed for open-sighted use is that the rifle’s comb is usually too low to match the higher sight-line you end up with, but the HALO’s low-line design counters this, by at least a few millimetres compared with other reflex and red-dot sights. For me, the Chiappa-HALO combo was perfectly aligned.

Mounted forward of the receiver, the sight always held the illuminated dot directly in my eyeline when I shouldered the rifle, so I didn’t have to search for it before getting a good sight picture, a vital attribute if you really want to take advantage of a red dot’s potential for speed.

This is helped by the ZeroTech’s 28mm lens size and its aspherical shape, which ever so slightly widens the field of view. Smaller reflex sights, in my experience, are often a handicap.

The compact HALO proved itself on a number of hunts

The combination of HALO and 1892 carbine was fantastic for a goat cull in thick and steep country, because you get fast shooting, quick target acquisition and very good accuracy with all the safety and awareness benefits of both-eyes-open shooting.

The point of impact is adjusted in 1.5 MOA increments, which is rather coarse, but in practical terms it’s good enough for a rig like this that will generally be used against medium to large animals at close range, and rarely much further than 100m. I wanted to be more critical about it but in the field I could not come up with an example in which I needed better accuracy; I never missed because of it.

The lens is fully enshrouded by the 7075 aluminium body, which gives the glass a lot of protection from drops and other shock loads. The top-loading CR2032 button battery can be changed in a minute and negates the need to dismount the optic from the firearm.

Useful on rifles and pistols, the HALO has a lot of good design attributes, not least being the top-mounted battery

Battery life is extended by the auto-off function that kicks in when the sight hasn’t moved for a short time; the sight wakes in a heartbeat when you pick up the firearm so there’s no delaying your shot. Not that battery life should be an issue. ZeroTech claims around 50,000 hours from it. I certainly didn’t drain it.

Buttons on the side of the sight’s body control on/off and brightness. They’re perfectly placed to use quickly and intuitively, but the one drawback I found, most notably on the rifle, was that when you put the gun down, if the weight rests on the low-side button, it’ll change your illumination or even turn it off. You learn to pay attention.

Like all ZeroTechs, the HALO comes packaged in a quality protective box, with accessories including tools that cover all tasks, the mounts mentioned above, a rubber hood, a lens cloth and a QR code that will open the detailed PDF manual. There’s also a 1° (60 MOA) shim in there in case you need extra elevation.

It has one of the best lifetime warranties in the industry, and while it’s made in China you can’t knock the quality, and you have the assurance that ZeroTech is an Australian company.

There’s a hell of a lot to like about the HALO, including its $549 price. It’s great on a rifle or pistol, is quite compact without being so small you can’t find the dot easily, has very good optics and has that great high-battery design, something that gets your sight picture lower and brings all the advantages I’ve mentioned.