XS Sights (formerly XS Sight Systems) is packing some nice tritium sights into a little package. When given the chance to shed the stock blocks from my Glock 17 franken-tester, how could I say no? The question isn’t really whether XS Sight’s product is an upgrade over stock, it’s whether the 24/7 Big Dot Xpress set is up to the challenge of being a true 24/7 any conditions sight set.
After opening the shipping box, I took to inspecting the contents. Front sight, rear sight, drift punch, front sight tool, allen key and even a little red loc-tite. The instructions lay out 16 steps, almost half of which should be achieved in seconds. Removing the stock sights took less than 5 minutes, including a coffee break. Test fitting, removing and re-installing the front sight took another 5 minutes. More coffee needed. Sliding in the rear and locking it down took a little longer, as a couple passes with a file were necessary and mine was hidden from my sight until I drained my cup of java. Aside from waiting on the red thread-locker to cure, the entire installation took about 15-20 minutes at a leisurely pace.
The big dot front is indeed big. I don’t mean the geography of the entire sight body, that’s a compact snag-free design. The large white circle surrounding the green tritium dot insert catches the eye quickly. Likewise, the rear vertical line of tritium is bordered by white. Lining them up while focusing on the target is certainly easier than with stock sights. It has taken me a few dozen dry fire draws to re-train myself to anticipate the dot-on-top-of-line alignment instead of the dot-in-a-“U” the stock sights gave me. The bold nature of the marks really do a good job of announcing themselves to my brain even while they’re still in my lower periphery.
With installation and some dry fire work complete, it’s time for live fire testing. I might not get out to the range til after this year’s SHOT show but you can bet that the next time I’m out plinking, I’ll be excited testing out these tritium sights from XS Sights. If you can’t wait for a defensive sight upgrade, these can be had for $137 at the manufacturers website. If you’ve used them before, sound off below in the comments. So far, I’m impressed.
Stay tuned..
