Electronic sights

[717shooter]

Alrighty folks, I need some electronic sight help here. I'll keep my questions to the point as I'm on mobile so don't think that I'm being an ass. (This happens)

What is the difference between holographic, red dot, and reflex?
Iv seen adds for one brand (don't remember) that says the sight could be left on for 5 years or so with the same battery. and yet when I go to gander mountain or look for one online, the battery life is in the HOURS. What's up with that?
I understand that some of them use ambient light/tritium to power..
I can't refill tritium and I might not always have enough ambient light so I'm looking for the sight with the longest battery life.
Have a good day.

[shooker8]

Alrighty folks, I need some electronic sight help here. I'll keep my questions to the point as I'm on mobile so don't think that I'm being an ass. (This happens)

What is the difference between holographic, red dot, and reflex?
Iv seen adds for one brand (don't remember) that says the sight could be left on for 5 years or so with the same battery. and yet when I go to gander mountain or look for one online, the battery life is in the HOURS. What's up with that?
I understand that some of them use ambient light/tritium to power..
I can't refill tritium and I might not always have enough ambient light so I'm looking for the sight with the longest battery life.
Have a good day.

A quick overview:

There is basically open or tube style sights (Open being Eotech and Tube being Aimpoint). I don't see any difference in using either (Eotech may be slightly nicer as its thinner on the sides).

That being said both of these styles are offered by other companies and then there are power sources. Eotech and Aimpoint uses batteries, but Aimpoint has a much longer battery life. The only problem with Aimpoint is unless you buy the COMP M4 they use a nonstandard battery you have to get from a shop/online. Eotech's run times are roughly 600 hrs with XPS 3 as reference and Aimpoint's run times are roughly 30,000 hrs with Aimpoint pro as reference.

If electronics are not your thing then there are tritium with fiber-optic sights (Trijicon's sights). These are constantly "ON" and work both day and night. Every 10-15 years the tritium will need to be replaced though for night use. It has a T1/2B (half-life) is becomes dimmer over time. If a sight has a fiber-optic it will always work during the day though.

When it comes to preference I will personally like Aimpoint for a few reasons:

1 I like the small dot size which is 2MOA ( about 2 inches at 100 yards). Eotech also has a small dot size with 1MOA. Trijicon does not. I am pretty sure the smallest size is 3.5 moa (correct me if I'm wrong), but they do have a 12.5MOA triangle, but I just don't like using the tip of a triangle to shoot.

2 The battery life on the Aimpoint is great. Yeah the batteries you have to get somewhere "special" and you can't get them at the gas station, but they have a great shelf life. You could get years worth and just store them. Eotech loses on this point to me, but for you or maybe others this isn't a big deal.

3 Weight is another factor for me because I'm putting this kind of sighting system on a fighting rifle (usually) and I don't want to weight my rifle down to much.

4 I like the tactile click of the rotating apparatus that the Aimpoint has compared to the Eotech. Trijicon is nice because it auto-adjusts its intensity to environment.

I really don't think you can go wrong with any of the choices, but they all have disadvantages and advantages. There are also other choices than the ones I've listed, but I wanted to just introduce them. I hope this helped with your selection.