Gear: The COA GLOCK
Mas finds the low-mounted COA brings the dot quickly to the eye.
Carry optics are all the rage. They’re no longer in their infancy but are still in their adolescence: They can be troublesome at times and rebel against their owners. Rain can have a negative effect on open emitters, batteries can fail and we see screws shearing on mounting plates.
Behold the response from Aimpoint. The gold standard manufacturer of optical sights for carbines has introduced the COA. This rugged unit has the desirable closed emitter, is a manageable size, and promises a 50,000-hour battery life.
The G19 Gen5 with Acro COA factory-mounted.
Aimpoint COA
The 3.5 MOA red dot has a dozen brightness settings, the highest being 12, which I can’t imagine using unless I was in the desert and had to shoot into the sun. If you leave the setting on 12, which will tend to suck out battery life like a vampire slurping blood, the COA is programmed to after a while power down to a more manageable level of 9. Some who haven’t tried the sight have misinterpreted this to read the sight will turn off after a certain amount of time. Untrue. On my sample, it simply returns to a normal level of brightness.
Aimpoint has worked a deal with GLOCK to give them an exclusive on this product from January through December of 2025, after which it will presumably be available for any pistol that is built to accept it. GLOCK is making the COA available in formats from the little slim-line G43X to service pistol size. American Handgunner’s sample was mounted on a Gen5 GLOCK 19.
This story is more about the sight than what’s under it, but it’s worth mentioning that my personal, often-carried Gen5 G19 has become a favorite. The Gen5 has, in my opinion, the best “street carry” trigger the company has ever put into a pistol: firm, safe resistance to fingers vasoconstricted from fight or flight response from the beginning of the pull to a clean break of the shot and a very positive return. My Gen5 19 has never malfunctioned with many thousands of rounds, and with its Marksman barrel is equal in accuracy to a Gen3 GLOCK 35 target pistol. The Gen5 19 tested under the COA promises the same.
The COA in the unique A-CUT slide.
Mounting System
Akey element to this concept is the mounting system, which GLOCK calls “A-CUT,” presumably because of the angles at which the slide is cut for the sight. There is no interfacing mounting plate and no little screws being tormented by the force of the slide rocketing back and forth with each shot. The COA direct mounts to the slide. Picture a mortise in front where the front of the sight’s mount levers in, and the sight unit is now pressed flat onto the spot milled for it atop the slide. Then, behind it is inset a piece that includes a steel BUIS (BackUp Iron Sight), which screws down — with big, rugged, serious screws — to lock the sight in place. “In place,” in this case, has roughly half an inch of solid slide behind it. With the relatively low mounting of the optic, tall “suppressor height” sights are not required.
I am not an engineer, but it looks to be as if this is gonna be rock solid and should virtually eliminate any shear factor on those screws. I’ve been shooting red dots on handguns since 1988, and this is the best set-up for a pistol with carry optics that I’ve seen yet.
Another advantage: You can change the battery without removing the sight and not have to worry about re-sighting in the gun.
The first ready-mounted optic-on-the-gun carry package I saw was from SIG, and I’m glad to see GLOCK doing the same. Not every pistol-packer is a do-it-yourself-er, and it’s easier for a lot of people to get everything they feel they need in one package, assembled and ready to go.
To put icing on the cake, the test gun came from GLOCK with both steel irons and the Aimpoint COA sighted in dead-on out of the box. And they were already co-witnessed, to boot. All that was needed for my own needs was swapping the mag release to the right side for my trigger finger instead of my arthritic right thumb to operate. So long as I had a strong firing stance, one-handed or two, the red dot never left the target during rapid fire, and the GLOCK/Aimpoint combo “hit where it looked.”
With an MSRP of $1,165 for our tested gun and sight ready to go, it looks like a solid value.
