Best Night Sight Brands
If you want to truly be ready for anything with you carry gun, you need a good set of night sights. Here's the best of the best.
Recreational shooter and firearms enthusiast. CCW permit holder
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Like most accessories, you get what you pay for...and when it comes to night sights, you obviously want something that helps you to see at night.
Night sights come in all price ranges. If you’re adding night sights to your carry gun, spend the money. But how do you know what's truly the best brand to buy?
That's where we come in. We're going to run through some of our favorite night sight brands to help you find some that work for you.
And we'll also cover the reasons and situations where they particularly excel.
So keep reading!
Table of Contents
What Are Night Sights?
Let's cover some basics.
Night sights are basically a type of sight that offers better visibility in low-light or dark situations.
They come in a couple of different types -- colored glass and tritium are the most notable, both with their own advantages.
Regardless of which type or brand you choose, you want to keep in mind that durability and visibility are important. If you can't see or they can't hold up, then it's not doing anyone any good.
Want to know more? We have an article on that with a more in-depth look on night sights and why you need them.
Best Night Sight Brands
1. Truglo
TRUGLO, if you’re interested, makes sights for a wide range of weaponry, including bows, rifles, and shotguns. For this article, though, we are going to talk about their handgun products.
Where TRUGLO excels is their combination Tritium and fiber optic sight.
This eliminates the shortfall of the fiber optic sight, which needs a light source to shine through the sight to illuminate it.
When you have your own light source – the tritium – light isn't an issue.
The housing for their fiber optics is also amazingly difficult to break.
Breaking your fiber optic sight is a common occurrence, and many manufacturers send replacements in the package.
2. Ameriglo
AmeriGlo sticks to making sights for handguns only, and they do it well. Their night sights are available in fiber optic, tritium, and a combination of both.
What I like most about AmeriGlo is that you’re not limited to one style of sight.
Many of the manufacturers on this list only have one or two styles of sights. Most common is the front sight with a single-color dot and a white outline.
The rear sight has a U shape with a colored dot on either side. There is nothing wrong with that. It works.
However, if you want something different, AmeriGlo has options.
One of their options that I can’t say I see often elsewhere is a ghost ring rear sight and tritium front sight. The rear sight has a dot on either side to help you line everything up, so you aren’t just guessing where it should be in the ghost sight.
And to be fair, there are more styles available, but they aren’t illuminated. I like choices. Even if it’s just the option of choosing a different color for my front and rear sights.
Use AmeriGlo to get more options than just your standard front and rear night sights.
3. Meprolight
The Meprolight has a night sight they call the FT Bullseye. It’s a rear sight only, and it doesn’t need a front sight at all. Pretty sweet, huh?
How does that work?
Well, think of it as if you were adding a reflex sight to your pistol, just low profile, and no batteries are needed. It’s a combination of tritium and fiber optic, so again, it illuminates itself.
As you aim, you’ll see a dot, and when you are on target, you will see a ring around the dot. It’s similar to lining up your front and rear sight.
4. XS Sights
Not everyone likes the same style sight.
Most sights have you line up the dots leaving the appropriate amount of space on either side and making sure you have it lined up top to bottom as well.
What XS Sights does is "Dot the I." Its front sight is a colored dot with a large white ring. The rear sight is a colored line. To take aim at a target, you need to place the white dot on the top of the line on the rear sight. That’s it.
When you are shooting from different distances, you can easily estimate where your bullet will impact by using a different point of reference on your sight.
When you are shooting from a closer distance, the dot in the front sight is your impact point. When you are farther away than 25 feet, you aim with the top of the front sight.
5. Trijicon
Trijicon is a company that has a history of being in the worst places, but not business-wise or having bad PR.
What I mean is they are trusted by law enforcement and the military, so they are used in places most of us are lucky enough to never need to experience.
That said, Trijicon offers a large array of scopes and sights. Their night sight offerings are your standard front blade sight and the U-shaped rear sight.
However, something that stands out, or rather gives you a better field of vision, is their front sight. It’s thinner but has a large dot and surrounding colored area for easy target acquisition.
Their iron sights use the glow of tritium surrounded by an aluminum casing to make them more rugged.
To cap that off (literally), they use a sapphire cap because it’s strong and it distributes the light more evenly. It’s the little things like these that make the Trijicon worth looking at.
What do you think of Trijicon? Rate them below!
Readers’ Ratings
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6. Night Fision
There are several companies that utilize tritium to fuel their night sights, but Night Fision claims to have the brightest glow of them all. They do this by using 30% more tritium.
Not only are Night Fision sights bright, but they also come in a variety of configurations for the most popular brands of handguns.
They also have a configurator on their website that allows you to select various types of co-witness based upon your gun, optic, and height you want.
In addition, Night Fision makes a variety of tritium-illuminated accessories for AR-15s that are worth checking out.
Installing Night Sights
Installing sights is pretty easy if you have the right tools, but the right tools can be a bit of an investment if you're only changing out one set of sights.
If you have plans on doing multiple sets either to test what you like best or to convert multiple firearms, then a good sight pusher is worth it.
Personally, I like the Wheeler Engineering Sight Pusher. We have a complete review on it and several other sight pushers, also!
Red Dots
In recent years the popularity of red dot sights has exploded, and for good reason. While iron sights and night sights are great, a red dot beats them in every possible way.
Red dots are bright, always. They are easy to pick up in any lighting, and they last for years at a time on each battery charge.
The downside is that not every handgun can mount a red dot, a good red dot is not cheap, and red dots may require retraining with them if you've only shot with irons before.
All of that said, you might want to at least consider a red dot; take a look at the Best Pistol Red Dots for a lot more info and recommendations!
Final Thoughts
There are a lot of manufacturers out there making night sights for your handgun.
When you’re going to buy a sight to see better in low-light situations, make sure you look at all your options and get what’s right for you.
If you’ve been training with a factory sight and you need to totally change how you aim because of your new sight, that might be an issue.
Alternatively, if you can't hit the broad side of a barn with your current sights, you can look into some of these that offer a way to acquire your target more easily. It’s all about you and what you need.
Do you have a preference when it comes to night sights for your handgun? Give us your two cents below. Interested in even more light? Check out our Pistol Light Guide.