Looked at one yesterday and have a couple issues with it, however I'm not sure if they're legitimate or that I'm just not used to it and that they will go away with practice.

1. For me the most disturbing issue is the sight. With a virtual front sight located at the rear, I find that I lose focus of the target as my depth of field narrows as I center the dot in the ring. Also, how effective is the sight in low-level situations, i.e., outdoors at night, indoors dark? Is it worse/better than tritium sights?
2. Having to slingshot the slide each time a new magazine is inserted seemed weird to me. I found myself instinctively wanting to move the slide catch lever down with my thumb. It just seems inefficient to have to use both hands to chamber the initial round.

Does anyone own one (or not) that would care to share their experience or thoughts on this pistol?
Thank in advance...

Can't speak to the 1st because I don't know. I have the regular.

2. If you're doing a mag change and the slide is locked out, you're off hand is already going to be in the area, so I don't see racking the slide to chamber the round as an issue. If anything, in a high stress environment counting on your thumb to feel and hit the slide release is asking for problems.

I've never been in a bad situation, but trained in higher stress environments and I've done and witnessed some dumb and hilarious **** done when you put someone on a timer or even raise your voice a little bit to build some stress. Hitting that slide release with your thumb gets screwed up all the time.

I have one and love it. The sight takes practice but is extremely accurate once learned. As for the slide release, the gun was designed for no snag which is nice. You can put a standard slide release on it, but I don't carry extra magazines so I would not have the need for it.

I have a 938 SAS and I like it a lot!. Still trying to get use to the sight, but so far I like the gun. I rented a 365 SAS and didn't care for the trigger, but I understand why someone might like the greater capacity of the 365 vs 938.

Like Woods said, I would use your offhand to rack the slide since its already off the gun for the mag change.

Woods Ag said:

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Can't speak to the 1st because I don't know. I have the regular.

2. If you're doing a mag change and the slide is locked out, you're off hand is already going to be in the area, so I don't see racking the slide to chamber the round as an issue. If anything, in a high stress environment counting on your thumb to feel and hit the slide release is asking for problems.

I've never been in a bad situation, but trained in higher stress environments and I've done and witnessed some dumb and hilarious **** done when you put someone on a timer or even raise your voice a little bit to build some stress. Hitting that slide release with your thumb gets screwed up all the time.

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Kind of like counting on your thumb to release the magazine in the first place?

Training, training, training. If you can push a mag release button, you can push a slide release...or flip the safety on an AR, etc. The "fine motor skills don't work in high stress" is only true if you don't train your fine motor skills.

The SAS sight is the primary feature of that model, so if it disturbs you then look into the other models with traditional sight pictures.

I passed on the SAS model because I couldn't envision ever liking the sights. I went with the regular 365. I like it so far. Shoots very accurate for such a small frame.

BCStalk and dsvogel05,

How does the sight perform in low light situations such as a dark room at night with ambient light coming through windows? Is that enough to illuminate the sight or do you need light from overhead?

It's tritium and honestly better in low to no light conditions.

It's very bright in a dark setting.

Ah, so it uses both fiber optics and tritium. I don't think the guy at the gun store knew that. I placed my thumb over the opaque plastic and the sights went black (they had just taken delivery and processed it and I think it was right out of the box). I appreciate the information and will definitely look for a place where I can rent one as I am really looking forward to firing one.

dsvogel05 said:

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It's very bright in a dark setting.

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So is the XL with the red dot sight. I did not like that pistol as you cannot dim the dot and I would not like looking at that glaring dot in the dark. Unless the guy at the store was also mistaken when he told me that you cannot dim the dot.

Both of my 365s with red dots have brightness adjustment. It's the button directly behind the glass.

Yeah, it's tritium fiber optic hybrid. Very cool system.... feels like playing a video game. I will admit to not liking it when it first came in but it grew on me. Now, I really like it.

I'm sorry y'all, but that sight is an absolute abomination and a solution in search of a problem. When we've seen them in classes, the owners have had nothing but problems using those sights at speed and at any kind of distance at ALL, and almost always ended up with a loaner gun. Avoid that thing like the plague.

It magnifies the issues that some people have with red dot sights on handguns by 100 - e.g. if your alignment isn't just right after your presentation (meaning bringing the gun to full extension from wherever it was before) you don't have a sight picture, and you don't have any immediate, intuitive visual information to help you naturally fix that the way you do with typical handgun sights. With a red dot, if the dot isn't showing up in the window, you then have to figure out how to move the gun in front of you to find it. Real world, save-your-life-right-now scenarios don't always look like that square range, squared up directly in front of the target draw and presentation. Odd angles, odd positions, moving at the same time, having to shoot with one hand, those all happen and it really complicates finding the "dot" with an optic. "Why would I be shooting one-handed?" Either you are in very low light and having to use a flashlight, which empirically is much more rare than you'd think, or you are task fixated and forget to drop what was in your support hand when the fight started, which force-on-force tells is much more frequent than you'd think.

Now extend that to the SAS sights where you pretty much have to be looking through a soda straw directly in front of your eye to get the sight picture.

Stay away from this unless you are just looking for another range toy.

Dave Reichek
KR Training

Karl Rehn (the "KR" in KR training) wrote an informative blog post last year on this topic:
https://blog.krtraining.com/365-sas-sights/?fbclid=IwAR3c73qeKx4nQYCUJL74ppsYa4BuWti4ZbPPMp0UaCJEnti3Ko1R7RRNyDw

I've been a firearms trainer for 30 years. I work with 500-700 students a year and get to see all kinds of pistols and sights. The SAS sights are a stupid gimmick intended to appeal to people that don't understand shooting. There are no top tier trainers or top tier shooters that recommend or use them. That's always a clue regarding oddball products that are the "answer" to questions no one other than inexperienced, low skilled shooters looking for shortcuts and workarounds to proven solutions are asking. I took a class from the SIG Academy last summer, and the SIG factory rep that stopped by the class to promote products was not a fan of those sights either, encouraging students interested in the 365 to consider the standard sighted models instead.

Consider the situation where you might have to shoot around a family member to save them, or the Jack Wilson incident where he had to make a head shot at 12 yards to save the people at his church. The point of having sights on the gun are to use them when precision is needed, and the SAS sights fail miserably in that role.

I wrote a longer analysis, including my experience teaching a moderate/high skilled student attempting to use one during a private lesson. It's on my blog - click the link to read it.

SAS sight review

The 365SAS is basically a pocket gun as useful (or useless) as a .38 snub with the terrible tiny sights those guns come with. In the pocket gun category, a Glock 42 in .380 is smaller, lighter and has better sights.


For belt carry or home defense use best configuration of the SIG365 is the SIG365XL, which has a slightly longer grip (so you can grip it with all 4 fingers instead of having a pinky hanging off the bottom), and a slightly longer barrel (less recoil, higher bullet velocity, better accuracy, better reliability -- all improve as barrel length and slide length increase on all guns), and actual sights you can use. The factory red dot model of the SIG365XL is only useful if you intend to throw away the SIG red dot and replace it with one with better battery life, better controls and a better reticle, like a Holosun or Trijicon or Swampfox.

My range is about 1 hour from BCS and we have classes every Saturday at the LTC level (and beyond) coming up in May and June - classes teaching drawing from concealment, two-person armed citizen team tactics, medical response, introduction to competition, introduction to red dot pistols, armed movement in structures, and more.

Karl
rehn@krtraining.com
http://www.krtraining.com