I’m not in the market but found this interesting:
At least the SPT tubes I see with this feature are much more expensive and have the beam combiner built in; they don’t have a hole in the middle of the mirror that shoots a coaxial beam through the tube or something like that to avoid a beam combiner.
When I replaced my tube, I asked Russ Sadler about these. He mentioned them as being the best red dot available.
This was based on it being factor set in the glass tube, along with the beam combiner. The advantage is the output is still calibrated to the full output, taking into consideration the beam combiner.
His response was a bit less enthusiastic, he advised he’s heard about some issues with these and didn’t recommend one.
I’ve lived my life without a pointer, thought it’d be fun… but I saved the money based on his experience with them…
It’s probably a viable upgrade, even with any errors. When I looked, they were only available at the 60W and higher power levels… I replaced mine with a 40W.
a better system would be where the beam combiner moved out of the way once you’ve used the red dot to see what you want. $0.02