We’re not talking about field of view… or at least I’m not.
I’m talking about the amount of deviation from center in which the dot is still visible, which allows one to take a responsible shot (if appropriate) or quickly correct when the pistol is less perfectly presented to the target… since parallax is a minimal issue.
You are correct that one shouldn’t be looking at the dot or the optic itself. We are indeed looking through the optic… focus should be, however, on the target, which is much easier said than done - especially for those used to iron sights.
Ben Stoeger recently did a really good video on this… but I’ve stayed at a holiday inn and have a bit of experience with dots from an instructor perspective so we can certainly deep dive further.
I agree that those used to irons are going to have a hard time picking up the dot at first and a larger window may help, but that also means that their presentation was never that good with irons either.
This is where the dot shines. It's shows you of some of those bad habits that are ingrained in you that you need to train away. Ask me how I know this?
A really great option are those holosuns with the Primary Arms ACSS reticles in them.
I grabbed one when they first came out and it helped me immensely get my **** squared away with pistol rds. Cool thing is is you can just turn off that outer circle when you're not really needing it any more. I still turn mine on sometimes when I know I may be shooting from awkward positions like behind or around barriers Etc.
Yes those Ben Stoeger videos are a great wealth of info.
He is definitely one of my top 3 favorites, but the beautiful thing now days is there are a lot of instructors out there and you can take the knowledge from each one of them and apply them to improve your shooting skills.
What I love about Ben is that he tells it like it is and he doesn't sugarcoat anything, and will tell someone if there being an idiot.
IMHO A good instructor That gets my respect are the guys who honestly disclose that they are not the end all be all on everything, and are still learning themselves. IMHO I believe you should always be a student of your craft no matter how good you think you may be at it.