Meprolight has been at the forefront of melding technology and optics for many years. The Israeli company’s MOR reflex sight, for example, included a laser-aiming device to combine what used to be two distinct tools into one, saving weight, bulk and rail space on a firearm. Now, Meprolight’s latest optic can connect via Bluetooth with your smartphone to enhance its capabilities. In fact, the company calls it an “augmented red-dot sight,” since it provides information in the viewing window beyond a mere aiming point.
Let’s address the elephant in the room first: We all have legitimate privacy concerns anytime technology, particularly connectivity-based technology, is concerned. The Foresight does not need to be connected to a smartphone or any other device in order to function as a versatile, durable and effective firearm sight. It has an integral QD rail-mounting system on its underside and is waterproof to military specifications.
Even without the connectivity, it is still an enhanced reflex sight thanks to its built-in compass, light sensor to automatically adjust brightness, five built-in reticles, roll indicator and battery-life display in the viewing port. Some of the features can be found on other optics, but I am not aware of a reflex sight—much less one that retails for significantly less than $1,000—that combines all of these elements, and that’s before you connect it to the app on your smartphone.
Given all of those built-in features, why worry about the app? For starters, the app allows the Foresight to be updated as new features are added. For example, Meprolight is working on a magazine-capacity indicator and a shot counter, which could be outstanding additions. When complete, synching the Foresight to the app will allow the user to add these and other features without needing to buy a brand-new optic, which is what every manufacturer has required to add new capabilities to your hardware.
But wait, there’s more. While the Foresight comes with five reticle options on board, the app provides access to 21 reticles, any five of which can be uploaded to the optic at once. Changing them is simple on the app, and if Meprolight designs new reticles, they will also be made available. You can zero one reticle, and all of the others will be automatically zeroed to the same point, and you can set up multiple firearm profiles via the app to allow swapping the optic between guns, yet maintaining your zeros.
The Foresight can be zeroed via three distinct means. The first is to use the keypad at the front of the sight on top of the housing. To begin, you toggle the menu and select the zeroing mode (this is to protect your zero from being moved in case you accidentally hit one of the buttons; the reticle won’t budge until you select the zeroing mode). Then, you adjust up or down, left or right using the arrows on the keypad, with each press of the button corresponding to 1 MOA.
The amount you’ve moved it shows up in the display, with “H” for horizontal (windage) “clicks” and “V” for vertical (elevation). Via the app, you can zero the optic without touching it by referencing a target-like display and moving the point-of-aim to match the rough location of where your bullet impacted on paper. Finally, via a third-party app called Double Shoot, you can take a picture of your group and have the optic automatically zeroed using photo-recognition technology.
The Double Shoot app requires an additional fee and has features beyond automatic zeroing, but we did not test it owing to ammunition-availability constraints. Zeroing using the Meprolight app and the sight itself were accomplished with ease.
Battery life is 50 hours, but the Foresight has an auto-off/auto-resume function to save power. It is powered by a rechargeable internal battery, so you don’t have to change batteries or remove the sight from your firearm to recharge it using the included USB cable. The sight also has a “Low Power” mode, which disables every feature apart from the reticle itself to squeeze every minute out of the battery in an emergency.
For what amounts to a first-generation smart optic, the Foresight has a lot to offer and promises even more as Meprolight updates and adds features to it. That kind of innovation is most welcome and promises to become commonplace in the coming years.
