Pistol optics are all the rage now, but do you have sto spend a fotune or buy the "established" names? Can you get all the features you want at a great price from a company that isn't quite as famous? Today we find out.
The Justice is one of Swampfox's two more recent red dot offerings, along with the Liberty. The Justice differs from the Liberty in that it has a larger window, otherwise most everything about the Justice discussed here feature-wise will apply to the Liberty as well.
The Justice is what I would consider a "full sized" red dot pistol optic, with dimensions that are very similar to the Holosun 407C. It measures 1.78" long, 1.24" wide, and 1.04" tall. It has a 3MOA dot projected onto its 27mm window, with 10 brightness levels available. It is IPX7 water resistant, which means it will survive under a maximum of 1 meter of water for a maximum of 30 seconds. It uses the same footprint as the Trijicon RMR, and it weighs 1oz without the battery. The body itself is made of 7075-T6 aluminum, with a glass window. The Justice carries an MSRP of $240, but can almost always be found for less than that. Brownells currently has them for just a hair over $200.
The Justice comes in a regular cardboard box. You get the optic itself, a rubber cover (which I trimmed to be able to fit while mounted on the slide), a battery, a cleaning cloth, a Swampfox multitool, three sets of mounting screws (which I didn't use), your papers and documentation, and most important, a sticker!
That included battery is a single CR1632 battery, which loads from the top of the optic. This is one of my favorite features, because this means that the battery can be replaced without having to remove the optic from the weapon, which means that it doesn't subsequently need to be re-zeroed with every battery change like some other optics. The justice is rated by Swampfox to deliver 1 year of "real world" use. This is different form how other manufacturers rate their optic battery life, but I like this rating actually. Instead of giving a battery life rating at a certain brightness setting they just tell you that it will last a year, which is when you should be replacing your optic battery anyways.
One feature that the Justice has that I love is the shake-awake feature. This means that the optic turns off automatically after a certain amount of time to save battery, but as soon as it senses any small movement it turns back on. I actually think that I love this feature so much that I probably would not buy a pistol optic without this feature in the future. Anyways in practice I found this feature to be surprisingly sensitive; it passes the "PT table-tap" test with flying colors. In everyday use I've never picked up the weapon from a table or pulled it out of the holster and had the reticle not be turned on, so A+ there.
The reticle is a 3MOA dot (available in either red or green), with 10 levels of brightness adjustment. The dot does give me a notable amount of astigmatism sunburst when using the optic. Its not enough to affect my accuracy, but its something to keep in mind if you have astigmatism like me and do a lot of longer range pistol shooting. It is also worth it to note that the glass, while clear, has a slight blue tint to it.
The brightness of that reticle is controlled by these two buttons on the side here. The Justice has 10 levels of brightness adjustment, and in everyday use I keep it at around a 6 or 7. You can also shut off the optic completely by holding down the + button. The Justice has two turrets for adjustment, one for elevation on the top and one for windage on the right side. Swampfox says that there is a total of 45MOA of windage adjustment, and 90MOA of elevation adjustment available. They don't specify a "per click" MOA rating which I thought was interesting.
For initial zeroing of the Justice, I mounted it and torqued down the screws and then, since I have suppressor-height sights, I lightly clamped the slide in a vise and then adjusted the turrets until I had the dot sitting right on top of the front sight post. This put me pretty much right on target, with only a few clicks of windage adjustment necessary to zero it in.
I've lived with the Justice for a few years now. It doesn't see any really rugged or sever use, since it primarily lives on this rage toy P80 build, but I can say that it's gone almost 1000 rounds without issues. I do know that there are people who have experienced problems with their Justice or Liberty, but I for one have had none. No flickering or fading of the dot, no coatings rubbing off, no weird glue issues as some have noted on Reddit. What I can say is that if and when I do have an issue, I'm confident that Swampfox will be there with their customer service that has gotten a good reputation from what I can determine. Overall, while I'm not quite ready to say that I would put this on one of my home defense or carry weapons, I do know that it does exactly what I bought it to do, which was to mount on a range toy, retain zero, sit there, and look good.
So that's the PT review of the Swampfox Justice. It's a great micro pistol optic at a great price. If you're interested in picking one up, check out the Justice at Brownells, where it's currently selling for right around $200. Thanks for visiting today, and until next time, stay safe!