Most gun owners are perfectly happy with the factory sights on their gun, figuring if it’s good enough for the manufacturer, it’s good enough for them. And in many cases, they’re right. However, for those who want to upgrade and add a brighter sight picture, especially in low-light conditions, switching to tritium sights can make a huge difference in their ability to be sure shots will go where they want them to go.
I recently had the pleasure of trying out the MEPRO Hyper-Bright Tritium Sights for S&W M&P Shield. How would they perform? Are they all they are cracked up to be? Is the marketing hype correct?
Benefits of Night Sights
Before we get into this particular product review, let’s discuss the benefits of upgrading your sights. As I mentioned above, most people never upgrade, and that’s okay. You don’t have to change your sights if you don’t want to. But everyone wants to see their sights better, right? So wouldn’t it be easier to aim the pistol in the right direction if you could see the sights as plain as day, even at night, or in other low-light conditions?
That’s the thinking behind night sights. Something goes bump in the night, so you roll out of bed, grab the gun from the safe under the bed, and start to figure out whether the bump was a bad guy, one of your kids, the family dog, or something else. If it’s a bad guy, your sight alignment will be critical in stopping the threat, should you decide shooting is the right and legal course of action.
Night sights are also helpful if you have trouble seeing regular factory sights because they are either too small or too dim.
Baseline established, let’s look at the MEPRO Hyper-Bright Tritium Sights for S&W M&P Shield and see how well they perform.
Overall Design
Aside from the different color dots, these sights look just like the factory Smith and Wesson Shield sights—the same dimensions and shape. They are available in two color combinations: green rear with green front and green rear with orange front. My set has the orange front sight, which made it stand out better than the traditional green. However, the rear dots are all green regardless of which front post you choose. They are constructed from an all-steel design, making them rugged, durable, and far longer lasting than cheaper plastic sights. Since I carry my Shield daily, my sights must hold up to everyday wear and tear and multi-box range sessions to work on my skills.
Installation
First things first, you have to install the sights on your gun. In this case, the MEPRO Hyper-Bright Tritium Sights were super simple. My S&W M&P Shield has dovetail sights in front and rear, with a front that does not require any screws to hold it in. Using a brass punch and rubber mallet, I slid the front sight straight out to the side and inserted the new sights the same way but in reverse. Using calipers, I perfectly aligned the sight in the middle of the slide. I wiggled the front sight a bit to see if it would move. Nope, it didn’t budge. It was locked in place.
The rear sight was a bit trickier but not difficult, requiring a tiny hex key screw to be loosened before it slid out. But once the screw was out, the same punch and mallet brought the rear sight out, and I tapped the new sight into place, locking it down with the tiny screw. The installation was completed in less than 10 minutes.
Function
Since I used my local indoor range’s shop where I work to install the sights, it only made sense to test them out in the shooting bay downstairs—for science, of course. So I grabbed my eyes, ears, and a box of 9mm and headed downstairs. While I prefer shooting outdoors, a nice thing about an indoor range is you can control the conditions. In this case, I wanted to test how well the sights worked in normal and low light.
For those who are unfamiliar with how night sights work, they glow all the time without the need for batteries or any outside light source. Unlike the photosensitive luminescent dots on your watch that require a light source to charge them—preferably (and ironically) bright sunlight—to work, these sights use tritium, a radioactive isotope that glows on its own for seven to 10 years. So even if your gun is sitting in a dark safe for a long time, the sights will work immediately when you need them. MEPRO guarantees these sights will still glow for up to 12 years, which is above industry standard. Now, back to our regularly scheduled review.
One thing that immediately jumped out to me about these sights was the big orange ring on the face of the front post. These sights are not just for nighttime but also work fantastic for daytime shooting. After all, you’re not going to quickly change your sights when the lights go down. Therefore, you need sights that work in all lighting conditions. With the lights on, the front sight is a non-glowing orange ring, while the rear sights look blacked out. If you’re a blacked-out rears fan, these are the sights for you. I’m not a big fan of blacked-out sights, but these didn’t bother me as much as others I’ve tried.
For my testing, I shot through a couple of magazines with the range lights turned up to simulate normal daylight shooting conditions. The sights were easy to pick up with my eyes, and alignment came quickly, thanks to a handy U notch in the rear sight. Once I set the orange front sight inside the blacked-out U—what I describe to my students as “dropping the dot into the bucket”—everything lined up perfectly. My shooting reflected proper sight alignment, with groupings in the middle of the target.
Next, I turned the lights way down—not pitch black, but low enough to see how well the tritium lit up. I’m not sure what I expected, but at first, I was disappointed in how faint the glow was. Perhaps I was expecting too much, thinking they would light up brighter, but I had difficulty picking up the rear sights as easily as I picked up the front post. In short order, however, everything came into focus, and I was again putting holes in paper.
Cost & Performance
With close to 200 rounds shot so far, the MEPRO Hyper-Bright Tritium Sights have held up perfectly and performed as advertised. As a result, I have no plans to switch back to my old fiber optic front sight. Replacement sights aren’t cheap. They can cost hundreds of dollars. However, in the grand scheme of things, the MEPRO Hyper-Bright Tritium Sights are relatively inexpensive at an MSRP of $109.99. You get a lot for the money with these sights, including a 12-year warranty. Overall, these are a great value and worth considering if you’re serious about upgrading to night sights.
