Green Laser vs. Red Laser

I've not been a fan of laser sights primarily because they are very difficult to practice with in normal outdoor range shooting sessions where "run and gun" scenarios allowed. Although I do have a couple on pistols I carry as a backup.

I recently got a S&W Shield 2.0 with built in Green laser. I was amazed at the difference -- I could easily see the green laser on the steel plates at ~15 yards in bright sunlight, the red laser built into my BG380 was invisible on the plates that same morning.

The BG380 has been carried a lot for several years, but practice with the laser has been very infrequent. When we get a dim enough day where I can see it on the plates, I do run a few mags with it and it has held zero perfectly. So I am comfortable with it for carry where the light is almost certain to be poor if its ever actually needed.

Check out this composite photo of green vs. red laser dot on my pool deck at about noon on a painfully bright Houston not-summer day:

Find the red laser dot in the sun.
(Hint Bottom left corner)

The green laser is actually significantly easer to see in the bright sun than it is the photo which is why the composition of the red sunlight photo is so poor I couldn't see the red laser at all through the viewfinder and had to (point shoot) the camera.

In this kind of lighting an LCD screen is utterly useless. The difference in "color balance" of the camera vs. the eye makes the red laser look better and the green look worse than they really are to my eyes.

OTOH if you are red-green color blind I doubt either laser will be of much use

Seeing how my Crimson Trace Green laser factory equipped Shield 2.0 was like $422 Compared to like $360 for models without it, It seem prices have come down a lot on these things. I'm planning to run another 100+ rounds through it tomorrow to see how well it holds zero (I expect it to be well based on the red factory laser on my BG380).

Like with red dot optics or scopes, you have potential zero shift issues when you move among guns so IMHO its not really practical to "share" among carry guns unless you have a range outside your back-door

if you were to use the green laser at night, it would be easy to pinpoint your exact location merely by looking at the beam.

Click to expand...

The same can be said about weapons lights or even hand-held flashlights.

For a self-defense gun, my position is already "given away" or I wouldn't be a potential target! so "stealth" is way less important than making my shots count!