Thomas discovered that the traditional post/blade sight is, for him, indeed a bit better for shooting at distance.

To test the accuracy potential of both sight types at reasonably long range, I fired six five-shot groups from the bench at 50 feet--the maximum distance possible at the indoor range where I do most of my shooting--with both guns.

Initially the XS sights shot high left, however my MGW Glock sight pusher from Brownells made short work of the windage discrepancy. A bit of experimentation with sight picture brought groups down to point of impact/point of aim for elevation as well.

I found it took a fair amount of attention to sight alignment--as in, how low to ride the dot inside the notch--to zero groups at 50 feet. However, once I had the right sight picture memorized, it was no more work than doing the same thing with post/notch sights.

Best group with WTS sights was 1.9 inches, average was 2.4 inches. For the XS dot sights, best effort was 2.6 inches, with an average of 3.2 inches.

However, honesty compels me to admit this average was inflated considerably by one absolutely egregious 5.4-inch group on my part. If we were to exclude that one group from the calculations, average big dot group size would be 2.8 inches.

So there does appear, in my hands at least, to be a difference in accuracy potential for the post/notch combo over the XS dot sights.

However, it's worth noting that this was my first-ever time firing these sights. It's quite possible that more experience with the system might shrink groups significantly. I might also mention I was not feeling particularly in the groove during this range session. In the past I have fired numerous groups of around one inch with 9mm Glocks with post/notch sights. Not this time, though.

I moved in to seven yards for the second part of the test, during which I put both sight systems through the graduation exercises from the Intensive Handgun Skills speed shooting course from InSights Training Center. This is a program of six different drills, five runs apiece, shot on three USPSA or IDPA targets set one yard apart, edge to edge, at seven yards.

I used my daily carry gear during this test: a straight drop Blade-Tech standard belt holster with a matching double mag pouch from the same maker, all threaded onto a 1.75-inch black sharkskin-and-horsehide Kramer dress gunbelt I've had for years.

Ammo was a mixture of American Eagle and Winchester USA "white box" ball, and when I ran out of that I switched over to my carry load, Winchester 115-grain Silvertips.

The first time I ran these guns through the IHS drills, I shot with a white sheet of typewriter paper over the target centers, something I do to extend target life. I found the XS dot sight worked really well on drills starting with the gun already on target, but on any drill requiring gun movement between targets (like fire one shot on two targets) or moving the gun swiftly to the target (like draw and fire drills) I had trouble getting on the sights fast and staying on them between targets. I realized this was because the white dot was getting lost against the white background.