The Izon is manufactured by DYE Precision

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DYE Izon Sight
by Bill Mills

For a lot of players first getting into the sport, one of the items they think is going to help them become the super-sniper is a giant scope.  Then they soon realize that as fast as paintball is played, there is rarely time to look through a scope, and much bulk on the top of the paintgun means a bigger target.  

Enter red dots.  With scopes, the user takes a fair amount of time to make sense of the magnified image, and then line up the crosshair with the target.  With traditional iron sights, the user looks straight at the target, and has to bring both the front and rear sight components in line.  A red-dot sight offers the fastest sighting.  The shooter looks at the target and has to bring only one item - the red dot in line with the target to be aimed properly.  

There are two types of red dot sights - the scope, where the user looks through a lens that has a glowing red dot on it, and the occluded eye sight.  In occluded eye sights, like the DYE Izon, the sight can't be seen through.  Instead the shooter keeps both eyes open, and the brain superimposes the image of the dot from one eye over the target image from the other eye.  In addition to a fast target picture, occluded eye sights have another advantage.  Since the user doesn't look through them, they aren't affected by items like a center-feed neck and hopper in their way.

DYE's Izon is the first sight from the rapidly growing west coast barrel and accessory manufacturer.  It is very compact, at about half the length of Armson's OEG sight.  It includes both windage and elevation adjustments, which in English means that you can adjust the dot up or down and left or right to "dial in" to your paintgun.

Like all sights in paintball, the Izon needs to be set to hit a target at a specific range, and due to the drop of the paintball in flight, the user will need to aim above the target when shooting further away.

The Izon features a unique mount.  It turns out that 3/8" "standard" sight rails aren't really all that standard in paintball.  While most manufacturers make them 3/8" wide, many very the angle of the dovetail edges, or thickness from the top to the start of the edge bevel.  Making a mount that looks good, but fits all the rails can be a challenge.  The Izon answers this challenge by not fitting into the dovetail at all.  Instead, it sits over and around the sight rail, and four hex head set screws simply grip into the sides of the rail.

While field testing I used the Izon on my E-Mag, which has a nice fade ano-job on it's sight rail.  Not wanting to mar it with the set screws, I inserted a couple of sheet metal shims, cut from a floppy disk shutter between the set screws and the sight rail.  This allowed the screws to do their job, without letting them bite through the ano job on the rail.

Since the release of the Izon, DYE has come out with a very stylish Angel sight rail.  The rail replaces both the 3/8" rail on the Angel, and the mount base from the Izon.  The rail itself cradles the body of the sight putting the Izon lower to the Angel's body and giving it a much more stylish, integrated look.

A couple of minutes shooting and adjusting the Izon on the targets at the chrono station got it dialed in, and first shot hits on six inch targets at 30 feet weren't a problem.

Because the sights uses an optic fiber material in the front to gather light, there are no batteries to wear out, and as the sunlight on the field gets brighter, so does the red dot, keeping it very visible.  Even in fairly dim, shaded forests, the dot proved bright enough to use, the only time it was too dim was at night, when there wasn't enough light to clearly see the targets either.

The Izon also handled direct hits with no problem.  Shot on purpose as a part of torture testing, it wiped right up, no worse for wear.  It's housing is hard anodized aluminum available in either silver or black.  The rear lens is rugged, and well protected by the body, while the front optics cover is small, and made of thick clear plastic that can really handle a beating.  Due to it's simplicity of design, there is little that can go wrong with the Izon.

In practical use, there isn't always time to use a sight, but the Izon proved very fast to draw in on target, so when the opportunity arose, it made it easy to get those first shot hits.  The small size meant that when it wasn't being used, it wasn't in the way.
 

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