OK--that was a productive day.
Hit Cabelas, The Mill, and Old Glory. Wanted to get up to Shooters, but ran out of time.
Cabelas has a very good selection of Red dot sights, but illumination was not working on several of them. They had a couple flavors of Holosun to consider. The Sig Romeo 5 and the Aimpoint Patrol had no battery power. Maybe bring your own batteries, if you want to be sure of a side-by-side comparison. The jury is not yet in, but the Holosun has a very impressive emitter for the money. The most unexpected find was a 3X prism sight I didn't even have on my radar--the Burris RT-3. Once the diopter was properly adjusted the etched reticle was super crisp.
BURRIS RT-3
The Mill was not in full swing--I hit Ma**h*** firearms, and got greeted by one of the biggest freaking dogs I've seen in recent memory. They didn't have a lot in stock, but they had just gotten in some Leuopold Freedom RDS's, and were willing to order whatever I was looking for.
Website...
I walked the halls and found a shop I hadn't heard of before--Ragnor Arms. He showed me the Holosun 510--said he was going to be getting in a shipment within a week. The 510 seemed like a pretty good package for the $300 price point as well.
HS510C
Ragnor Arms...
Finally I got up to Old Glory--and they do indeed have a VERY impressive collection of red dot sights to consider--Aimpoint T-2's, Trijicons, half a dozen Holosun variations, and Vortex. Unfortunately the Aimpoint T-2 had no battery installed (can't say as I blame them), so I wasn't able to compare the emitter to the Holosun. At a 1K price point I'd expect it would be flawless, and the best/most reliable components avaialable. The salesman encouraged me to take the Holosun out into the daylight--and I was pretty impressed, especially by the green circle-dot. It was daylight visible even looking directly into the sunniest part of the sky. The staff at Old Glory were as friendly and helpful as Quiller implied, although they weren't able to speak knowlegeably about warranties. Oh well. Old Glory is definitely worth a trip. They had a pretty good selection of powder as well. 8lbers of H335 and H4350, 1 lbers of H110, Accurate 7, CFE Pistol, and Magnum, among others. Nothing is cheap--but they have it on the shelf. They had some Gold Medal Match 69 Grain SMK on the shelf, so I picked some up to proof a couple rifles.
About Us - Old Glory Guns & Ammo
My takeaway from today is that I want to do some more looking into Holosun's warranty. The dot (and circle dot) is impressively sharp at the price point, and the Green option surprised me with how good it looked. I was also plasantly surprised by the startling sharpness and clarity of the Burris 3X micro prism, as well as the lightweight compactness of the package overall. I might give a 3x microprism some serious consideration for a different rifle.
Anyway--thanks for the input.