Personal choice here; For my bedtime pistol, a laser. Why? It's fast and I can see the da*n thing without my glasses, as well as what it's reflecting from ( I have to keep low lighting on all night due to age and cats.) Thus, if the crash was due to a cat, I can fuss at them and go back to bed, If it's due to someone I don't know with burglar tools... (sigh) I'm gonna be staying up. Side note: my laser has a small white light led included, for obvious reasons.
For rifles, I prefer a dot. I can keep both eyes open and optical sharing will paint the dot where I'm pointing, plus dots don't eat batteries like lasers do.
I did try a red dot on a pistol and really didn't like it. It felt unnatural, and besides I have decent irons on all my handguns so...not really necessary IMHO.