binoculars » OpticsThoughts

Leica Customer Service: I like what I am seeing

binoculars, Cameras, Rifle Scopes, Spotting Scope Comments Off

Nov 232017

I usually do not talk about customer service very much since it has generally been getting better for most brands even the ones that were not known for this in the past.

For example, in years past Burris was not famous for great customer service, but they have really stepped up in that department (and my personal experience with them last year was excellent).

As far as Leica goes, I was never aware of anything being wrong with their customer service, partly since Leica riflescopes and binoculars I used never needed any. I did have a Leica camera that needed to be repaired and Leica took care of that quickly and with more courtesy than I expected (or deserved). It broke right before a trip I needed to go to and after sending it I called an begged for them to move it up the line. I really did not expect anything, but they stepped up, replaced the lens on my Leica Q and got it back to me in time.

With this as background, I was talking to a friend of mine a little while back and he said he would not buy a Leica scope because of customer service concerns. Rather than do forensic analysis on the history of their customer service, I reached out to my contact at Leica and politely inquired how they are going to go about fixing that reputation.

Frankly, I liked their response. They did not offer any excuses and did not spend any time admitting or denying anything or discussing whether that reputation was deserved or not.. Their basic response boiled down to a very simple acknowledgment that they pay attention to the market and they recently made an investment in beefing up their service department both in terms of personnel and resources.

It takes very little effort to get bad publicity and a lot of hard work to regain your good reputation. I will keep an eye on how Leica does moving forward, but I like what I am seeing from them so far.

Progress Report

binoculars, Rifle Scopes, Spotting Scope Comments Off

Oct 192017

October 19, 2017.

I popped the safe open to do an inventory of sorts of the stuff I have on hand that still needs to be written up.
This somehow creeped up on me, but there is a lot of stuff in there. I will stop accepting new review items for a bit, until I clear this out.
Here is a rundown with some brief comments, in no particular order.

1) Leupold VX-6HD 3-18×44. I am basically done with this one. I like VX-6HD a lot and if Leupold made a version of this scope with FFP reticle and mrad adjustments for similar money, I would own at least two or three. It tracked true, the low profile turret had a good feel and optical quality is commensurate with the price.

2) Leica Magnus 1.8-12×50. This is the best general purpose hunting scope I have ever tested, bar none. Swaro Z8 is in the same league, I think, and both are really expensive. Zeiss V8 is in the same price range, but from a cursory look, Leica and Swaro are better. Anyway, the image of the Magnus really agrees with me. FOV is superb. Ballistic turret is accurate and the reticle illumination is world class. The reticle is mrad delineated, so I do not have to learn new BDC dimensions. If you want a hunting scope with no compromises, this it. It is sitting on my Tikka M695 in a McMillan stock. I took it out to 600 yards with zero issues. I’ll take it out to 1k next.

3) Leica ER5 2-10×50. Optomechanical quality seems very good. I am a bit mixed on the magnum Ballistic reticle, but I will admit I have not spent as much time with this scope as I wanted to. I got it at the same time as I did the Magnus and I have to admit, I spent more time with the Magnus than with the ER5.

4) Athlon Ares 4.5-27×50. I’ve spent some time with this scope already and so far I like what I see. It offers a lot for the money, but as the design is new, I want to spend some more time with it before I decide whether I will recommend it or not.

5) HiLux Phenom 5-30x56FFP. Same general comment as on the Athlon above. These two scopes cost about the same customer. I like the design overall, but there is some field curvature that I need to see if I can dial out. HiLux Phenom and Athlon Ares go directly against each other, so I am looking at them side-by-side. These are very featured rich design for not too much money. These are also among the most ambitious designs I have seen come out of China so far. Naturally, they peaked my interest.

6) Hi-Lux Uni-Dial 5-30×56. This is sort of a SFP version of the Phenom above and it is looking quite good so far.

7) Vortex Razor Gen 2 spotter. I am done testing the variable eyepiece and I am now looking at the fixed eyepiece. This spotter rocks and it is easily going to end up at the top of my list of recommendations. Vortex should really get a reticle in there.

8) Leica Noctivid 8×42 binocular. This is the best general purpose binocular I have seen to date. Now, you can make a reasonable claim that other similarly priced designs are as good, but they all have their own character. I have looked at Zeiss, Swaro and Leica at reasonable length and while all three are excellent, Leica agrees with my eyes the best. It has spectacular microcontrast and the most relaxing image I have ever seen in a binocular.

10) Shield RMS miniature red dot sight. I’ve got this thing incorporated into the slide of my Glock 43 and it is likely to become that sight of choice for my handgun use on smaller handguns. Generally, I have been looking at a variety of miniature red dot sights recently and for handgun use, I am converging on Shield RMS and DocterSight III as my favourites. RMS has the lowest sightline of them all, but it is not waterproof. However, I accidentally tested that feature and it is definitely splashproof. I will avoid going swimming with it though. RMS easily lands on my list of recommendations that I will be updating shortly.

11) Shield SIS is to ARs, what RMS is to handguns. I am extremely impressed and it moves to the top of my list for carbiine use. The SIS has really impressed more than I thought it would. There is an interesting (to me) aspect of it that I hadn’t really thought about earlier. Everyone is trying to make red dot sights with minimal visible housing, so that all you see is a bright red dot surrounded by as little as possible. With the SIS, at first blush, the window is comparatively small, while the housing is pretty prominent. However, it does not seem to have slowed me down in the slightest. However, when I did some house clearing drills, I realized that at these close ranges, that housing is really helpful. I do not have to worry about the red dot at all. The moment I see something that needs to be shot through that window, I can pull the trigger and hit it. At longer ranges it works about as well as most other red dots. I have a little astigmatism, so the dots are not terribly sharp, but I can still use the holdover reticle well enough. I have not yet tested it to see if it works well with a magnifier, so that is next.

12) Vortex UH-1. I will have it in my hands next week, so a First Look article is forthcoming.

13) Vortex PST Gen 2 3-15×44. It is arriving next week. When I looked at the new PSTs briefly earlier this year, I thought the 3-15×44 was the best one of the bunch. We’ll see how it holds up.

14) Docter QuickSight. This is mostly a shotgun sight, but I fashioned it to a handgun to see how a short/low window will work. It is an interesting design, and I’ll have more to say about it shortly.

15) Vortex AMG 6-24×50. Almost done with this one. It is currently sitting on my 338LM and working great. EBR7 reticle is not my favourite, but it works. The horizontal has a bit too much happening on there for my taste, but it is undoubtedly a functional design. The scope itself is excellent and I fully expect to buy it from Vortex when I am done. There are a couple of tests I still need to finish, but I am really impressed with what I see so far.

16) Burris RT-6. Almost done with this one. This is my favorite budget 1-6x.

17) Hawke Frontier 1-6×24. I am surprised with how much I like this scope. Excellent reticle design and overall a very solid product.

18) Burris XTR 2 1-8×24. I think the reticle needs a little work, but it is functional. I suspect this the best overall 1-8x scope under $2k

19) HiLux CMR8 1-8X24. I helped design the reticle for this one, so I like it a fair bit. The scope itself is quite respectable and seems to stay zeroed. This is likely the best FFP low range variable to come out of China to date.

ILya

SHOT Show 2017, Part 2

binoculars, Rifle Scopes, SHOT Show, Spotting Scope Comments Off

Feb 182017

Continuing where I left off in Part 1…

Vortex

I think Vortex is one of the more a forward looking companies in this business and the pace with which they have been growing is pretty impressive. I think their product strategy for a bit looked somewhat like a shotgun blast: fire off a bunch of new products at the market and see what sticks. It worked adequately and they came up with a good product range, but thankfully, it looks like they are moving past. Their product line-up looks reasonably coherent and logical to me, except for a few outliers. I wonder if those will develop into separate product lines or remain single product experiments. Vortex has converged on four discreet quality levels for their products: Razor (made in Japan and/or USA), Viper (made in Phillipines), Diamondback (made in Phillipines) and Crossfire (made in China). For conventional riflescopes, this gradation stays consistent for both tactical and hunting products and for all four product levels, Vortex offers very compelling alternatives to other brands. With riflescopes, the outliers are Golden Eagle target scope and Strike Eagle low range variable. These are very different kinds of eagles with the Golden Eagle being more or less at the Razor-level of performance, while the Strike Eagle is a “me too” OEM product. I am a little surprised they didn’t call the Golden Eagle “Razor F-Class” and be done with it, so I wonder if it will spawn another product family. With red dots, the naming is sorta all over the place, but it almost seem like they are beginning to clean that up as well. There is a pretty nice Razor reflex sight and a new Razor AMG UH-1 holographic sight that sit at the top of Vortex’s non-magnified sight line-up. With the tube-style red dot sights, the original Strikefire is still there and somewhat more recent Sparc and Sparc AR. All are pretty compelling products for their price ranges, although I will freeley admit to liking Sparc AR a lot more than the other two. With compact reflex sights, in addition to the previously mentioned Razor, there are the Venom and Viper. They cost about the same, but use different batteries, Venom has a top loading battery and slightly larger lens. Viper needs to be removed from its mount to change the battery, which may effect zero. I do not fully understand why I would choose one over the other (in my case, why I would choose Viper over Venom), so I am curious to see how Vortex will work this out. Lastly, there are the Spitfire prism sights. I am not sure where they fit in the Razor-Viper-Diamondback-Crossfire continuum.

Razor AMG UH-1

Generally, with Razor products, the only new offering is a very interesting looking holographic sight. I liked what I saw and I plan to test one. This is an interesting time to take on EOtech and I think Vortex will do well with this one. The optical design looks to be a little simpler from alignment standpoint than EOtech, so I do not expect it to have thermal stability issues. Controls are pretty straightforward with two pushbuttons on the back of the sight.

UH-1 with VMX3 magnifier

I am a bit mixed on that since accessing them when used with a magnifier could be a bit difficult. Generally, magnifier use is one of the advantages holographic sights have over reflex style red dots, so I spent some time trying to convince Vortex to make a high quality magnifier for the UH-1. We’ll see if they do it. They did have the UH-1 set up with the VMX3 magnifier (which I just tested with Sparc AR) and while it is a very respectable magnifier and good for the money, I do not think it is quite good enough for the UH-1. However, in the picture to the left, you can see how accessing the controls could be a bit problematic. Lastly, since all holographic sights have a significant battery life disadvantage compared to reflex sights, I was happy to see a rechargeable battery option.

The rest of the Razor line is unchanged for now and, honestly, that is a good thing. These are excellent scopes. Razor HD LH has become my go to recommendation for hunting scopes (I think they will adda model or two to it next year) and Razor AMG is still almost impossible to get due to all the backorders. Razor Gen II in the meantime soldiers on as one of the more compelling general purpose precision scopes out there. I think the decision to round out the Razor line-up with an American-made quick acquisition sight is a good one. Aside from that, the Razor HD spotters are new(ish) and I am testing the 65mm model. It is very good.

PST Gen 2 3-15×44 and 1-5×24

Viper product family probably had the biggest splash in the Vortex booth this year, since the PST riflescopes were redesigned. They are still made in the Phillipines, but by a different maker. The new models are 1-5×24, 2-10×32, 3-15×44 and 5-25×50. They all sport a new larger eyepiece and they are a bit heavier than their predecessors. 1-5×24 is a SFP model only, while the others are available as both FFP and SFP. The reticles are well conceived and are generally similar to those in the Razor scopes, so someone who uses a Razor on a primary rifle can put a new PST onto a trainer and feel right at home. The three higher magnification scopes now sport a proper zero stop similar in operation to Gen 1 Razor. They seemed like well designed scopes at SHOT and I suspect they will be a meaningful improvement over the original PST. The big question, of course, is whether they will compete well against all the scopes that were designed to compete against he original PSTs. That question I can not easily answer without doing a proper test. The Gen 2 PSTs run between $700 and $1100 depending on the model, so they are a bit more expensive than the original ones and go head to head against Burris XTR II and a few others, most notably Athlon Ares and Midas (2.5-15×50 and 4.5-27×50), as well as Hi-Lux Phenom HD 6-30×56 and PentaLux 4-20×50. There are others, of course, but one of the things I am really curious about is whether the better-made Chinese scopes from Athlon and Hi-Lux can compete adequately well (and consistently enough) against the better-made Phillipine scopes like the PST Gen II and XTR II. Once I work that out, the next question will be how well they stack up against Japanese competition like Sightron S3 and some of the US competition like Leupold VX3i LRP. Basically, I am going to have a lot of fun with this, since this is the price range I want to look at this year.

Among the PST Gen 2 scopes, the 3-15×44 and 1-5×24 seemed to be the best ones of the bunch based on a rather cursory look, so I will start with the 3-15×44. Interestingly, with the original PSTs, the 2.5-10×32 was the best optimized model, followed by the 6-24×50, while the 2.5-10×44 was the runt of the litter. We’ll see if my original impressions of the Gen 2 are correct.

Rounding out the Vortex news, they introduced a tactilized version of the Diamondback with a ranging reticle and exposed turrets. I like Diamondback scopes, but unless there is a lot of interest I will likely skip this one over: it only comes with MOA turrets and I really prefer mrad.

Lastly, Vortex now has a rangefinding binocular called Fury HD. I wasn’t terribly impressed with how it looked, but then again, at around $1200, it is about half the price of the LRF binos I like. In other words, as far as LRF binoculars go, I am both spoiled and picky. I will look at it if time allows, but I have a suspicion that these will be difficult to come by for a bit, so a test may have to wait.

Hi-Lux Precision Optics

I know these guys pretty well, since I have been talking to them on and off for some years. The first of their product I looked at many years ago was not great and I was not kind to it. Rather than getting all poochy-faced about, the guys at Hi-Lux took it as constructive criticism and got better. The next scope of theirs I looked at was the original 7-30×50 Uni-Dial with an elevation turret that allows to set flags for different distances (they have a patent on this and I am moderately certain that some other people who use this approach pay them licensing fees). That scope was not a world beater either, but it stayed zeroed and adjusted true. Some things on it were a bit crude, but it was ultimately a very usable design and I said exactly that. A bit more time passed and Hi-Lux introduced their CMR and CMR4 scopes, which are generally good and absolutely superb for the money. These scopes easily landed on my list of recommendations and I spent a fair amount of time and effort beating them up. They kept working and working well. Most importantly, they did well for Hi-Lux so there are enough of these out there to give me confidence that Hi-Lux can build these consistently. Unlike most other companies who make optics in China, Hi-Lux has their own factory, so they control the manufacturing process. As they continue moving toward more sophisticated designs, I’ve been sorta keeping tabs on what they do and it sounds like this year they have a bunch of new stuff that is of interest to me:

-CMR8 1-8×26 FFP with 34mm tube

-new Uni-Dial 5-30×56 SFP with a 34mm tube (successor to the original Uni-Dial I tested so many years ago)

-Phenom HD 5-30×56 FFP with a 34mm tube

-PentaLux 4-20×50 FFP or SFP with a 30mm tube

-CMR4-based 1-4x34AO Competition scope since you can now use optics for servie rifle competition

-8×42 and 10×42 binoculars with field flattener lenses

All of these will be in the $500 to $900 range, which makes them fairly accessible.

Hi-Lux makes a lot of other stuff as well, but most of it has been around for a bit and I do not have enough time to look at everything. I will, however, mention the MM2 (Micro-Max 2) red dot sight that I have failed to break for a number of months now. It is probably my favourite of the sub-$300 tube-style red dot sights (and is one of the reasons I have not bought an MRO).

The new CMR8 is of particular interest to me since late last year, Hi-Lux asked for some ideas on a reticle for the CMR8. They already had a very nicely executed internal design, but they wanted another option. I am perpetually dissatisfied with most of the reticles out there, this was an opportunity for me to try a design that I like. I suggested a few things and they implemented most of them and added a couple of other things that appealed to them. I will talk a bit more about this reticle in future articles. At SHOT was the first time I saw it live and I think it is going to work well for my purposes. I took a couple of blurry handheld pictures at 1x and at 8x, so you can see what it looks like. I will do better photography when the first production scopes get here.

CMR8 reticle at 8x

CMR8 reticle at 1x

My basic design concept was to have a large out horseshow that is outside the FOV at 8x, but salmost serves a ghost ring at 1x. At 8x, the smaller 10 mrad horseshow is the dominant feature designed to draw the eye to its center where there is a mil-scale and a small mrad-grid array that serves as elevation, wind and lead holds for typical 5.56, 6.5Grendel or 7.62×51 load out to 500-600 yards without the need to twist the turrets. The grid can also be used for quick rangefinding which I will cover in more detail later. However, the primary rangefinding features are the choke style rangefinders for both horizontal and vertical targets 1m and 1.75m in size.

CMR8

Aside from the reticle, the scope looked pretty well executed, but I will reserve judgement until I get a production unit and properly test it. The turrets are easily finger-adjustable with 0.1 mrad clicks. You can keep them exposed without any undue effects, but I prefer to run scopes like this type primarily with the reticle, so the included turret covers suit me well. The illumination starts at a couple of night vision compatible settings one one end and gets pretty bright on the other end. I am not convinced it will be day bright at 1x, but the reticle is designed to be very visible regardless. I will work it out for a range of lighting conditions once it gets here. Overall, the scope is fairly compact at only 10″ of length and at 22 ounces is not overly heavy for a 1-8x design. Field of view looks to be impressively wide and eye relief is longer than on the CMR4.

Hi-Lux Uni-Dial

The new Uni-Dial seems to be a new design and since I liked those programmable turrets originally, I will definitely test this one as well. The turrets seemed to have decent feel and tool-less reset. These days, many companies offer custom engraved turrets for their scopes. Uni-dial’s customizable nature approaches the same problem from a different angle. I suspect that the new Uni-Dial and Phenom HD are related design differing in reticle location and perhaps a few other design specifics and aesthetic features.

Hi-Lux Phenom HD 5-30x56FFP

The turrets are clearly different between the two with the Phenom being ore of a traditional precision scope design with knurled exposed turrets. Both offer a removable cat-tail for quick magnification adjsutments. The FFP reticle in the Phenom is a mil-grid style (along the same lines as Sig’s DEV-L, some Horus designs and many others) and generally this scope’s feature set is pretty ambitious. I think the Phenom and Uni-Dial will be the first of Hi-Lux’s new scopes I look at. With the CMR8 and the new competition scope following suite in late spring some time. As I mentioned earlier, between Hi-Lux and Athlon it looks like Chinese-made designs are really coming of age. Hi-Lux’s Phenom HD and CMR8 are ambitious designs, but if they are executed well could be a pretty major deal simply because of their sub-$1k price.

CMR4-based service rifle scope

The CMR4-based competition scope is fundamentally a direct response to the change in the service rifle competition rules that now allow magnified optics of no more than 4.5x of magnification and no more than 34mm objective. Bother March and Nightforce came out with scope specific for this competition, but both are expensive at $1900 for the Nightforce and well over $2k for March. I am sure they are exceptional, but I was curious to see what will be out there that is a bit more affordable. Well, this is an interesting design that will be far cheaper. Best I can tell, it is the regular CMR4 with the objective lens bumped up to 34mm and adjustable configuration to dial out parallax. The reticle is a fairly clean MOA-based design. Now that the rules allow for optics, I have been thinking about trying the service rifle competition. My original plan was to simply use my Elcan Spectre OS, but perhaps I will experiment with this one as well. Honestly, I think it is a clever way to quickly get a product to market using a proven platform. Similarly importantly, this is probably the largest objective for a low range variable scope out there. I am very curious to see how it does. At 4x, with a 34mm objective, this scope should have far better low light performance than most similar low range variable designs. While Hi-Lux was thinking of service rifle competition when they came up with this, I can think of a variety of other applications where it can do well.

Sig-Sauer Electro-Optics

I would like to start this with a formal complaint: I take my sweet time when I test precision riflescopes. After months of messing with it, I finally concluded that I really like Sig’s Tango6 scopes. Naturally, Sig responded by introducing an entirely new Tango6 line-up. The 1-6×24 is not too different, except the tall turrets I did not like are gone, replaced with covered low and wide knobs. It is also the only one with a 30mm tube. The rest are 34mm.

New Tango 6 3-18×44

The 3-18×44 got much shorter and noticeably fatter. It is now about the same length as the Leupold Mark 6 3-18×44, but a lot heavier. 4-24×50 is new, while the 5-60×56 appears to be similar to other designs coming from the same OEM (you all know who this is, but Tango6’s product manager seemed sensitive to this, so I won’t say it out loud). Other than the 1-6x, they all have 120 clicks per turn turrets (i.e. 12 mrad for me or some irrelevant number of MOA for the unholy MOA shooters out there…) that also have zero stop and locking capability (pull-up to unlokc, press down to lock). The 1-6×24 might also have that many clicks, but I did not check. The turret on the 1-6×24 is now eerily similar to the Vortex Razor HD Gen 2 1-6×24. I like all of these new turrets. The feel was good and the feature set is very rich. There is now an electronic level and, importantly for me, there is now a mil-grid Christmas tree stile reticle called DEV-L. For me, that is a big deal. The electronic level has two indicators that appear to be in the reticle plane, that light up when the scope is not level. They eat a little into the FOV, so I am trying to decide what I care about more: FOV or electronic level. I asked Sig to keep me in mind when the 4-24×50 shows up. While in principle a 3-18×44 is more up my alley, the 4-24×50 is only 3 ounces heavier, so I figured I would rather look at that model.

Sig Whiskey5 scopes

Whiskey 5 scopes have gone through an update as well. These are Japan-made hunting scopes that are now black in color (apparently the hunting crowd objected to greyish bodies). They also gain the previously mentioned electronic level. They look like fairly well worked out hunting scopes.

Other riflescope product lines (Tango4 and Whiskey3) look to be reasonably unchanged.

Sig’s excellent LRFs get an upgrade in the form of Kilo2200 and Kilo2400. Kilo2200 looks like its predecessor, but get a little more range. Kilo2400 doubles the price tag and adds a sophisticated ballistic calculator and a wind meter that plugs into your smartphone. Essentially, it is an attempt tog et rid of the Kestrel. I do not spend a whole lot of time looking at LRFs, but this got my interest.

Aside from that, Sig has a new full size red dot sight called Romeo6 that is apparently assembled in the US. It looks like a nice sight, but full-size red dots are not my cup of tea. It does have a solar battery, which I like (I just tested solar powered compact Romeo4). What did peak my interest was the Juliet4 4x magnifier. However, it seemed like it was a rather early prototype. There are not that many truly high quality magnifiers out there, so I am very curious to see what Sig came up with.

SHOT Show 2017, Part 1

binoculars, Handguns, New products, Rifle Scopes, Rifles, SHOT Show Comments Off

Feb 072017

Just like the videos (here), this is going to be long and laborious. If you manage to make your way through this whole thing, pour yourself a nice bourbon. Personally, I am starting with the bourbon now, as I write this. I suspect, it will be a living document for a few days (so Scotch and Rum might be involved in some stages of this creative process).

Docter Optics

DocterSight G

I liked the DocterSight III quite a bit, so I made sure I visit Docter Optics at SHOT. They are now owned by a company called Noblex. I am not sure what that means for Docter, but I hope that means more funding for R&D and increased marketing reach. Docter is one of those German companies that I can never quite figure out like Kaps or Nickel. I know Docter has an arm that deals with the military side of things since I have run into theei US arm in the past. In the commercial world, Docter has a fairly complete line of hunting scope and a few offerings intended for some sort of competition use. I am not up to speed on the types of competitions that exist in Europe, but it sounds like a low range variable scope with a simple dot reticle and bright illumination is just the ticket for that. Aside from that, these all look like very solid scopes with the V6 line standing out to me as the more modern offerings that probably go head to head price-wise against Meopta’s MeoStar R2 line, the new Leupold VX-6HD and a few others. I honestly do not know where these sit quality wise, but they looked pretty good offhand, so I will make sure I look at one. I think the V6 2-12×50 will be an interesting design to mount on my 280Rem and test. It looks like it only comes with the #4 reticle which I happen to like, but the illumination system looks to be exceptionally well worked out. There are quite a few other magnified scopes in the Docter line-up (some come with intersting colors…), but I have to start somewhere and I think I will start with the V6.

I think these are Cerakoted…

On the red dot sight, they have a couple of products that got my interest. The new DocterSight G is the next evolution of their miniature reflex sight, but with a much larger lens, so I expect it to be notably quicker to pick up. It will also have manual intensity adjustment. I expect it to land on our shores toward the end of the year and I will test it then. Quicksight, is on the other end of the spectrum: it is a freakishly small reflex sight intended for shotguns.

Docter Optics QuickSight

It has a different construction which allows it to have a very low axis. The construction uses some sort of a prism to redirect the projected dot, so the LED can be set underneath the lens. That way the body you can see to the right of the lens is basically just a battery compartment. Vertically, the sight is extremely short and low profile. Looking it over, I did not see any means of adjusting POA, so I suspect that on shotguns, it clips to the top rib of the barrel and is considered to be more or less sighted in by design. I would like to test that theory.

In short, I see some things at Docter that are very traditional and some are pretty innovative.

Janz Revolvers

They were right next to Docter and the revolver there looked very cool with interchangeable barrels, cylinders, etc. Once I learned that these start at around $6k, I walked away, but not before taking a couple of pictures.

Janz

The whole kit.

EOTech

EOTech had some reasonably well publicised issues involving their holographic sights which tarnished both the company and product in many ways. Beyond this acknowledgement, I will pretty much ignore all of that sordid history and focus on the new products. New products in question are Vudu riflescopes. Finally, EOTech offers a line of proper magnified sights and they seem to be pretty decent magnified sights. What I am not entirely sure of, is whether they are sufficiently differentiated from everybody else on the market who uses LOW’s OEM designs. What I do not know is whether EOTech has made any modification to these LOW designs outside of their own reticles and external cosmetics. The EOTech person I talked to said there was some additional customization, but I do not have an easy way to verify that. There are four riflescopes in the Vudu product line: 1-6×24, 2.5-10×44, 3.5-18×50 and 8-32×56. There are some discrepancies between the brochures I picked up at SHOT and the information on the website, but best I can tell, 1-6×24 and 2.5-10×44 are available as FFP models only, while 3.5-18×50 and 8-32×50 are available in both FFP and SFP configuration.

EOTech Vudu 1-6×24

The two reticles available in the 1-6×24 both built on the original circle-dot theme of the HWS. There is a 65 MOA circle that makes for a very quick CQB aiming point. However at 6x, it disappears outside the FOV and whatever is in the center of the reticle can be used for more precise shots. There you have an option of either a mil-scale or a horseshoe with caliber specific holdovers for either 5.56 or 7.62.

The reticles in the other scopes are fairly simple designs that look a little bit like Gen 2 MilDot (or Sig’s milling reticle) and are available in two versions: mrad-based and MOA-based. They look like perfectly respectable reticles, but I am surprised EOTech is not offering something along the lines of a Christmas tree or grid style reticle. I could have sworn I saw mention of H59 somewhere in the past, but I can’t find it anywhere now. Honestly, I think that is an oversight. I am curious to see how these scopes will do, so I sent an e-mail to the gentleman I talked to at SHOT to see if they are willing to lend me one to play with. The model I am most interested in is the 2.5-10×44. It is a very underlooked configuration and there are very few of these in FFP form. My plan is to compare it to US Optics B-10 1.8-10×42.

EOTech Vudu riflescopes and Q’s “The Fix” rifles

Oddly enough an item that caused a lot of interest in the EOTech booth was the rifle that a couple of the scopes were mounted on. The rifle in question is called “The Fix” by Q LLC. Best I can tell, Q employs a bunch of people that used to work at Sig and AAC. I am not sure if either one of those companies has a financial interest in Q and do not particularly care. The rifles were interesting and, unlike most modern chassis-style rifles, quite light. I made a mental note to look them up and I did. And then I pre-ordered one. I like the idea of huting with the same gun I use for precision shooting and my Desert Tech is a bit too heavy for that. The Fix with a 16″ 308Win barrel weights right around 6lbs and takes a regualr LR-308 magazine that costs abotu $20. A Desert Tech Covert with a 16″ 308WIn barrel weighs around 10lbs and the magazines are $100 each. Desert Tech is probably a better precision platform. I like the bullpup configuration and its weight distribution, I like the quick change barrels. However, if I wanted to buy a Covert to add to me Gen 1 Desert Tech SRS, I’d be out around $5500. The Fix is $2800 and weights four pounds less. If it proves accurate enough for my needs, I’ll have to pull off some sort of a miracle of self-persuasion to keep my old SRS. Ultimately, that will become the question of how much I want to keep my 338LM.

Nightforce Optics

There were two fairly new things at Nightforce booth this year: ATACR F1 7-35×56 and SR-1 Competition 4.5×24 scope. Both were announced a bit before SHOT, but that was the first time I got to see them. The little 4.5×24 looked mighty appealing to me (I like compact fixed power scopes, probably owing to how much time I have spent with various Mosin PU scopes) until I figured out that it costs right around $1900. I will freely admit that it looks like a very well optimized scope and I am sure it will do well with service rifle competitors, but I am having a hard time justifying that cost for a fixed power scope. Then again, I am not a service rifle competitor, so I might be missing something. Also, it is cheaper than the March 1-4.5×24 that is also new this year. On the other side of the spectrum the FFP 7-35×56 ATACR is intended for a very different audience and I suspect it will do very well with precision rifle shooters. It is pretty expensive at right around $3500, but that is more or less in line with the competition, although in all fairness, if you want more than 30x in a FFP scope there isn’t that much competion out there. S&B 5-45×56 is close to $5k. March 5-40×56 is probably the closest and it costs about the same. There were two 7-35x56s sitting in the Nightforce booth and one looked excellent while the other seemed a little iffy. I am guessing these were prototypes of some sort, but in the meantime I asked Nightforce to send me one of these for T&E. I really liked the 4-16×42 ATACR F1, so my expectations for the 7-35×56 are pretty high. I have not shot my 338LM in a little bit. This will be a good opportunity to do so.

Trijicon

The big recent news with Trijicon is their acquisition of IR Hunter. That was a shrewd move on their part. In my opinon these are the best engineered of the commercially available thermal sights. Now, with Trijicon’s marketing muscle behind them, we will likely see them get a bit more traction. The first obvious effect though is that the price has gone up… Now, in principle, Trijicon has something to offer regardless of the type of a weapon sight you are looking for. Between RMR and MRO the have some of the better red dot sights on the market. ACOGs and Compact ACOGs continue to do well (although some could models stand a refresh). Accupoint and Accupower cover conventional riflescopes fairly well, while TARS serves the precision market (not sure how much impact it has had).

Trijicon MRO

On the non-thermal side of things there is a new version of the MRO called “patrol” or something along those lines, which is the original MRO with a different mount and some accessories. I really like the MRO and prefer it over the Aimpoint Micro, and the new mount is a solid improvement. THe top mounted control dial is much easier for me to use with either hand than most other arrangements. As far as small tubualr red dot sights go, I sorta settled on the MRO is being my overall favourite with Hi-Lux MM2 being the bang for the buck champ.

There is also a new Accupower, and it is an interesting design being a FFP 1-8×28.

Trijicon 1-8×28

A slightly larger than the more common 24mm objective might make a difference at 8x. Aside from that, it looks suspiciously similar to the 1-8×24 design that Light Optical Works from Japan makes for a bunch of other people. That is not a bad thing since this is a very respectable design, but I am not really sure what changes Trijicon has introduced other than a slight bump in objective diameter. The reticles are simple and fairly effective designs: broken circle and a ranging scale. There are two versions, one with mrad scale and another with MOA scale.

I have mixed feelings about broken circle designs. They work adequately well, but a solid circle or a solid horseshoe is, I think a better option. One other nice feature thing is a removable cat tail.

I asked Trijicon who I should talk to if I want to borrow one of these for T&E, and they gave me a business card for a gentleman named Eddie Stevenson who is the President of Driftwood Media. Apparently, that is Trijicon’s PR firm. I reached out to Eddie and got a fairly quick reply politely asking who I am. I told him what I do here and never heard back from him. He is either really busy, or he deemed that I am not worthy of testing the new Trijicon. I might still borrow one from one of my dealer/distributor friends, but that sorta depends on how busy I am in this coming year. In years past, I tried to get my hands on every new scope in some manner, but that was before I was married and with kids. Nowadays, I follow the path of least resistance: I figure out what I want to compare, reach out to the makers and spend whatever time I have on the actual testing process. If I have to spend time chasing after a manufacturer or, in this case, a PR firm, that’s basically a non-starter for me. Most of the time, that means they will not deal with writers whose opinion they can not easily influence (via advertising revenue or other means), and I do not feel like delving into figuring this out.

Juggernaut Tactical

I had never heard of Juggernaut Tactical before, although they, like me, live behind enemy lines (in California) and have to comply with California insane laws.

JT CA-compliant Stock for AR-type rifles

JT’s CA-compliant Stock for AR-type rifles

They make a lot of miscellaneous parts for semiauto rifles including a bullpup chassis for M1A and a bunch of other things. What attracted my interest was there CA-compliant AR stock. It replaces the buffer tube and provides a pretty good way to make a “featureless” CA-compliant AR-15 or LR-308. Interestingly, the part of the buttstock that replaces the buffer tube is apparently three times thicker and it feels exceptionally sturdy. They also tell me, it gets rif of that annoying twang sound AR buffer tubes make. It comes with an extended takedown pin that serves as a thumb rest and still allows yo to use your original pistol grip (except you cant wrap you thumb around it). The length of pull was about right for me, and I think it will serve well on my LR-308 when it finally comes out.

Kel-tec

I always stop by the Kel-tec booth to see what they have that is new. They are an innovative company that really needs more manufacturing capacity. What has a really got my interest lately with Kel-tec is their RDB-C rifle. It is a semi-automatic bullpup rifle that does not have a pistol grip. What it does have is a very respectable trigger. Since there is no pistol grip, it should be allowed in the People’s Republic of Kalifornia. It was surprisingly comfortable to hold and when equipped with a 20″ barrel, the overall length is just over 30″. If they actually make it, they will have the bulk of the California market to themselves. They have a 5.56 variant and they are working on a 6.5Grendel one. I will buy both when available.

US Optics

I’ve always had a somewhat complicated relationship with US Optics. I like a lot about this company, but for a little bit I thought that the market has sorta passed them buy. They did not have a whole lot of new development (they did have some with low range variables) and while I am a big fan of the EREK knob, I do not like the low magnification tunneling and I did not like how much their scopes cost. This year, they’ve got the new B-series scopes which are newer iterations of the original 1.8-10x, 3.2x-17 and 5-25 designs called B-10, B-17 and B-25 respectively. They told me that there were some changes in the system that helped with the tunneling and the turret box was redesigned a bit to be more streamlined. The tunneling is still there, but looks less pronounced. The elevation turret is still excellent, and, very importantly, the pricing is a bit more reasonable, at least for the B-10 which lists somewhere around $1700. B-17 and B-25 list at $2300 and $3300 respectively. B-10 is the one that I would like to look at. It is reasonably compact and I really want to give the new turrets a workout with the new zero stop design, tool-less zero, etc. I glanced at their website and it looks like they are still making changes to it. At the moment they’ve got some rather questionable product categories there, but I will reserve judgement until it is all updated.

Shield Sights

This is a British company I stumbled onto purely by accident. Apparently, they make Jpoint and have, in the past made a bunch of miniature reflex sights for others, like Trijicon. They are now marketing their sights under their own brand and best I can tell, they have been in use by British military for quite some time. There is a rumor floating around that their rifle sight (either SQS or SIS, I guess) proved to be more reliable than Aimpoint Micro in some British trials. If true, that is pretty impressive. Aimpoint Micro is a nice sight. Shield currently has for reflex sights in their product line. The original miniature reflex sight is called SMS (Shield Mini Sight) is what you get if you order a Jpoint and a few other sights. Best I can tell, this is the only one that Shield OEMs for others. The other models are RMS (Reflex Mini Sight), CQS (Close Quarter Sportsight) and SIS (Switchable Interface Sight).

Shield SIS

The SIS feature list, interestingly, enough, looks like someone reached into my notes and made a carbine/backup sight based on them: it has three auto adjust modes and a manual adjust mode, it has four reticles you can switch between (8MOA dot, 4MOA dot, 1MOA dot with a 65MOA ring made out of 12 dots, and SIS 2MOA bullet drop). It also looks pretty indestructible and very compact. The SIS 2MOA bullet drop reticle is unique to the SIS, while the other four reticle are available in the other sights as well.

1MOA with 65MAO circle reticle

CQS looks pretty similar to the SIS, so I am assuming it is the earlier version. That is the sight that is in service with the British military. Like the SIS and RMS, it has an aluminum body (earlier SMS has a plastic body). You lose some of the options you have with the SIS and save about a hundred bucks. I think SIS runs ~$500 and CQS runs around $400, so they are up against some pretty serious competition, and I am very curious to see how they stack up.

Shield RMS

For handguns, the sight that really got my attention is the RMS. It has the lowest base of any red dot I have seen and looks like it would be a perfect match for cowitnessing iron sights. With the proprietary plate, it cowitnesses with standard Glock sights, which is kinda remarkable. Basically, the body of the sight below the lens is concealed by the rear sight and does not interfere with the sight picture. That means that all the presentation drills I do with iron sights are not wasted. With RMS, I do not have to change a thing.

I sent the gentleman who owns Shield an e-mail to see if I can get my hands on one. We will see how it goes, but I am pretty pumped about these.

Nite-Site

Another British company around the corner from Shield was Nite-Eyes. I was probably pre-dispositioned to not take them very seriously since I have a pet peeve about intentionally misspelling words. I am not sure what the reasoning is behind butchering the words “Night” and “Sight”. Maybe they were trying to write in ebonics or something. I was not born in this country and I worked very hard to learn this language. I sorta take it personally when people butcher it for no good reason.

Nite-Site gizmo

This company makes a Near InfraRed camera that clamps onto your scope and blasts the image from the eyepiece onto a screen that hangs a few inches above the scope. The gizmo with the screen also contains a NIR illuminator that points in the same direction as the barrel. I see a few problems with this approach. First of all, if you are shooting a rifle with any sort of recoil, that camera will smack you in the face. Looking up at that screen while shooting is very unnatural and breaks your cheekweld, since looking at the screen without breaking your cheekweld did not work for me due to camera housing blocking the line of sight. Then again, they had it all set up with on a Rudolph scope, which kinda stands to reason… On a plus side, the had a standalone system that was essentially a NIR spotter: it integrates a NIR camera and illuminator into one module with a screen on the back. That seems like a perfectly viable idea except for some ergonomic issues. They claim that it is designed to spot things out to several hundred yards which requires some means of holding it in a stable manner. The way it is right now is not conducive to that. Still, that is a fairly clever gadget, while their system that attaches to a scope is… well, I think you worked out what I think about it.

Sightron

Sightron did not have too many new things this time around. They now offer simple plex reticles in some of their high magnification scopes. There is a new small rimfire scope in the SIH line (3-9×32) which looks like a pretty nice little scope, but a simple crosshair reticle it comes with is not my cup of tea. I think there were a couple of new SII Blue Sky spotters as well. The two announcements that are of interest to me were in two far removed from each other market segments: miniature red dots sights and ultra high magnification target scopes.

ED Glass in Sightron’s next to of the line scope

I spent a lot of time with Sightron’s SV 10-50×60 target scope and really liked the innovative dual speed side focus. That scope was almost good enough to go head to head with the Marches of this world, but did have some annoying CA at high magnification. More importantly, Vortex’ new Golden Eagle cost a bit less and performs better at high mag. Now, Sightron has updated this scope with ED glass, which should help at high mag. It should be out in late spring some time and I will make sure I get my hands on it. On the opposite side of the spectrum, it looks like Sightron is finally getting into the miniature red dot sight business with their new SRS6 that features a 6MOA dot and a battery compartment accessible form the top. I’ll make sure I look at that one too.

SHOT Show 2017 Impressions (videos)

binoculars, Rifle Scopes, Rifles, SHOT Show, Spotting Scope Comments Off

Feb 012017

While I work on the pictures and some written commentary, here are the video clips of my ramblings after SHOT. I apologize about how disorganized these are, but they are mostly intended as a means for me to record my impressions before they fade.

These are long and meandering, so watch at your own risk…

Levenhuk Sherman Pro 6.5×32

binoculars Comments Off

Jul 202016

Written by ILya Koshkin, July 2016

Levenhuk Serman Pro 6.5×32

If you look up a brand name “Levenhuk”, you’ll see all sorts of products that would ordinarily be outside of the scope of the things I look at.

The folks at Levenhuk reached out to me through my website asking if I want to review something. I am guessing that they are a growing brand looking for publicity. I do not think they will be too excited about my take on their Sherman Pro binocular, but such is life.

I dug through their website and found that they market a 6.5×32 binocular with very wide FOV. The specs looked identical to United Optics BW18. United Optics is a Chinese OEM company that makes a great variety of things including binoculars, some of which are reputed to be quite decent.

Here is a link to the United Optics page that lists the BW18 family:

http://www.united-optics.com/products/binoculars/Huniting_Birding_Outdoor_Binoculars/BW18_Series/BW18_Series.html

Here is a link to the Levenhuk page with the Sherman Pro 6.5×32 which looks liek the same binocular to me:

https://www.levenhuk.com/catalogue/binoculars/levenhuk-sherman-pro-6-5×32/#.V4-rQ7grK8M

Prior to looking at this binocular, the only knowledge of the Levenhuk company I had was through the OpticsTalk forum. For a while someone was actively spamming the forum with Levenhuk links and the same robot would occasionally barge onto my website with the same spam. Well, as you imagine, all spam was deleted immediately. I think most people have the same opinion of unsolicited spam and there is a reason professional spammer try to remain anonymous. Even cops would probably refuse to protect them.

Still, the name Levenhuk reminds me of early science classes I had in Russia where we talked about a 17th century Dutch scientist who is effectively the father of microscopy. Technically, his correctly spelled name is Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (here is a Wikipedia article on him), but I can’t even begun to try to figure out how to pronounce that correctly. In Russia we spelled it “Levenhuk” and I suspect the correct pronunciation is not too different from that.

We mostly studied him because he was a contemporary of the Russian Czar Peter the Great who lived in Holland for a bit and met with Leeuwenhoek at some point. Leeuwenhoek was the discoverer of single cell organisms owing to his ability to build homemade microscopes that far surpassed anything available in his day. Read up on him if you are curious, but I suspect that he was one of those freakishly brilliant people who pop up in human history occasionally and make a difference. Most of them die early, but Leeuwenhoek lived until 90, so he built a LOT of microscopes.

That aside, the Levenhuk company seems to market a great variety of Chinese OEM’ed products and the Sherman Pro binocular I looked at is one of their higher end offerings.

I like 6x or similar binoculars (my go to binocular is a Vortex Viper 6×32 and has been for a few years now), so this was an interesting test to do. In addition to the Viper 6×32 which is much more expensive, I have Vortex Raptor 6.5×32 and Kowa YF 6×30, which are priced similarly to the Sherman Pro and offer a good comparison.

Naturally, let’s start with a spec comparison table:

	Vortex Raptor 6.5×32	Levenhuk Sherman Pro 6.5×32	Leupold Yosemite 6×30	Kowa YF30 6×30	Vortex Viper and Viper HD 6×32
Weight, ozs	17.3	25.6	17	16.5	19.4
Size, in	4.5 x 5.7	4.4×7.2	4.6 (H)	4.5×6.3	4.9 x 4.8
Field of View, ft@1000yards	410	525	420	420	420
Eye Relief, mm	20	21	18.5	20	19.5
Close Focus, ft	15	9.8	10	16.4	3
Price	$95	$135	$85	$99	~$550

I included the Leupold Yosemite 6×30 in there, but I do not have one of those in hand. I gave it to my nephew and he lost somewhere in Alaska earlier this summer. Kowa YF30 is the same binocular as the first generation of Leupold Yosemite was. Leupold moved their production to a different place in China and, in my opinion, the new Yosemite 6×30 is ever so slightly worse than the original one, and I know how they compare.

All the numbers are from company websites and I did not fact check every single one, but nothing there jumps out at me as particularly fraudulent. Other than the Viper, all of these binoculars are made in China.

On paper, the Levenhuk looks good. It is a bit heavy, but it has long eye relief and massive FOV. There are some differences in close focus distances, but I sorta assume that if you are looking for a close focus binocular, you will not be going with a traditional porro anyway. Those widely spaced objectives make close focus difficult. If you are interested in close focus you should be looking at inverse porro or roof binoculars.

Side-by-side, it is apparent that Levenhuk has the widest FOV, just as the table suggests. It is also the largest and heaviest binocular here, just as the table suggests.

If you look at the pictures, it is readily apparent that the eyepieces on the Sherman Pro are notably larger diameter than on the other binoculars here and the prisms are a fair bit more massive either.

While I am generally all for extracting lots of FOV from my binoculars, in this case I have decidedly mixed feelings on the subject. While the FOV of the binocular is indeed impressively sharp, the sweetspot is not very large. My best guess is that center sharpness is maintained for about 30-35% of the FOV and outside of that, the image gets softer quickly and all sorts of geometrical aberrations start setting in.

From the handling standpoint, the large prisms move my hands sufficiently far apart that reaching the focus wheel is fairly uncomfortable. I have average sized hands, so someone with larger hands would not have that issue. The size of the eyecups did not give me any issues. They are a little larger than those of the other binoculars here, so they index on a different spot of my eye socket.

Still, the eyecups are pretty comfortable and getting them aligned for my eyes was not difficult.

While we are on the subject of eyecups, I think they are supposed to have two intermediary clickstops between the “all the way in” and “all the way out” settings. On the left eyecup, those positions are reasonably distinct. On the right eyecup, you have to really focus to figure out where they are. If the way you use binoculars involves applying a fair amount of pressure against your eye socket, the intermediary positions on the Sherman Pro eyecups do not do much: they collapse. For practical purposes: it is either all the way collapsed or all the way pulled out.

I have a fairly simple durability test for binoculars: I leave them in the trunk of my car for a few months. Now, they are wrapped up and they do not bounce around. I am not trying to abuse them. However, I live in California, so they get fairly hot and I drive an offroader, so there is some vibration. That is a fairly normal use case for me: I always have a pair of binoculars in the car and that is the minimum abuse they have to sustain.

When I first received the Sherman Pro binocular, I tested them in a variety of lighting conditions. Then I shoved them into the trunk of my car for about three months. It was not supposed to be three months, but my day job went into overdrive and I was busy. Now, I pulled them out and tested them again. I do not think they faired too well, since now it takes less than a minute of staring through them to develop a searing headache. My best guess is that they developed some sort of a collimation issue that was not there before.

Outside of that, mechanical feel was fairly decent. Build quality was reasonable and the focusing knob adequately smooth. There was a little hysteresis, but not enough to cause problems. I did not check how waterproof it is.

Optically, as I mentioned above, the sweetspot was pretty small and the sharpness roll off toward the edges was quite noticeable. Chromatic aberration is usually not too prominent in low magnification binoculars, and this one is no exception. I did not see much of it at all in the center of the FOV and it got a little more noticeable toward the edges. Color cast was fairly neutral and overall contrast was respectable.

Side-to-side against the Vortex Raptor which is its most direct competitor, Sherman Pro was able to stay close in terms of optics, but the Raptor was a touch better in terms of both resolution and contrast. While the Raptor’s FOV was smaller, the sweetspot was actually larger and I did not run into any QC issues with the Raptor.

Similarly, there were no QC issues with the Kowa and while it has slightly lower magnification, it was just a touch behind the Raptor in resolution and similar to the Sherman Pro.

Both the Vortex and the Kowa have slightly more compact housings, so there was a little less reach to get to the focusing knob. That was a better fit for my hands.

To summarize: Levenhuk Sherman Pro I looked at had a couple of QC issues. Since I only looked at one, I do not know how prominent such things are in this product family, but this is not a good sign. As far as general performance goes, even without the QC issues I would have a hard time making a case for the Sherman Pro instead of the Raptor or Kowa YF. Of course, had the edge performance been better, perhaps my conclusions would also be different. As is though, I am not terribly impressed.

New binocular article

binoculars Comments Off

Feb 072014

I have been so focused on riflescopes lately that I neglected the other optical devices that I originally promised to keep looking at. Here is an article on three binoculars that I spent considerable amount of time using side-by-side with each other.

http://opticsthoughts.com/?page_id=1289

ILya