When I originally started this website one of the things I wanted to do was put together a series of brand overviews. I wrote a few, but then sorta gave up since the brands were changing their product lines quickly enough to make my overviews rapidly obsolete. The ones I wrote several years ago are here. Written 8-9 years ago, they are not terribly relevant today. However, it was interesting to re-read them and see what happened since. For example, Nikon managed to get rid of all the better scopes they had and decided to stick to strictly second tier (and I am being generous) stuff. SWFA stuck with what worked and gradually expanded their SS scope line-up. Burris has largely cleaned up their act and their product line makes sense to me. Leupold has definitely made significant strides in the other direction. While my original musings are not strictly speaking relevant, I kinda enjoyed going over them to see if the trends I saw back then panned out. With that in mind, I decided to add a few overviews of other brands as time allows, starting with March optics.
The reason I chose to start with March, is two fold:
- There has been a fair amount of confusion about the company in recent months stemming from them parting ways with their US distributor.
- I am revisiting a few of their scopes, so I am up to speed on what they have been up to.
March’s world wide website is www.MarchScopes.com and that will have the most up to date information on the company and their product line. The company that manufactures March scopes is called Deon Optical Design Corporation and that’s their website. The website www.marchoptics.com is owned by March’s former US distributor and, presumably, they are keeping it up as they sell off what little inventory they’ve got remaining. Unfortunately, when people search for March products they often end up on the wrong website and assume that March is going out of business. Nothing could be further from the truth. March seems to be doing just fine and they are working on several new and interesting designs. I am somewhat friendly with the folks at Deon, so I have insight into what’s coming. As is always the case, I can’t divulge too many details, but it seems they are listening to the market and making steps in the right direction. In the US, their scopes are available via SWFA, Europtics and Longrange Shooting Supply. Since I live in the US, I am not up to speed on who distributes them in other countries, but all of that information is on their website.
Here is the links to where they all are on SWFA website:
https://www.swfa.com/optics/riflescopes.html#brand=March
March makes a ton of different configurations and I am not going to go into detail on all of them all. Instead, I will point out a few highlights and if you have questions about anything specific, please ask me in the comments below.
I had looked at a good number of March scopes years ago, but then largely ignored them since the then new (now former) US distributor and I did not make a good connection. However, I always liked the products, and to a significant degree because of how well they were packaged. March scopes were usually shorter and lighter than the competition, while offering high erector ratios. Now, there are compromises involved with that, but I know what they are, so I can work around them quite comfortably. This makes several March scopes really interesting candidates for what I call “crossover” applications where I can do everything from hunting to precision shooting with the same scope. That’s one of the reasons I ended up looking at them again: I wanted a proper crossover scope for my hunting rifle. I like to practice at distance and a regular hunting scope left me wanting at 1000 yards. I would never take that shot at game, but I shooting at plates is a different ballgame. Besides, my 280Rem is freakishly accurate and stays supersonic well beyond 1k. At around 24 ounces, March’s 3-24×52 is easily one of the better crossover scopes out there, hence my interest.
Generally, March’s product offerings can be loosely divided into four types:
- High magnification target scopes
- FFP and SFP tactical and precision scopes
- FFP and SFP low power variables for general purpose use
- ELR scopes
I am not much of a target shooter, but I will say that March’s target scopes have absolutely spectacular resolution and some interesting tricks up their sleeve. For example, they have a scope with eyepiece zoom that is effectively a neat trick of adding a little bit of variable magnification to what is effectively a fixed power scope. Their current offerings are 48×52 and 40-60×53 High Master scopes. They have a new optical system they called High Master and it is not restricted to target scopes. I am not crazy about the name, but image quality is absolutely spectacular even for an optics snob like me. The new optical system is also more stable with temperature changes. Apparently, that makes a big difference for F/T airgun shooters who calibrate their parallax for range finding.
The other two categories are closer to what I normally look at, so I have a LOT of mileage with those. The previously mentioned 3-24×52 FFP scope is their light-ish precision and crossover scope. It was preceded by the 3-24×42 that they still make. It was a good scope (I used to own one), but I like the 52mm version more. They also have a 5-40×56 scope and a new 5-42×56 precision scope coming out that looks very promising. With SFP, their range is 2.5-25×42, 2.5-25×52, 5-50×56, 8-80×56, 5-32×52, 10-60×52 and 10-60×56 High Master. There is a lot of overlap there and, honestly, the two that stand out to me are the 2.5-25×52 and 10-60×56 High Master. The 2.5-25×42 is a very nice compact design, but the 52mm version is not that much bigger. These two, aside from the precision applications, also make for very decent hunting scopes. March reticles are on the thin side, so illumination is a good thing to have. With the high magnification scopes, I think the new optical system is worth the extra money. The magnification range does not look as impressive on paper as 8-80x, but there is a tangible improvement to the already good image quality with the High Master optics.
LPVOs are kind of an interesting thing with March. They march (pun intended) to the beat of their own drum, which often produces interesting products that unlike most things out there. They started out with a SFP 1-10×24 scope quite a few years ago that is probably still the best 1-10x on the market today. Unusually for a low power scope, it has parallax adjustment, so it can do just about anything in a pinch from 10 yards on out. The FFP counterpart of this scopes is the 1-8×24 that also has adjustable parallax making it an interesting alround choice. Their newest 1-8x24FFP is the “Shorty” that is barely longer than eight inches and weighs 17 ounces. That’s the scope I am looking at as well, since I want to explore how it might do in a DMR role with a clip-on. March’s FFP scopes have reticle illumination that is not terribly bright, so it does not do much for visibility in bright daylight, but works well otherwise. With SFP scopes, they now have a couple of models with very bright fiber optic illuminated dot (reticles called FD-1 and FD-2 have that). It started out in their 1-4×24 scope (with very large exit pupil on 1x for speed), but it is also available in the 1-10x and, I think, 2.5-25x. They also make a 1-4.5×24 variable for CMP competition, but I have never looked at it, so I do not have much to say on the subject.
Lastly, March has come up with a dedicated riflescope line for ELR shooting, called Genesis. A lot has been written about these, so I am not going to re-hash it too much. Fundamentally, it is a new take on a scope with external adjustments. It really helps with optics, since you are always looking right down the optical axis and it full decouple the adjustment range from any manner of optical considerations. That allows them to get some a really huge adjustment range in a FFP scope with 10x erector ration: 6-60×56. I have seen this scope, but I have not tested it. I have some reservations about the need of 6x for ELR, but it is a really interesting design that is unlike anything else out there.
They have new things coming next year both in terms of scopes and in terms of improved turrets. Honestly, I always thought their turrets were very good, but it looks like they plan to make some improvements to how the zero stop is set up among other things. I’ll do a separate post on that as details become available. I suspect they will have a full announcement at SHOT.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.