Sniper ZT 5-25×50

by moondog on March 30, 2022 with No Comments

The Sniper ZT was sent to me by Texas Precision Optics of Dallas, TX which markets the brand. Any scope with the brand name “Sniper” either has the stones to actually live up to the name or just a poseur brand. With a price just under $300 for a 5-25x first focal plane, I suspected the later.

The ZT comes with a wealth of accessories in the box including a parallax focus wheel, sun shade tube, anti-flash filter, and heavy duty scope mount. In general, a budget scope that is loaded with this many accessories is a huge red flag that the product is pig in makeup. The scope and the accessories did appear well constructed but I was still not convinced.

The scope has an integrated throw lever of sorts, in the form of a raised skeletonize fin on the magnification ring. It features a red and a green reticle illuminator with 5-intensity settings. While almost daylight bright, it illuminates only the center T-shape of the reticle.

The First Focal Plane, reticle is configured in a german-stye ‘T’ with 1 and 0.5 MOA sub-tension hash marks for precision shooting. At 5x it appears very fine and light which may be hard to use in a hunting application as it is easily lost in the background, but the thinness is ideal for precision shooting, especially for rimfire. But for rimfire precision, I would have wanted the center ‘T’ to have had a gap for better target placement.

The eye-relief was more than fair at 3.7″ with a decent eye-box that did become a bit unforgiving at 25x. The image quality was somewhat typical for a budget scope: milky, with low contrast and detail, and chromatic aberrations. But what did surprise me was that scope had exceptionally good resolving power beating both my Athlon Helos and Vortex Diamondback Tactical in this regard (though the later has a brighter and cleaner image).

All in all, the Sniper ZT was a surprisingly good scope for a street price under $280. Its turrets tracked and returned to zero. The optics are a mixed bag with very noticeable chromatic aberration. As to it’s durability and reliability, that I’ll need to discover over time.

This scope is available on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3up8K6V

Learn more at Texas Precision Optics: ZT 5-25×50 FFP First Focal Plane (FFP) Scope

USAF OPTICAL RESOLUTION PERFORMANCE
Group -1 : Element 4

SPECS
MODEL: ZT5-25x50FFP