UTG/Leapers is a Taiwan based maker of optics and firearms accessories that is often miscategorized as a cheap Chinese knock-off brand. But their most recent offerings are often original designs that often copied by the aforementioned knock-off brands. Case in point, their Recon Flex II bipod was one of the first direct attach M-Lok bipods to market.
I purchased the Gen 1 Recon Flex a few years back and found it to be an affordable, rugged, and stable bipod. In addition, its side-mounted M-Lok design made it exceptionally low profile when stowed. It’s major drawback was it’s slow speed in deployment compared to spring-loaded Harris style bipods.
This deficiency was the main feature rectified in the Recon Flex II. Like a Harris bipod, the Flex II has spring loaded lower legs which quickly extend the legs to max extension when the locking tab is pressed. The Flex II also features smaller metallic feet which can be user replaced with Atlas compatible pads.
The lower legs are sectioned to index when adjusting for height. The release tab must be pressed to retract or extend, unlike the Gen 1, which could be pulled out without depressing the release tab. Like the Gen 1 the Flex II has an adjustment wheel should you require a leg length between index stops to level a rifle on uneven terrain.
The Flex II still has not come up with a quicker means to deploy the legs. Unfortunately, the slight redesign of the locking collar with a less aggressive checkering, makes the legs harder to unlock and deploy compared to the Gen 1. A slightly flared collar or raised checkering might solve some of this but the short of adding spring loaded legs or creating an unlocked free swinging mode, this design will never be as quick to deploy as a Harris-style bipod. The trade off for the quick deployment its legs is a thinner profile when stowed and the option to angle the legs forward to pre-load the tripod.
Because of the bipods M-Lok side-mounting, the bipod can not swivel or cant. For some shooters this is no loss and may be preferred. The Flex II offers a very rigid and strong shooting platform which just a slight amount of give for micro-adjustments required for precision shooters.
Overall the Flex II is an improvement on the Gen 1 but the changes are not all improvements. The two handed leg lock design and the smoother locking collar both make for a new design which can actually be slower to use than the original Recon Flex. But a retail price still below a $100, this is one of the most affordable high-quality, bipods available.
This Recon Flex II is available on Amazon through my affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3sL5ItE
Hawke is one of the top hunting optics makers in the United Kingdom and the largest maker of precision airgun optics in the world. But chances are, unless you shoot competitive or hunting airguns in the U.S., you’ve never heard of Hawke scopes. You should.
I meet the folks at Hawke at Shot Show this year and they showed me some of their newest products. The Sidewinder caught my eye because it had an unusual temperature gauge like window in the elevation turret, to indicate how many revolutions you turned. I wanted to get my hands on one to test at the range and Hawke was kind enough to send me a Sidewinder 30 6-24×56 FFP model.
The box had a clean, white design indicative of in high end European brands. Inside was a scope, sun shade, parallax focus wheel, throw leaver, cleaning cloth, allen wrench, and instruction book. The scope came with a modern update of old-school see-through caps, kept in place with an elastic band.
On close inspection the scope was of excellent build. The 30 in the name denotes the tube dimension which offers it a wider range of reticle adjustments from their older 1″ tube designs. My first impression was that the scope felt light and its stated weight of 27.3oz is approx 6oz lighter than my Athlon Helos Gen2. The tube has a smooth matte black finish and all the nobs and turning surfaces are well checkered and treaded to aid in manipulation for wet or gloved fingers.
The parallax focus and ocular fast focus turned smoothly. The parallax ranges from 10yrds to infinity. The eyepiece ocular/reticle focus has locking ring, an uncommon feature nowadays but a welcome one for hunters.
It’s most striking feature, and which originally caught my eye, is the elevation turret. At the base of the turret there is a witness window showing a red-on-white gauge numbered 0-4, which rises or falls with the turn of the turret cap. The turret clicks are clearly audible and tactile positive. Both turrets are locking, with a pull-to release allowing the cap to turn freely.
The elevation turret had a noticeable wobble when released. This concerned me enough to contact Hawke which suggested I send it back to have a Service Tech examine it. Hawke was a no-fault lifetime warranty, so this was done easily, with them sending me a mailing label to ship it back to them.
A few weeks later, I followed up and their Tech assured me that there was nothing wrong with my scope. The wobble is an unintended side effect to the unique design of the elevation turret. They shipped it back to me that same week.
I would like to note that the “wobble” did not effect the function of the scope in my testing. The windage turret, of a traditional design, had no wobble. Both turrets are resettable by unscrewing the cap.
The scope has an illumination dial on the parallax turret. The center third of the reticle illuminates red when activated. The dial has settings from 1-6 in intensity with an off-setting between the numbers. At its highest setting at 24x magnification, the reticle is bright enough for daylight use.
The reticle itself is exceptionally fine/thin to a fault. It is a cruciform, Christmas-tree style with MIL sub-tensions. At 6x it floats in the center of the field of view without touching the edges. As a First Focal Plane (FFP) reticle, it thickens up considerably at 24x to a weight more typical of a SFP reticle.
This reticle may appeal more to target shooters rather than hunters? At 6x it is so thin as to be easily lost in heavy foliage. Then again, some hunters may want a clearer field of view when wide scanning at 6x.
Most MIL or MOA target reticles (especially Christmas-tree style) have a few reference numbers along the reticle sub-tensions to indicated MOA or MIL radiant from center. The Hawke Sidewinder lacks any numbers or letters and is as naked as a duplex reticle. This has the advantage of offering the user a much less cluttered sight picture even for a Christmas-tree reticle but with the added challenge of carefully reading their user manual and remembering the size and distance each sub-tension mark.
As a primarily Precision competition shooter, this thin and simplified reticle very much works for me. The Christmas-Tree employs mini cross-hairs instead of dots to denote its holdover positions which makes shooting at paper much easier. But for an ELR or NRL22 shooter, you’ll have to devise your own cheat sheet and get very used to remembering and counting your marks.
The scope has a generous 4″ and the eyebox was better than most even at 24x. Looking at my reference targets at 24x at 100yrds, there were noticeable chromatic aberration but the image was evenly sharp from center to edge. The image was bright, though slightly warm in tinge and lacked a bit of contrast compared with Vortex and Leupold scopes I’ve tested.
Where this scope shines is in sharpness and resolution. You can easily make out .22 caliber holes on paper at 100yrds. On the USAF-51 optical resolution chart, I could make out the Element 1 / Group 0 element bars with my naked eye (my phone camera could only make out Element 6 / Group -1). This puts it on par with a comparably priced Leupold Mark 3HD and almost as sharp as much more expensive Leupold Mark 5HD.
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It’s become more common to find affordable first focal plane (FFP) variable optics scopes. But it’s rare to find one that’s 4-16x that’s less than 10.5″ long. The Texas Precision Optics Sniper VT 4-16×44 MFFP First Focal Plane (FFP) Scope is that unicorn.
Any scope with the brand name “Sniper” leaves many a tad dubious. But my review of Sniper ZT 5-25×50 left with with a positive impression, especially with the high quality accessories that came with the package. I opened the box more hopeful than skeptical.
Reflective of the lower price point, the VT comes with far fewer accessories than the ZT. The box like the scope was unexpectedly small containing the scope, flip-up lens covers, CR1620 button batteries, an Allen key, cleaning cloth, and a scope mount. The scope came pre-mounted on a skeletonized cantilever mount.
I’ve never seen a scope mount design quite as squared off as this one but it appeared well made and strong enough to handle full-sized rifle cartridge recoil; though the cross bolts were rounded and lacked any lugs or stop blocks.
One glaring issue with the mount is that the locking screws are the right-hand side (as installed). The mount designers made a confounding decision to place the screws where they did and I suspect were not avid shooters. This puts the screws in the way of many rifle bolt lever or charging handles.
More than once I banged a knuckle while working the action of my Ruger 10/22. I had to take off the scope and reverse the direction of the mount which worked on my 10/22 rail but may not work for other rifle setups. I would recommend Texas Precision Optics change the position of the screw bolts or request the factory to reverse the direction of the scope when installing it.
I found some minor issues with the scope and turrets. The etching of the numbers and lettering along with the metallic gold point used to highlight it, made it annoyingly hard to read some of the numbers on the turrets. The turrets had some slop and weren’t as tactical or audible as the ZT. In fact the first sample Texas Precision Optics sent me had some tracking issues but their customer service quickly sent me a replacement and return label without issue.
The optics quality were underwhelming; not very bright and with noticeable chromatic aberration at its highest power setting. About on par to a similarly sized UTG Bugbuster in terms of clarity though with higher magnification. Where it did exceed the Bugbuster was the VT’s more detailed first focal plane reticle, which has MIL hashmarks and a LPVO style central dot and horse shoe design.
Regarding the aforementioned UTG 3-9×32 scope, the VT is essentially a better Bugbuster. The VT is 1.5″ longer but still short enough to fit inside a Ruger 10/22 Takedown case. It has a better illuminated reticle and higher magnification power which makes it far more usable at ranges of 100 yards or more. And while I would like a scope with better optics than the VT, in the case of my 10/22 Takedown, size matters.
Biometric gun safes have gotten cheaper but some of the cheapest are cheap for a reason. I’ve seen a video of the biometric sensor activating when another finger or even just the palm of the hand was pressed down upon it. One Amazon reviewer reported that their son was able to open his safe, presumably because of the similarities in fingerprint between father and son due to genetics.
So I wanted to make sure that in testing a RexMeo biometric gun safe, that it couldn’t be defeated by genetics. After keying in my fingerprint into the sensor and confirming that only my thumb would open the lock (and another finger). I asked my 9-year old son to try and open the lock using his thumb and other fingers on the sensor. I’m happy to report that he was unsuccessful.
As a parent, I’ve taught both of my children gun safety and have taken them shooting at the gun range. They know I keep guns in the house and not to touch our firearms without my direct supervision. But I know that I can’t watch them all the time or any child that may enter my home as a guest. That’s why I keep firearms hidden, in safes and in locked cases. While no solution is completely fool proof or child proof, it is a fool relies on technology to keep his family safe. The first and most important step you can take is education.
I received these back-up iron sights (BUIS) to test and review, which was quite timely because I was looking to add iron sights to my Ruger Precision Rimfire which I’ll cover in another article. These are pretty generic AR-style flip-up iron sights. You’ve seen these BUIS designs sold under a variety of US brands including Troy Industries, Midwest Industries, etc. I believe the design originated from Heckler & Koch, though I can’t be certain of this?
This design has been copied by Chinese EOMs and sold under countless brands like Feyachi, CVLife, Marmot, and many more brands you’ve never heard of, like Nelahol. Despite not knowing anything about this brand, I went under the assumption that they’re all made by the same handful of factories using the same copies of CNC milling specs. The only difference is the quality of the screws and aluminum stamped components. Plus, they were fairly inexpensive and covered the Amazon no-fault return so I figured I had nothing to lose trying it out.
The BUIS came in a thin black plastic case. Inside were the the front and rear sights and an allen wrench. No instructions and no branding.
On close inspection, they seemed well machined. No blems on the finish, pits or unfinished edges of the parts. The spring loaded flip-up sights deployed without issue. The front was an A1 AR-style post and the rear was a 2-position CQB and small aperture peep sight. The rear windage peep sights are finger adjustable with tactile positive indexed clicks.
Like most HK-style BUIS, the sights and spring loaded and lock in the elevated position, when flipped up. A small side pun near the hinge is pressed to unlock the sight. The sights may be pushed down flat against the hand guard/receiver providing a very low profile when not in use (hence the their use as ‘back-up’ sights to red dots and other optics).
The bases mount to Picatinny rails with enough clearance to rock them onto a slot. They required a bit of extra finger torque to clamp down solidly on my rail. I suspect the screws could use a bit of lock-tite to keep them from loosening.
I zero’d and tested them at 25yrds and found the sights were repeatable and didn’t lose zero in a limited sample of 50rnds. My only issue was that the front sight pin’s screw lacked sufficient clearance around it to use my AR sight tool to seat them below the base of the screw well. The need for that depression was specific to my Ruger RPR and may not effect most AR users.
I was fortunate that this brand put out very workable BUIS that do the job for an affordable price. Are they as durable or rugged as German-made HK sights or similar US made sights; probably not. But for your average home owner who wants a BUIS for their home-defense gun that will probably only see range use, this should work.
I mounted my Vortex Diamondback Tactical 6-24×50 scope on my new CZ 457. Rather than waste my limited supply of CCI Standard which I was saving for the match, I opted to use some extra (“Blue Box”) I had, figuring I could waste it to get a rough zero on paper before fine tuning with the CCI Standard.
In the process, I noticed that the Federal Champion was printing surprisingly tight groups. As good as good as the CCI Standard I was planning on using at an upcoming 100yrd match. I was down to 40 rounds of CCI Standard (since the COVID pandemic 22LR has been in limited supply at any gun store near San Francisco). Rather than risk running out of CCI Standard during the match, I went out on a limb and used the Blue Box instead and son-of-a-gun, I took 1st place!
Match-grade 22LR has still hard to find and due to California’s inane laws, mail-order ammo is both a hassle to get and with extra State fees tacked on to boot! While not specifically marketed as “match-grade”, has recently become available at my local Big-5 Sports. This high-quality 22LR sold by the US subsidiary of the Swedish ammo maker, Norma.
But look closely and you’ll see that the Tac-22 cartridges have a RWS headstamp. It’s rumored to be rebranded RWS Target Rifle or RWS Rifle Match ammo; sharing their black oxide colored bullet and thick European wax coating. Like some strange Euro-Pop Band, it’s a German made product, sold by a Swedish company, packaged under a US brand.
RWS 40gr ammo was the type used by CZ to proof test my CZ rifle. If the rumors are true, Tac-22 should perform pretty close to that. As a benchmark I chose to compare Norma Tac-22 vs Federal Champion.
I put up a paper target at 100 yrds and fired 20 rounds in 4 groups of 5. I started with a clean barrel, fired a single fouling round before each test, and snaking the barrel before switching to the next ammo brand. Federal Champion shoot better, printing sub-MOA groups on average. Tac-22 printed an average group of 2MOA. The groups were getting progressively smaller by the time I shot the last 15-20 rounds on my 4th target. But that group was still 2x large as the smallest Champion group.
VeGue sent me their VS-0606 Bluetooth Party Speaker / Karaoke Machine to test and review. This is their least expensive Karaoke machine which they specifically market as a “Kids Karaoke Machine”. We’re going to see if this is just a kid’s toy or can you use this at your next party with “grown ups”?
In the box, it comes with a wireless microphone, remote control, 3.5mm audio cable, Micro-USB cable (for charging the unit), and instruction manual. The first thing that struck me was how cheap the microphone looked and felt. Like knock-off toy quality. The mic runs of 2x AA batteries and has a manual power switch but no controls for changing the operating channel. Despite its budget appearance, it sounded better than a toy microphone. Not professional quality by any means. Not the best but not the worst. It automatically connected to the speaker without issue.
The speaker itself felt and looked like a kids toy. The exterior reminded me of the plastic one finds on a camping/party cooler. The seams had irregular gaps and the front grill was painted to appear metallic but was plastic. The speaker wasn’t heavy which is convenient for portability but anybody who knows speakers, knows that light speakers seldom sound better than heavier ones. Worse, some part of internals rattled inside the case (I contacted VeGue and they informed me this was not normal and offered to send me a replacement for this defective speaker).
The unit would not turn on out of the box. It would power up when connected via Micro-USB to a .5V charger. For testing, I let it charge it overnight.
The speakers controls and connections were all located on a control panel above the speaker grill. It had an RCA type 1/4″ jack and a 3.5mm audio jack as your Line-In to device. In addition, you can insert a micro-SD card into a slot and play MP3 files directly into the speaker. It also featured a digital FM radio receiver and Bluetooth connectivity.
Comparing it to the JYX BT61 speaker, the audio quality was less true to the source with a tinny quality to the sound. The VS0606 was louder but neither speaker would be loud enough for a typical house party, pool side, or backyard party. This unit is best suited for small rooms like dorm rooms, class rooms, or small coffee shops. I can understand why they would market this as a “Kids Karaoke Machine” as it’s ideal for a Kid’s sized room.
When Feyachi offered to send me a budget red dot to test and evaluate, I was a little puzzled when one arrived the next week. The box I received was a red dot but it did not have any Feyachi branding at all on the exterior graphics. Nor did the red dot inside. Fortunately the brand appeared in the user manual to let me know it was indeed from Feyachi.
The red dot itself looked fairly generic. This model looks identical to a Marmot red dot I reviewed over a year ago. But this box included a 1″ Picatinny riser. The red dot itself looked well made. The same could not be said for the riser, which had casting pits and a gauge when exposed the aluminum under the black oxidized finish. Whoever was making the riser mounts wasn’t as good at QC as the scope maker.
The red dot had 11 brightness settings. At its brightest setting the 4MOA red dot was visible in broad daylight. The dimmest setting was nearly invisible in all the but the darkest background. The red dot is powered by a CR2032 coin battery. The box came with two.
At the range, I was easily able to zero the scope and it retained zero throughout 20rnds of fire. To simulate years of use or heavy recoil, I banged the unit with my ammo can for about 30 seconds. I found that the red dot dit not lose zero despite the physical impact and abuse.
The poor QC and construction of the riser gave me serous doubts about its overall quality. The unit surprised me, passing my requirements for a basic red dot that could hold its zero. Time remains to be seen if it durable enough to survive long term use and abuse or just a heavy downpour.
Biometric gun safes used to be the realm of spy-fiction and the well heeled. But now, they’re not only widely available, they’re also affordable. But a quick glance of some Amazon 1-star reviews of budget gun safes talk about their weak locks and unreliable biometric security.
A Chinese marketing company contacted me to ask if I would test and evaluate a Rexmeo biometric gun safe, a brand I’d never heard of. Upon initial inspection I was surprised at the weight topping 15lbs. This didn’t appear to be to be some cheap, thin-skinned lock box.
The unit comes with 2 sets of keys to open the box. Inside it has a enough space to contain 2 full sized pistols and a fair number of spare magazines and/or accessories (or a single pistol with a hard case holster depending on the model). The interior is padded with foam to protect its contents and has cut-outs to allow the safe to be securely screwed into a wall or furniture. The unit comes with a cable lanyard and pass-through hole to allow it to be secured to a post, pipe, or vehicle seat.
Activation was straight forward, you open the safe with the keys. Insert 4 x AA batteries (included) and following the instructions, you set up your finger to be read by the biometric sensor circle on the top of the unit. The unit requires multiple contacts with your finger to set up but once read, the unit would only open with my right thumb. I attempted other fingers and my left thumb but none of them would activate the lock.
Impressively the unit can store up to 50 different fingerprints! Not only could you use all 10 of your fingers but you could also allow access to other individuals through their fingerprints. I wonder if more fingerprints degrades the specificity of the biometrics (allowing for less precise biometric activation?)
Upon opening a digital voice informs you that the unit is unlocked. You can disable this voice but turning off the sound output. But this can lead to unintended issues as I’ll get into.
The unit also has a password entry through a 1-6 number keypad on the top of the unit. The unit allows for passwords between 6-8 numbers as well as adding non-opening scramble codes. When the correct passcode is entered the biometric sensor turns green and opens the safe. My initial unlocking occurred without issue but later in testing I ran into a troubling series of “wrong password”, the unit signaled a red light and would not open.
I discovered that this was because I was pressing the keypad buttons too quickly. The keypad required about a 1-second press per button to register correctly. When I had the Digital Voice/Sound on, I could get audible cues when a button was pressed correctly, when the Voice/Sound was turned off there was no positive feedback.
This degree of user-error in the interface could give some gun owners pause. But I consider biometric or electronic locks a secondary rather than a primary entry method. Think of it is a standard key-entry gun safe with biometric backups.
The makers did include some clever features to make the battery power less of an issue. The unit has a low-battery audible alert and if the batteries completely die, there is a USB-C port next to the key lock which allows you to power the biometrics or keypad through a powered USB cable. In addition, the unit claims to have a pick-lock alarm though I was not able to test the mechanism of how the unit knows the lock is being physically picked?
The safe could also be improved with some additional changes. I wish it had a way to turn off the annoying digital voice while retaining the keypad beeps at a lower volume. It could use an automatic red LED light to illuminate the interior contents when opened like with some other safes by Wincent and Vaultek. But for the price, the Rexmeo is a solid gun safe with generous interior space that most gun owners.
