While many optics come to SHOT Show to show off the latest and trendiest, it’s surprising to see a brand bring out a traditional product. Athlon showed me their new fixed power Talos SFP. That’s right, a fixed power scope. This Talos has a fixed 10x magnification.
What is impressive is that this scope has 35mils (120 MOA) of internal adjustment. So this scope is perfect for airgun or competitive bench rest shooters who are shooting at fixed targets at known ranges. Moreover, coming from Athlon’s Talos line, this optic is also one of their most affordable.
Maven is a new company in the Premium Optics world, founded in 2013 in Wyoming by three veterans of the outdoor industry. Their goal was create quality sporting optics without the big box store mark-up by selling direct to consumer through their website. This business model is not new (Arken, Tract, and Discover are some examples) but what does make Maven unique is the level of customization they allow on their products. Maven was the first optics company to offer customers a choice of different color accents, camo patterns, and custom engraving on different parts of their optics.
Perhaps more than most, this scope looked “premium priced”. The price of the RS.5 starts at $1400 and depending on level of customization can run up to $1510. They also offer accessory bundles which include scope rings. The base model arrives in a compressed paper clamshell package, that opens like a high end egg crate; but those fancy ‘cruelty free’ eggs they sell at Organic Markets.
Surface appearances aside, my testing their RS.5 precision hunting scope showed excellent optical and tracking performance. This Japanese made scope has ED glass and an well designed SFP reticle that offered useful elevation and wind hold stadia and a super fine .1 MOA floating center dot for precise long range shooting. Despite its svelt 30mm tube and low profile turret, it offered 100 MOA or vertical travel and precise tracking.
I was especially impressed with the scope’s stylish industrial design. The turrets are resettable but instead of visible hex or slot screws, the top of the turret is seamless hidden locking hut which twists off (though mine was really on tight and required some rubber bands and a pliers to loosen). The control surfaces were nicely checkered and had nice pewter grey accent coloring making the whole scope feel more like a fine timepiece than a typical scope.
I’m looking forward to trying out their other scopes and binoculars. The Maven RS.5 may look boojie but it performs like a badass.
Hi-Lux is known for making vintage style optics, They make the Malcolm, possibly the best reproduction Unertl style scopes on the market. They also make modern tactical optics; last year I tested their PR5 long range scope and found it a solid long range tactical optic if a tad heavy.
At SHOT Show this year, they showed me their new 1-8x LPVO the CMR1. This utilizes fiber optics to achieve a daylight bright central point like a red dot. I hope to get a sample to see how good it performs optically.
Since the departure of Nikon from sporting optics, March Scopes has stepped up to become Japan’s maker of premium rifle scopes. They are known among competition Precision Rifle Series (PRS) shooters for their high power scopes. At SHOT Show I was introduced to their new 80x Majesta scope, the highest power rifle scope I’ve ever seen. And the Genesis, a 4x-40x scope that puts the Extreme in Extreme Long Range (ELR) shooting with 400 MOA (116 MIL) of adjustment.
Conquer is Riton’s flagship long range rifle scope line with the 5 denoting this models magnification factor. This is the first Conquer scope Riton has sent me to test. I was eager to try one out since first seeing the newly redesigned line at SHOT Show 2023. All of their scopes now feature a unique twisted grove patter inspired by the rifle twist in the barrel of a firearm. This is not only stylish but the pattern provides an aggressive contact texture on their rings, knobs and turrets.
Looking through the scope, the image was clear and sharp with a warm tone bias. My camera saw chromatic aberration looking through the glass at 25x at 100yrds. Despite this, I was clearly able to make out .22LR bullet holes on paper; even the wrinkles on the paper target. Using the USAF-51 chart, its resolution was as good as any 25x scope I’ve tested.
This scope has a fairly unforgiving eye box. At 25x it has a fairly small exit pupal of 1.6mm. Tight eye boxes is a common experience I’ve had with Riton scopes. This is also a common complaint of most high power scopes under $1000 (the Arken EP5 is an example of that). The 5 Conquer has an MSRP of $959, which for the average rifle owner isn’t cheap. But comparing it to the Leupold Mk5 which has a similar resolution performance, this scope is a value.
I can’t speak to the long term durability of this scope, since I’ve only put it through a couple of mags of .22LR and 5.56. It has so far held zero. Riton’s customer service is responsive and their optics have a transferable Lifetime warranty. The same can’t be said of more expensive European brands.
This scope is available on Amazon. This affiliate link helps support my channel https://amzn.to/46R6rLq
RESOLUTION
Group: -1 Element: 6
MANUFACTURER SPECS
Magnification:
5-25
Parallax Adjustment:
20-infinity
Tube Diameter:
34mm
Objective Lens Diameter:
56mm
Focal Lens Position:
First Focal Plane
Lens Coating:
Fully Multi-Coated, Full Wide Band, Waterproof Coated, Low Light Enhancement
What happens when you work at one of the best known brands in sporting optics and that company decides to get out of the rifle scope market? That happened to Jon Allen and Jon LaCorte at Nikon. Rather than join SIG, Bushnell, or another optics company, Jon and Jon started Tract Optics.
Tract quickly made a name for itself among competition shooters. Not surprising given the Toric is made with the same German Schott glass as other top tier brands like Leupold, Schmidt & Bender, and Zeiss (Schott is owned by Zeiss by the way). Another key feature in its popularity: a street price around a grand. While not cheap, this is less than a Vortex Razor, and significantly less than a Leupold Mk5 or a Zeiss S3.
Some have called the Tract Toric, a Zeiss S3 clone. While physically, I do not think they look all that similar, their performance specs are. So perhaps calling it a “clone” is not a derogatory statement. Both share an impressive 160 MOA of elevation adjustment, unusually tall turrets, and excellent fit and finish in their construction.
Tract sent me a Toric 4-25×50 MOA ELR to test and evaluate. My first impression was positive. The Toric sports a striking graphite grey color, excellent fit and finish, oversized turrets, and butter smooth knobs and rings. In my range testing, I found the glass to provide a bright, detailed image with little or no chromatic aberration at maximum magnification.
Ask 10 different people what they think about a reticle and you’ll get 20 different opinions. I like Christmas Tree reticles even though I have no business using them, since I mostly shoot 100yrd rimfire. I prefer less busy, finer reticles for shooting bullseye targets, so the Toric fits my style. The Toric MRAD ELR reticle has a a cleaner layout than a Leupold Mk5 PR2, while providing more subtensions in a tall column below the Christmas tree. And unlike the Zeiss S3 MOAi reticle, the entire column is illuminated and not just the center mini-cross.
The Toric box includes a sun shade, Allen keys, and a an easy to install zero stop ring. The scope comes with very basic plastic lens caps for shipping protection but these aren’t sturdy or secure enough for field use. Perhaps to make up for this, in the shipping box Tact included a sight in target and a branded chamber flag as swag. I asked Tract about the caps and they said they were planning on upgrading the caps to a silicone bra style in the near future.
An odd feature I noticed was what I thought to be a throw lever socket on the magnification ring. After contacting Jon LaCorte at Tract and asking him how to remove this and what levers fit it, he told me that cap was the Argon gas fill port. They recommend using clamp on polymer throw levers that can break away if and not shake and damage the scope internals, which can happen with screw in levers. Like better lens caps, I hope they include said polymer lever in future packaging of this scope.
Socioeconomics aside, $1000 is not a small sum, but in a world where a top-tier PRS/ELR scope costs a couple grand, a brand new Tract Toric is a deal by comparison. To keep costs down, Tract uses a direct to consumer model so do not sell through stores (though they are available from their store on Amazon).
At Shot Show this year, Athlon showed me their new Heras line of “cross-over” scopes. These scopes were designed to appeal to hunters and target shooters. The 10 yrds minimum parallax piqued my interest (for airgun matches and dispatching the occasional field rat in my backyard this distance comes in handy). A few months later, they finally released the Heras and they offered to send me one to test and evaluate. Seeing as they market this scope to hunters, I requested the MOA version but they also make it in MIL.
I didn’t fully appreciate the differences between this and my Midas Tac until I got it in my hands and took it to the range. The glass isn’t as good as the Midas Tac (not surprising given the Hera’s 25% lower price point). I appreciate that Athlon listened to complaints and added illumination that the Midas Tac is missing. But the only thing lit is the center dot, which isn’t daylight bright at max. Moreover the dot is too small to even see at low magnfication, so the the illumination feature is a wasted effort.
The Heras’ turret design differs from Athlon’s other scope line with much more data information, larger footprint, and aggressive knurling. It’s a marked improvement over the Midas and Helos in design and ergonomics. The elevation has a respectable if unremarkable 70 MOA of elevation adjustment.
The windage is lockable (pull up to unlock) which is a nod to hunters who prefer to use subtension for cross-wind compensation. Both turrets are resettable for zero. The elevation turret features Athlon’s easy-to-use and solid zero-stop, for competition shooters.
The illumination dial has an OFF between the 6 levels of brightness. Unfortunately in the MOA SFP version of this scope, only the tiny central dot (0.3 MOA) is illuminated; which is not daylilght bright and too small to use as a target dot at low magnfication. The MIL SFP version of this scope has the APRS8 reticle which illuminates the center cross which offers a more visible illuminated reference. The FFP version of the HERAS has APRS9 reticle which illuminates the entire Christmas tree.
One feature I appreciate in the HERAS is its usability at short range. The paralax focus goes down to 10 yrds., which is a boon for NRL22 and airgun shooters. When doing rodent control on your property, its rare to find varmints beyond 10 yrds.
I found the optics to be on par with Helos, which it likely shares its glass as well as price tier in Athlon’s lineup. The image was sharp with a modest amount of chromatic fringing at maximum magnification which hampers its clarity and detail at higher magnifications. I was still able to make out .22 cal size holes on plain paper at 100 yrds. Overall the scope seems to check all the boxes for both hunters and long range shooters.
Support my channel by purchasing this scope using the affiliate links below.
I had to re-edit and re-upload this video because of goof on my part. I’ve been mispronouncing the name of the brand. It’s not EZshot, it’s EZshoot.
EZshot is a brand best known for budget firearms accessories like barrel snakes, red dots, and weapon lights and not always in a good way. It came as a bit of a surprise that they reached out to me with an 1-6x LPVO. I didn’t have high hopes as to optical qualities and build quality but I was delightfully surprised.
The scope came in completely blank black box which was not a good start. Like Feyachi and MidTen, most of EZshots product are generic and often lack any branding on the product itself. I assume they buy their products from the same factories and just market them under their brand name.
Inside, I found an LPVO that we pretty well put together. The elevation and windage turrets are capped. The turrets underneath, looked a bit cheap but had nice loud clicks. Overall the scope looked good; not $500 scope quality but more than its $109 price on Amazon.
At the range, I found the image at 6x to be decent. Not amazing but not bad. It had a fair bit of chromatic aberration, edge distortion, and lacked some resolution and brightness. But the image was sharp enough to confidently engage man sized targets from 50-100 yards.
It’s eye relief and exit pupil were average for a budget LPVO. There are better scopes but almost none it’s price tier. I had no trouble brining it up to my eye and quickly acquired my target. I found it’s reticle to be better than I expected, though its outer cross hairs should have been thinner.
Without a doubt, there are better and more durable LPVOs. But for the price, this is great optic for a range baby.
Hi-Lux is an optics company best known for making reproduction vintage-style scopes. But at Shot Show this year, their show stopper was their newest modern ELR/PRS scope, their PR5-R a 5-25x56mm beast of a scope. They were kind enough to send me a sample to text and evaluate.
Out of the box the scope is massive. It is 16″ long even without the included sunshade. It is perhaps the heaviest scope I’ve yet tested, weighing in at 2.5lbs (40oz). The package includes the aforementioned 56mm sunshade, front and rear flip-up caps, and a throw lever.
The scope has equally massive and oversized turrets which have nice loud clicks and are tactile positive. The elevation has a zero-stop reminiscent of Leupold’s spiral groove design but with the spiral under the cap instead of the base of the turret. While interesting, I found correctly lining up the stopping pin in the grove to be sometimes finicky.
In addition, Hi-Lux’s “Zero Stop” is designed to stop 1 MIL past 0. So perhaps they should call it a “1 Stop” or “+1 Stop” instead? Moreover, my turret didn’t stop at 1 MIL, instead stopping sometimes at 1.2 or 1.3 MIL. While you can correct for this by adjusting your initial zero, I find this lack of precision problematic. But as I so not use Zero Stops my disappointment is somewhat moot.
The magnification dial was moderately stiff but movable without the throw lever. The ocular focus was smooth and the eye-piece features rotation markings making. This is an often overlooked feature on scopes and I wish more makers put them on their scopes because this makes it easier to return to a known focus when sharing a rifle with a guest shooter.
The most interesting feature of the scope is it’s digital illumination controls. The brightness and activation on controlled by two rubberized buttons next to the paralax focus knob. The model I tested had red illumination but Hi-Lux also sells a green illumination model.
The entire central sub-tensioned cross-hair and Christmas tree is illuminated. The two lowest brightness settings are designed for night vision and were not visible to my naked eye. The highest level (11) was not daylight bright but more than bright enough for dusk. It is powered by a CR2032 coin battery in the parallax knob, which can focus down to 10 yards.
At the range I noted distortion along the outer edge of the image and chromatic aberration at 5x which is usually the best image seen through a scope. I was therefore surprised when the outer edge and color distortion improved at 25x. We did lose light and there was a noticeable reduction in the eye-box.
In overall sharpness and contrast the scope was middling to average for a $800 scope (I’ve seen street price ranges from $800-$1300 depending on retailer) but its resolution was as good or better than similarly priced Athlon and Arken scopes I’ve reviewed.
This scope was designed to appeal to ELR and Bench Rest Precision shooters for whom a +40oz tank of a scope is not a problem but an advantage. It’s turrets are oversized, easy to read and control. But it’s finicky Zero Stop may be a deal breaker for some competitive shooters.
Konus is an Italian optics company based in Verona. I had an opportunity to visit their booth at SHOT Show earlier this year and examine their wide range of hunting and target scopes. Konus sent me their Absolute scope to test and I was surprised at its wide range of magnification going from 5x-40x. Prior to this the highest power scope I I have tested was the Leupold Mark 5 with a 7x-35x; the Konus exceeds the Leupold in both the low and high magnification, and at half the price.
The Absolute has a traditional profile, with a 30mm tube and tactical style exposed turrets. The scope tested has a half-MIL crosshair reticle that is illuminated in both red and blue light with brightness ranging from 1-5. It is powered by a CR2032 coin battery co-housed in the side parallax focus knob. The scope can focus as close as 10 yrds, which is much appreciated feature for airgun shooters and NRL22 competitors.
The elevation and windage turrets are traditionally sized turrets unlike the over-sized monster knobs that have become popular recently among ELR competitors. The Kronus turrets are push-to-lock and are zero resettable by loosening three set-screws around each turret. The scope tested was the MILRAD version and they offer an MOA as well.
The turrets turn 1/10 MILs per click and are nicely loud and audible. They provide good tactile feedback per click but aren’t the most positive turrets I’ve felt. Oddly the elevation turret provides 7.2 MILs per rotation rather than whole number? I suspect that Konus originally designed this scope for MOA and swapped out a MIL conversion turret, which is why the turret has 7.2 rather than 7.0 MILs per rotation.
I found the turrets to be accurate and repeatable. Overall sharpness was good from center to edge. At 40x the scope able to resolve twice as much detail as a typical 24x scope but with a much less forgiving eyebox (as to be expected by the reduced exit pupal at 40x). The image at 40x was clear enough to make out wrinkles on the target paper at 100 yrds.
The Konus Absolute is a 40x scope with the extra magnification not found in many scope brands. I don’t think this scope will appeal to ELR shooters who prefer first focal plane scopes with Christmas-tree reticles. But for long distance airgun competition, precision target shooters, long-range hunters, or older shooters with weaker eyes, this is a scope to consider.
Konus Absolute is available through this Affiliate Link Optics Planet:https://alnk.to/2Qu5Igb
