I am looking at several digital day/night scopes with built in ballistic calculators and laser range finders and am wondering if they are worth it.
I am comparing them to $400-$500 scopes (Specifically an Arken EP-5) and wondering which is the better option.
Currently I am starting from zero, I have no range finder, and no scope and my ballistic’s calculator is on my phone, doing the math, by the time I got the scope plus the range finder I would be close to (or over) the price of one of these digital scopes, which have the added convenience of a built in ballistic calculator to do all the work for me essentially, with the press of a button.
There is an issue though, I really only need the daytime optic, the night vision is nice but I will rarely if ever actually use it and those digital scopes seem to be geared more towards hunters shooting at close range to just a few hundred yards, not someone who wants to shoot out to a thousand or a bit above, like I want to do so I am concerned with long range resolution, would it be too pixelated to see and would the range finder even work correctly at that range?
What is your opinion, are the digital scopes worth it or am I better off with an optical scope and just dialing it manually based on what my phone tells me?
No, an expensive optic is not an option here, I just do not have the budget so the comments saying “get a Nightforce or Schmidt and Bender” are not helpful. By optical scopes I am referring to around $500 or so max. After that I still need to buy a range finder, so that is how they are comparable in price to the digital ones.
