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Rifle Scopes Vortex Strike Eagle 5-25, an Honest Review

BigJohn141

Sergeant
Full Member
Minuteman
Nov 18, 2011
795
255
Timnath, Co
Just wanted to throw up a quick review for those looking at more budge friendly scopes. There are a lot on the market and it can be a daunting task to sort through them all. I was in search for something to run on my rifle until my higher end glass shows up. I scouted around for a while and found a great deal on a never mounted Strike Eagle 5-25 here in the PX. It arrived yesterday and so I mounted it up in a 1.26” ARC M-Brace mount and headed to the indoor range to sight in. For those wondering, the 1.26” mount makes the bell easily clear a Proof comp contour barrel on a 20 moa rail with room to spare. Nothing major to report from the indoor range, sighted in easy enough with no weird occurrences, seemed to track well. The range is in the basement of the facility and is not super bright but I had no problems seeing the reticle dot on the target at 100 yards. I have had this issue in the past with lesser quality scopes and had to kick on the illumination to a low level. This morning I headed to the outdoor 1000 yard range to true my dope and see how the scope would perform. It was an almost perfect morning for shooting at around 45 degrees, slight overcast, and an 11 o’clock wind at 3 mph. The 1000 yard range at the facility starts at 400 yards and has multiple size and shaped targets every 100 yards out to 1000. The 400 yard targets were white so I dialed in the correct elevation and went to work. I will say the parallax adjustment was slightly more stiff than I would like and it may loosen up with use but not overly hard by any stretch. The marked parallax ranges were close but not exact as common with most scopes. The magnification adjustment was surprisingly excellent, smooth and easy to move. Both the elevation and windage turrets were smooth, had decent tactile clicks to them, and were spaced well. It was easy to move .1 mil without worrying about overrunning the intended stopping place, all lines aligned properly. The turret locking feature is nice if you are looking for that, I kept the windage locked almost all day. The impact on the 400 yard white target was right where it was expected, 500 yard yellow targets were the same, holding wind on both. The 600 yard is where I started to see the loss of contrast and clarity show up. These particular targets were a medium red color so picking out the black impact on them was a little difficult. When shooting a target with previous hits on it, I could not tell exactly which one was mine. At this range I could start to pick up bullet trace for a brief moment. The color pattern repeated with white 700, yellow 800, and red 900. Impacts were easily spotted again on white and yellow but a little harder on red. The 900 yard red targets had little to no impacts on the smaller ones so I chose to shoot those. They were easier to spot on clean plates but still did not greatly stand out. The elevation was .1 low at 800 yards from the ballistic calculator output but I account that to the colder temps from when I chronographed the rounds. After adjustment, it was spot on again. At 1000, I decided to dial the wind, a whole .3 mil, and see how it acted. With the adjusted velocity, it was a first round center punch on a 10” square and the subsequent rounds were right with it. Impacts were easily spotted on the white plate. At the extended ranges, the bullet trace was more prominent but still not as clear as higher end glass. This could partly be accounted to atmospheric conditions possibly. After that I did some positional practice on the closer targets, dialing back and forth with everything tracking as it should. Before packing up, I sent the last few round at the 1000 yard square again with expected results. There was some light mirage starting to show up but nothing that would distort the target. To sum up my experience with the Strike Eagle, I can say I am happy with the performance of the scope and will probably hold on to it for a while. It will more than likely find a home on my rimfire for practicing. As mentioned above, I find the contrast lacking on darker colored targets and you will notice the image is less crisp if you are use to higher end glass. I decided to not use the included throw lever since the magnification rings is so smooth and I find the lever is large enough to block the view of the turrets causing you to come off the rifle. I will be running it next weekend under comp use so I will update if I find anything troublesome. As long as it holds up mechanically, I would recommend it if you are looking in the $500-$700 price range.
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Thanks for the nice wright up I have been looking at this scope to put on a B-14R I got about a month ago, sounds like it might fit the bill just right for the 22lr, I have a gen 1 razor on it now and would like to have the lower 15 yd. parallax for the 22. just wonder how it would do on small targets in shadows.
 
Great review! I picked one up a few weeks ago and am impressed for the price point. They are really close to the PST Gen 2 scopes (I've got several) and not in the league of Razor Gen 2 scope, but for the money, the Strike Eagle is a great value.
 
Great review! I picked one up a few weeks ago and am impressed for the price point. They are really close to the PST Gen 2 scopes (I've got several) and not in the league of Razor Gen 2 scope, but for the money, the Strike Eagle is a great value.
I don’t have buyers remorse at all with it. It’s going to be rather chilly on Saturday if the comp still goes, around 0 degrees in the morning with snow. I’m interested to see if anything gets hard to turn in those types of conditions.
 
I’m very happy with mine for the price.
It has a pretty good track record for function and mechanics. Not a lot of bad reviews as of late.
 
I’m very happy with mine for the price.
It has a pretty good track record for function and mechanics. Not a lot of bad reviews as of late.
Same here! Mine only cost me $99... 🤣

The scope it replaced was discontinued, and had an issue, and so Vortex let me upgrade to the SE for $100 bill. Not bad considering the scope I sent back was bought 10 years prior, so I had written that expense off long ago. 😂
 
I have two. Haven't gotten them out to the range yet but initial reviews and just playing around with them inside and bore sighting are positive.
 
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So a quick update from today. I went out this morning and shot a local Wyoming match from 200 out past 1000. It was a trying day with temps starting off around 15 degrees and full value winds at 16mph with gusts over 20mph. To say it was a little chilly would be a gross understatement. The Strike Eagle held its own, even though you could tell the cold was going to work on moving parts. Magnification and parallax was harder to turn but still usable, turret clicks were softer than before. It was a day of mixed dialing and holdovers with partly sunny, bright conditions and snow on the ground. Admittedly, this was my first time shooting a comp in almost a decade and my very first full positional match. Again the Strike Eagle did quite a decent job and ran solid through the day. I never found myself struggling to get a decent sight picture and seeing hits was more than acceptable as well. I ran the scope around 15-20 power all day to help with perceived wobble so I can’t really speak to how it is maxed out in those situations. I really don’t have much bad to say about it so far. Every time I have been to the range, I haven’t had to deal with heavy mirage so I’m interested to see it’s performance there. I never expected it to replace upper mid to high end glass and still don’t. With that said, I don’t think my scores would’ve been any better running a higher end scope today. For someone looking for decent budget glass and some PRS style shooting, I still recommend it.
 
Just wanted to throw up a quick review for those looking at more budge friendly scopes. There are a lot on the market and it can be a daunting task to sort through them all. I was in search for something to run on my rifle until my higher end glass shows up. I scouted around for a while and found a great deal on a never mounted Strike Eagle 5-25 here in the PX. It arrived yesterday and so I mounted it up in a 1.26” ARC M-Brace mount and headed to the indoor range to sight in. For those wondering, the 1.26” mount makes the bell easily clear a Proof comp contour barrel on a 20 moa rail with room to spare. Nothing major to report from the indoor range, sighted in easy enough with no weird occurrences, seemed to track well. The range is in the basement of the facility and is not super bright but I had no problems seeing the reticle dot on the target at 100 yards. I have had this issue in the past with lesser quality scopes and had to kick on the illumination to a low level. This morning I headed to the outdoor 1000 yard range to true my dope and see how the scope would perform. It was an almost perfect morning for shooting at around 45 degrees, slight overcast, and an 11 o’clock wind at 3 mph. The 1000 yard range at the facility starts at 400 yards and has multiple size and shaped targets every 100 yards out to 1000. The 400 yard targets were white so I dialed in the correct elevation and went to work. I will say the parallax adjustment was slightly more stiff than I would like and it may loosen up with use but not overly hard by any stretch. The marked parallax ranges were close but not exact as common with most scopes. The magnification adjustment was surprisingly excellent, smooth and easy to move. Both the elevation and windage turrets were smooth, had decent tactile clicks to them, and were spaced well. It was easy to move .1 mil without worrying about overrunning the intended stopping place, all lines aligned properly. The turret locking feature is nice if you are looking for that, I kept the windage locked almost all day. The impact on the 400 yard white target was right where it was expected, 500 yard yellow targets were the same, holding wind on both. The 600 yard is where I started to see the loss of contrast and clarity show up. These particular targets were a medium red color so picking out the black impact on them was a little difficult. When shooting a target with previous hits on it, I could not tell exactly which one was mine. At this range I could start to pick up bullet trace for a brief moment. The color pattern repeated with white 700, yellow 800, and red 900. Impacts were easily spotted again on white and yellow but a little harder on red. The 900 yard red targets had little to no impacts on the smaller ones so I chose to shoot those. They were easier to spot on clean plates but still did not greatly stand out. The elevation was .1 low at 800 yards from the ballistic calculator output but I account that to the colder temps from when I chronographed the rounds. After adjustment, it was spot on again. At 1000, I decided to dial the wind, a whole .3 mil, and see how it acted. With the adjusted velocity, it was a first round center punch on a 10” square and the subsequent rounds were right with it. Impacts were easily spotted on the white plate. At the extended ranges, the bullet trace was more prominent but still not as clear as higher end glass. This could partly be accounted to atmospheric conditions possibly. After that I did some positional practice on the closer targets, dialing back and forth with everything tracking as it should. Before packing up, I sent the last few round at the 1000 yard square again with expected results. There was some light mirage starting to show up but nothing that would distort the target. To sum up my experience with the Strike Eagle, I can say I am happy with the performance of the scope and will probably hold on to it for a while. It will more than likely find a home on my rimfire for practicing. As mentioned above, I find the contrast lacking on darker colored targets and you will notice the image is less crisp if you are use to higher end glass. I decided to not use the included throw lever since the magnification rings is so smooth and I find the lever is large enough to block the view of the turrets causing you to come off the rifle. I will be running it next weekend under comp use so I will update if I find anything troublesome. As long as it holds up mechanically, I would recommend it if you are looking in the $500-$700 price range.
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I went with the PST II. Reason being the QC on the Strike Eagle is crap. Close to
50% are poorly assembled with misaligned reticle etc. so either get a great one or a really shitty one friend of mine had three of them they were great the other one useless, that said if you do get a good one it’s pretty decent aside from the fact that I think the zero stop system with little Ring is going to half assed though than that if you do some shopping you can find them up in Boxford really reasonable prices
 
I tool a chance on the Venom last year. Have half a dozen Vipers. It's like a Viper at half price.....maybe better. Zero issues with it thus far.
 
I went with the PST II. Reason being the QC on the Strike Eagle is crap. Close to
50% are poorly assembled with misaligned reticle etc. so either get a great one or a really shitty one friend of mine had three of them they were great the other one useless, that said if you do get a good one it’s pretty decent aside from the fact that I think the zero stop system with little Ring is going to half assed though than that if you do some shopping you can find them up in Boxford really reasonable prices
That's only 25%...
 
@BigJohn141 Your pack is nice... Are those suppressor holder tubes on the outside? If so, who makes it, and where did you get yours? I'm looking for a new range pack, and that one looks nice.
 
That's only 25%...
The 50% was from a published article, not the bad ones I mentioned, and At any rate things like that are part of the reason some people don’t take Vortex seriously, If you want respect you can have issues anywhere in your line as it just brings a cloud over their high end products And prevent them from ever being a night force or a leupold, just as a Corvette will never be a Ferrari as you can’t drop 150,000 on a car, only to sit in the service lane behind a malibu.
 
I tool a chance on the Venom last year. Have half a dozen Vipers. It's like a Viper at half price.....maybe better. Zero issues with it thus far.

Same here, i picked my pst II 5-25x50 brand new open box for $650, then tripped watched sail out of my hand hit the tile and damaged 2 of the turrets, so i call vortex to see how much it would be to fix it and found out that not only are they warranted for life but they told me you could literally tell us you threw it against the wall and still no charge to repair. So they sent me an email with an overnight FedEx label fixed it in one day and overnighted it back to shipping alone is 160 bucks round-trip so you really can’t knock their service
 
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The 50% was from a published article, not the bad ones I mentioned, and At any rate things like that are part of the reason some people don’t take Vortex seriously, If you want respect you can have issues anywhere in your line as it just brings a cloud over their high end products And prevent them from ever being a night force or a leupold, just as a Corvette will never be a Ferrari as you can’t drop 150,000 on a car, only to sit in the service lane behind a malibu.
Can you share the article?
Since the SE has been out I don’t remember 50% failure rate. Early on they had some bugs to work out but the track record now is on par or better than the pst 2.
 
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I had this scope on my tikka 22, but then needed glass for my tikka 223, so I switched it over and bought the venom for my 22.. both are great for their purpose.

I couldnt bring myself to buy a 3rd MK5, which is what I wanted. Those sit on the 308's
 
The 50% was from a published article, not the bad ones I mentioned, and At any rate things like that are part of the reason some people don’t take Vortex seriously, If you want respect you can have issues anywhere in your line as it just brings a cloud over their high end products And prevent them from ever being a night force or a leupold, just as a Corvette will never be a Ferrari as you can’t drop 150,000 on a car, only to sit in the service lane behind a malibu.
You’ve obviously never been in the industry… Leupold was one of the most common brands I used to have to send back for repair/replace. Their CS was always excellent, but their scopes were not so much (20 years ago). I’ve sent back NF, S&B, Trijicon, and pretty much all the top brands for warranty work and/or defects. Anything man made has the propensity for defects. Don’t think that just because a scope’s price reaches a certain point that they are immune to issues.