New Kahles K328i
- Thread starter gamewarden
- Start date
I find this scope easier to mount on a split rail than previous scopes where I couldn’t get the scope rearward enough for comfortable eye relief. Just depends on LOP and how upright or forward leaning your position on the rifle is.
Thanks, the upper range of the scope seems about perfect. Comparing a few of my scopes yesterday I felt like this would be a jack of all trades scope, and the same weight as my ZCO 4-20.
I haven't checked, but do Spuhr have 34 mm "block" mounts?
I had to use that solution (but 30 mm) on another gun and it worked great - except the rifle was shit (Benelli MR1).
I have a few optics laying around, and yesterday we went down to my lake and sat in the sun to just enjoy some time off and look through them properly.
I wanted to be 100% neutral in this, and all ended up with my friend typing this up in Swedish, and I ran it through ChatGPT for a translate. To my surprise it did a full "review" all by itself, and I checked for accuracy and it did it properly.
The main point here for the Kahles K328i is that I have one, and I absolutely love the zoom range and the image clarity is just silly. It's a love affair and I'm not selling, it's pretty perfect on my LWRCI REPR Mk II Elite (although I'm now running a Pulsar XL60 on it against the pigs).
However, and to my surprise, the Schmidt & Bender 6-36x56 (EU version) was even better. I laughed out loud, and I tried it a few times over. I know 3.5-28x and 6-36x don't really correlate, but as the main range is around 12-15x it's still compareable.
I'll double post in the S&B 6-36x as well.
Here's my friend's conclusion. He left with my S&B 6-36x and compared it to some other scopes as well.
Background is he runs ZCO420 and ZCO527, but looking for alternatives.
Scopes tested:
Schmidt & Bender (S&B):
Kahles:
ZCO:
I wanted to be 100% neutral in this, and all ended up with my friend typing this up in Swedish, and I ran it through ChatGPT for a translate. To my surprise it did a full "review" all by itself, and I checked for accuracy and it did it properly.
The main point here for the Kahles K328i is that I have one, and I absolutely love the zoom range and the image clarity is just silly. It's a love affair and I'm not selling, it's pretty perfect on my LWRCI REPR Mk II Elite (although I'm now running a Pulsar XL60 on it against the pigs).
However, and to my surprise, the Schmidt & Bender 6-36x56 (EU version) was even better. I laughed out loud, and I tried it a few times over. I know 3.5-28x and 6-36x don't really correlate, but as the main range is around 12-15x it's still compareable.
I'll double post in the S&B 6-36x as well.
Here's my friend's conclusion. He left with my S&B 6-36x and compared it to some other scopes as well.
Background is he runs ZCO420 and ZCO527, but looking for alternatives.
Scopes tested:
- S&B: 10–60 / 6–36 (two versions with different reticles, P5FL, TRID) / 1–8x CC Shortdot / 3–27x56 PM II
- Kahles: 540 / 328
- Element: Theos 6–36
- ZCO: 840 / 420 / 527
Schmidt & Bender (S&B):
- Natural colors, almost slightly washed out. Very realistic rendering.
- Very good field of view. Better than ZCO up to around 15x magnification. From 15x and above, the difference wasn’t as noticeable.
- Very good depth perception in the image. In other words, objects at different distances were clearly distinguishable. This is an important detail in competition, for example during a troop line with targets placed at varying ranges.
- Details remain sharp even at low magnifications. It almost gives the illusion that targets are closer than they actually are.
- Very little to no scope shadow (scope ring). Edge-to-edge clarity is fantastic.
- Good parallax. I could set it to infinity and no matter what distance I looked at, the image remained sharp.
- Other: Built like a tank. Tactile turret clicks with no play.
Kahles:
- Colors and contrast “pop”. Everything feels enhanced through the glass.
- Amazing field of view – the best of all the scopes tested.
- I had some issues with the parallax. It felt like I had to fine-tune it for each specific target. This could be a problem in a competition scenario where time is tight, and you're switching targets at different distances.
- The Kahles 328 is my favorite of their two new models. Compact, with a fantastic zoom range and consistent clarity throughout all magnifications. Excellent edge-to-edge clarity. I’d love to spend more time with this one.
- The Kahles 540 gave me a “flat” image. I didn’t get a sense of depth from the image. I found myself constantly fine-tuning the parallax. The edge-to-edge clarity didn’t compare to the 328. I’m not an expert, and this is just a sample of one, but the 540 was my least favorite of all the scopes.
- Other: I don’t like that the parallax adjustment is located underneath the elevation turret, but that’s a matter of taste and probably just a habit I can unlearn.
ZCO:
- The 840 clearly shows its Kahles heritage. Colors and contrast pop across the entire magnification range.
- The 420 / 527 / 840 all had a narrower field of view and a tighter eyebox compared to S&B and Kahles.
- Fantastic glass and image sharpness.
- Generous parallax adjustment – it felt like it wasn’t too sensitive to different distances.
- Amazing sharpness and clarity in the glass. For the price, it’s a home run.
- Forgiving parallax.
- Had the most scope shadow (scope ring) of all the scopes I tested.
- When we looked at a radio mast at 2 km, the detail clarity was good, but it felt far away, like the image was at the end of a long tube.
- ZCO and S&B felt like the image was much closer, and there wasn’t much visual difference between the magnification levels.
- Kahles was not included in this specific test.
