Ah Jim….did you really not know, before you went to the range, that 3.27 was a failed point release and that it had a propensity to miss shots and 3.32 appears to be the fix???
Precision Rifle Gear New Athlon Rangecraft Chronograph-Garmin Xero Killer?
- Thread starter Steel+Killer
- Start date
I thought it was 3.30. That's actually why I hadn't updated the Garmin again. I thought I dodged a bullet on that one. Until near the end of the Garmin review I hadn't updated it's firmware at all. I was totally satisfied, why would I. I only updated it to be thorough in the review and cover the app and updating process. Personally, I only use apps when I have to and prefer to keep my data pen and paper as much as possible as my experience with tech is that all your data getting deleted with an update is a common occurrence as is an app and your data it holds not working on a new device with a new operating system. Well, I sure paid for that update. 3.27 may not have gotten the bad rap that 3.30 did, but it was not good compared to the firmware the Garmin came with last year. I hope 3.32, which I have since updated to, returns the functionality I had with the firmware the unit shipped with.
I have uploaded a video with my initial thoughts on the Athlon Chronograph after one range trip side by side with the Garmin.
First impressions of the Athlon Pro Radar Chronograph after a range session side by side with the Garmin
This video is an experiment. YouTube is, of course, algorithm driven when it comes to what video options it shows people. So far I’m not getting many views. It’s algorithm doesn’t like me near as much as goggle’s does when it comes to my written reviews and articles. As such, the viewing numbers are pretty bad. I’ve heard that the flavor of the day for the YouTube algorithm is completely unedited low production value stuff. Perhaps so, it certainly keeps trying to force feed me videos of Gen Z crying in their car about how hard working in the real world is. As such, I shot a video, in my truck, with no edits, in portrait, and uploaded directly from my phone. I haven’t even changed it’s thumbnail shot, which is terrible. Some genius AI went in to that for sure. I am also putting this first impression video up within a week of the product launch so it should get some play from a newness factor. We will see if it gets any traction. Anyhow, the full written review will come in while after a lot more range sessions to test things out as per usual.
First impressions of the Athlon Pro Radar Chronograph after a range session side by side with the Garmin
This video is an experiment. YouTube is, of course, algorithm driven when it comes to what video options it shows people. So far I’m not getting many views. It’s algorithm doesn’t like me near as much as goggle’s does when it comes to my written reviews and articles. As such, the viewing numbers are pretty bad. I’ve heard that the flavor of the day for the YouTube algorithm is completely unedited low production value stuff. Perhaps so, it certainly keeps trying to force feed me videos of Gen Z crying in their car about how hard working in the real world is. As such, I shot a video, in my truck, with no edits, in portrait, and uploaded directly from my phone. I haven’t even changed it’s thumbnail shot, which is terrible. Some genius AI went in to that for sure. I am also putting this first impression video up within a week of the product launch so it should get some play from a newness factor. We will see if it gets any traction. Anyhow, the full written review will come in while after a lot more range sessions to test things out as per usual.
I have on hand a CE ProChrono Digital, MagnetoSpeed V3, LabRadar V1, LabRadar LX, MacDonald TwoBox, Caldwell VelociRadar, Garmin Xero C1, and Athlon Velocity Pro (and will have 2 Athlons soon to be able to validate within the same brand, will borrow another Garmin, and possibly another LX). I'm working on an in-depth comparative matrix of "experiments" to put these through as many tests as I can (not terribly interested to set up the MagnetoSpeed for archery) over the next couple of weeks, attempting to make this comparison as unbiased and systemic as possible.
Ah....yeah, I'm not a big "put another frakin app on your phone" guy. I do like the app as its the only way to get the data off of the Garmin. I just email the cvs file to myself and I keep my data in Excel.
I really need to get off my ass (and actually remember) to see what firmware release I'm on. I don't believe (or perhaps remember...sigh) updating the device at all as it was just working great.
And thanks as always for your time and effort to eval products and write reports for us. Much appreciated.
Anybody confirm what the OG firmware release was on the original generally available shipments of the Garmin?
Picked up my rangecraft today from Euro. I had it on preorder since January. Just letting others know they are hitting the customers finally. Hope to get to the range with it Sunday.
Got shipping notification yesterday, should have it probably tomorrow
^^^Taiwan BUT the point is, Garmin was a pioneer with this small relatively cheap unit and now Athlon puts out basically a clone of it for less made in Chyna. Honestly, I don’t really give a fuck, just throwing kidney jabs. I have and like Chynese Helos BTR G2 and Jap Cronus G2 scopes from them.
Actually I think the small FX unit may have come out first, it was limited in its velocity readings, but worked well for rimfire.
The reality is, even the Taiwanese manufacture their low - to mid - end chips in China anyway, so everything’s really made in China…
It’s been a running gag since that film “2012,” and even the remake of “Robocop.”
Mine came today but I won’t get to try it out until next week. From playing with the buttons and whatnot overall build quality appears to be grade A chinesium.
It turned on so it must be “JuSt As GuUd” right?
It turned on so it must be “JuSt As GuUd” right?
Mine too, hopefully get to test it out tomorrow. I have an optical unit made for airguns/rimfire to test it against.
Initial out-of-the-box impressions. This is based on firmware v1.40.61 and app v1.0.23. Most of this is a review of the app since I haven't taken it out to the range yet.
• Good case. Nothing exotic, but very serviceable and will protect the unit when it's bouncing around in my range bag. Will be on the lookout for a screen protector, though.
• Battery came with ~80% charge, so it was nice not to have to charge it before I could play with it.
• It weighs 4.4 oz according to my postal scale. Garmin says the Xero weighs 4.1 oz.
• The included tripod is nicely solid and weighs 4.5 oz.
• The manual first recommends going to Settings to setup the device, so that's what I did.
••Date formats on the device only support DD/MM/YY or MM/DD/YY. Would prefer to have YYYY/MM/DD as that can be more easily sorted. It does support 24-hour time, thankfully. The rest of the settings were straight-forward.
•• User manual tells you to download the Athlon Ballistics Lite app, but at least in the Apple App store the app doesn't have "Lite" at the end of the name.
••• The first thing the app asks you to do after you launch it is to sign in, but there's no button or link to create an account and it won't let you submit a username / password that you manually type in. I had to choose the "Sign in with Apple" option to get past this screen. (There's a "Sign in with Google" option, too, but I didn't test that.)
••• Once signed-in you are taken to the Calculator page. At the top are fields for selecting a rifle and bullet profile. Tap the rifle field, then tap "+ New" to create a new rifle profile.
•••• Profile names for bullets and rifles are limited to 15 characters, which is not nearly enough.
•••• For a rifle you input the twist, twist rate, scope details (height, MOA/mil, V&H click values), and then reticle details (FFP/SFP, min/max magnification, and reticle "validitty" (sic) for SFP reticles). There's a reticle library, but understandably it only has details for Athlon reticles.
•••• For a bullet you can specify profile name (again, max 15 chars), length, diameter, weight, G1 or G7 BC, speed, zero distance, and zero offset. Right under the profile name field are four orange buttons for cartridge library, G7 library, G1 library, and pellet library. These save you from having to look up your specific bullet's characteristics, but you still have to give all that data a profile name.
••• Now that you've created your rifle and bullet profiles you can slide the distance, wind speed, and target angle ribbons to your desired values. As you adjust these the large elevation and windage fields at the bottom of the screen update with your current solution.
••• There's also a wind direction circle with a pointer you can drag around to indicate which direction the wind is coming out of. Unfortunately it doesn't snap to any increments, so the O/C amongst us are going to be challenged to get precisely 0°, 25°, 90°, etc.
••• There's a reticle you can tap that takes you to another page showing you where you should hold and what your point of impact will be on a variety of targets (deer, coyote, 10" circle, IPSC, etc.). I don't know that I'd ever have the time to reference this on a moving target, but it's still kinda neat.
••• The chart button takes you to your ballistics chart. In there there's a Settings button where you can show/hide a bunch of different columns of data. Unfortunately the app only displays the chart in portrait view, so you only get 3–4 columns of data visible at a time and you can't set the column order. It'd be nice if you could rotate this into landscape mode and see more columns of data at once.
••• Lastly, there's a weather button that takes you to a weather page where you can tap another button to fill in your local weather. However, it won't automatically fill in your altitude (even though your phone knows that info).
••• To connect the app to the Rangecraft, tap the hamburger menu then select "Connect Device." Tap the "Pair" button at the bottom of the screen. Then in the Rangecraft go to Settings->Connection->Pair Phone. You should get a confirmation PIN and your devices will be connected. If you power off the Rangecraft it looks like you need go back to the Connect Device screen in the Athlon Ballistics app and tap the "Pair" button for the devices to connect again, but you don't have to be in any particular screen on the Rangecraft when you do this.
••• Note also that you'll get a spurious "Please enable and connect to Bluetooth" error message at the bottom of the Connect Device screen in the Athlon Ballistics app after they connect.
So to sum of the out-of-the-box experience, it's a little rough. The paper manual has some errors and is pretty brief. The Athlon Ballistics app also has some errors, odd limitations, and quirks. However, if the YouTube reviews of the chronograph performance are to be believed, the Rangecraft is a pretty solid little chronograph for significantly less than the Xero. Fortunately software can be updated and I think all these little issues can be pretty easily ironed out.
• Good case. Nothing exotic, but very serviceable and will protect the unit when it's bouncing around in my range bag. Will be on the lookout for a screen protector, though.
• Battery came with ~80% charge, so it was nice not to have to charge it before I could play with it.
• It weighs 4.4 oz according to my postal scale. Garmin says the Xero weighs 4.1 oz.
• The included tripod is nicely solid and weighs 4.5 oz.
• The manual first recommends going to Settings to setup the device, so that's what I did.
••Date formats on the device only support DD/MM/YY or MM/DD/YY. Would prefer to have YYYY/MM/DD as that can be more easily sorted. It does support 24-hour time, thankfully. The rest of the settings were straight-forward.
•• User manual tells you to download the Athlon Ballistics Lite app, but at least in the Apple App store the app doesn't have "Lite" at the end of the name.
••• The first thing the app asks you to do after you launch it is to sign in, but there's no button or link to create an account and it won't let you submit a username / password that you manually type in. I had to choose the "Sign in with Apple" option to get past this screen. (There's a "Sign in with Google" option, too, but I didn't test that.)
••• Once signed-in you are taken to the Calculator page. At the top are fields for selecting a rifle and bullet profile. Tap the rifle field, then tap "+ New" to create a new rifle profile.
•••• Profile names for bullets and rifles are limited to 15 characters, which is not nearly enough.
•••• For a rifle you input the twist, twist rate, scope details (height, MOA/mil, V&H click values), and then reticle details (FFP/SFP, min/max magnification, and reticle "validitty" (sic) for SFP reticles). There's a reticle library, but understandably it only has details for Athlon reticles.
•••• For a bullet you can specify profile name (again, max 15 chars), length, diameter, weight, G1 or G7 BC, speed, zero distance, and zero offset. Right under the profile name field are four orange buttons for cartridge library, G7 library, G1 library, and pellet library. These save you from having to look up your specific bullet's characteristics, but you still have to give all that data a profile name.
••• Now that you've created your rifle and bullet profiles you can slide the distance, wind speed, and target angle ribbons to your desired values. As you adjust these the large elevation and windage fields at the bottom of the screen update with your current solution.
••• There's also a wind direction circle with a pointer you can drag around to indicate which direction the wind is coming out of. Unfortunately it doesn't snap to any increments, so the O/C amongst us are going to be challenged to get precisely 0°, 25°, 90°, etc.
••• There's a reticle you can tap that takes you to another page showing you where you should hold and what your point of impact will be on a variety of targets (deer, coyote, 10" circle, IPSC, etc.). I don't know that I'd ever have the time to reference this on a moving target, but it's still kinda neat.
••• The chart button takes you to your ballistics chart. In there there's a Settings button where you can show/hide a bunch of different columns of data. Unfortunately the app only displays the chart in portrait view, so you only get 3–4 columns of data visible at a time and you can't set the column order. It'd be nice if you could rotate this into landscape mode and see more columns of data at once.
••• Lastly, there's a weather button that takes you to a weather page where you can tap another button to fill in your local weather. However, it won't automatically fill in your altitude (even though your phone knows that info).
••• To connect the app to the Rangecraft, tap the hamburger menu then select "Connect Device." Tap the "Pair" button at the bottom of the screen. Then in the Rangecraft go to Settings->Connection->Pair Phone. You should get a confirmation PIN and your devices will be connected. If you power off the Rangecraft it looks like you need go back to the Connect Device screen in the Athlon Ballistics app and tap the "Pair" button for the devices to connect again, but you don't have to be in any particular screen on the Rangecraft when you do this.
••• Note also that you'll get a spurious "Please enable and connect to Bluetooth" error message at the bottom of the Connect Device screen in the Athlon Ballistics app after they connect.
So to sum of the out-of-the-box experience, it's a little rough. The paper manual has some errors and is pretty brief. The Athlon Ballistics app also has some errors, odd limitations, and quirks. However, if the YouTube reviews of the chronograph performance are to be believed, the Rangecraft is a pretty solid little chronograph for significantly less than the Xero. Fortunately software can be updated and I think all these little issues can be pretty easily ironed out.
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