I got my scope early this morning and immediately mounted it on my Vudoo and headed to the range. My first impressions of the scope were very good. I was pretty impressed by everything I saw. I was pretty surprised by the locking turrets as well. I didn’t realize the scope had locking turrets.
Well to the meat of the matter. I got to the range and set down with the Strike Eagle, a 6-24 Midas Tac and 5-25 Gen 2 Viper PST. The glass on the Strike Eagle and Midas Tac are darn close. The PST may be a little better but it’s marginal. Between the SE and TAC it is really tough to say because the FOV is so much better on the SE. Personally I think people place way too much emphases on glass quality. All the scopes demonstrate some level of CA at higher magnifications which is to be expected at this price point. If you think you will be getting Razor glass at this price you will be disappointed. That said, for the price the the glass it great and you will not be missing any shots due the the glass.
The eye box and FOV on the SE is fantastic. I would say the Strike Eagle is hands down the best of the three in this regard.
The turrets. All I can say is wow. I was very surprised at how nice they were. I would say they are comparable to the Razor turrets. The Midas TAC turrets are really nice with auditable clicks. The Viper turrets in my opinion are okay. The SE turrets take just the right amount of force to turn and have very distinct clicks. With my Tango 6 I sometimes have issues with knowing where I am because I don’t feel the distinct click into the next position. With the SE that is not an issue. The turrets also lock which is a game changer for me. I have had one two many windage turrets move on me. If a scope doesn’t at a minimum have a capped windage turret I wouldn’t even consider using it on a competition rifle.
The magnification and parallax are nice and smooth. Much better than the PST I have. The magnification ring on it is very difficult to turn. The addition of the nice aluminum throw leaver is a really nice bonus. The illumination is a little tough to turn as well but not a big deal for me. I just don’t really use illumination. Illumination is daylight bright if that matters to you. The diopter is a little too easy to turn. It was spinning just trying to put my lens cap on and I had to re set it several times. If you aren’t going to be covering like I did that could potentially be a problem.
I didn’t do a formal tracking test. I did run the scope from 50 yards out to 200 yards and back more times than I could count and it returned to zero every time. I don’t use a zero stop on my scopes so I can’t really say how that works. I have MOA built into my rail so I only have about 5 mils below zero so I had right around 25-26 mils of useable elevation which is fantastic for a rimfire.
That’s about all I can say. For once I was really surprised by a Vortex Optic. This scope is what the gen 2 Viper PST should have been. With this release I can see a gen 3 PST on the horizon that will,have a lot of the upgrades this scope has.
