Re: Which scope do you recommended?
The Leatherwood/Hi-Lux CMR is pretty cool for the money. I haven't taken mine out yet but here's my initial impression.
The scope feels a little inexpensive. It has heft to it and substance due to weight but details do look cheap. The printed numbers and letters on the body and turrets are not very fine in detail. Maybe they could've used a better font.
The actual turret knob and the MOA hash mark ring are two piece and will rotate independently if the allens on top of the turrets are loose. There's a set screw on each turret on the MOA indicator rings. It's there to stop the ring from rotating more than one full revolution as per their ZRO-LOC feature. The whole ZRO-LOC system, although it may work perfectly fine, is a bit hokey compared to the svelte system of something like a Nightforce. You have to loosen the visible dual allens on top of the turrets, zero your rifle, turn the MOA indicator rings to line up at zero, then tighten the dual allens on the turrets down. But if your turrets aren't tightened down well, once you hit the ZRO-LOC set screw while turning your turret, you could potentially stop the MOA inidicator ring from turning but still turn the actual turret knob.
The turret indents are well defined and give you audible clicks but they're rather weak with quite a bit of slack. There's a bit of slop between clicks. If you lightly wiggle the turret, you'll feel it wiggle back and forth between clicks by about 1/8". The turrets are a little too easy to turn also. Don't try to tighten the exposed set screws, that I mentioned earlier, to try and stiffen the turret resistance because the screw will gouge into the inner mechanism and more importantly, will ad resistance to the MOA rings and not the actual knobs. It's just a stop screw.
The flip up covers are a bit large and required some electrical tape to fit correctly. The grooves on the magnification ring was machined a bit poorly and you can see it in some of the fine lines that look marred. But the resistance of the adjustment is nice and tight and there's a knob that sorta protrudes out to aid in grip. The ring has to turn a little more than half a circle to go from 1x to 4x.
The illumination turret is stiff and has positive clicks. The illumination is more like a traditional illuminated rifle scope where the reticle is just black against a bright background but visible against a dark background. At medium to high settings, it's quite usable in afternoon lighting and where there's a dark backdrop like trees and shrubs and obviously great indoors and at night. It's not like a red dot or holo sight. The brightness incriments from low to high are quite good. The levels on the dial aren't stacked to one end in brightness if you know what I mean. But the NV setting looks too bright for actual NV use. I noticed that in low light, at higher settings, it'll cause the lens to glow green with glare. Not a big deal since you should use the lower settings in really dark areas.
The diopter works very well. Even with my slight astigmatism, I can get it to focus well. The magnification says about 95 yards FOV at 100 yards. That's probably about right but not in close quarters. The CMR feels like 1.5x at close range such as inside the house. It's definitely not as fast as a red dot in close quarters but if you know how to use the BAC method of aiming, this glass won't slow you down by much. It may not slow you down at all if you're used to an RCO. Anyways even a NF 1-4x is a bit magnified at close range.
The glass is pretty good. Compared to a Nikon Buckmaster, it's probably just slightly less bright. And it's noticeably dimmer than a 3.5-15x50 NXS and an RCO. But resolution is great. Read some books on shelves with it just fine that could barely be made out with an ACOG but the RCO did have a much wider FOV.
There's no weird surface tension/bubble effect on the edges. Eye relief is decent at about 3" as advertised. The reticle is what I like the most. It's got a super simple BDC (although I haven't tried it yet) and a ranging reticle. The 5MIL horseshoe comes out to about 18"@100yds but their manual says it's 19". Maybe they meant meters. BTW, their manual is sort've a joke. The illumation will light up this 5MIL horseshoe as well as the 1MOA dot. Obviously you can use the thick 5MIL horseshoe and the thin 10MIL donut but you've also got 5MIL holdover stadia lines that correspond to yardage for BDC and MIL stadia along the horizontal crosshair for traditional range estimation. From the online reticle image, it looks quite clustered and busy but in real life, it's very simple and clear. The horseshoe is really quick to acquire targets.
The reticle makes for a fantastic value in a 1-4x scope. I think that in a scope used for quick target acquisition, a BDC reticle with ranging capabilities is ideal. If Vortex or NightForce came out with such a useful and quick reticle, I'd be all over it. The closest thing to this that I found that I would love to own is Vortex's R/T binocular reticle with an MLR type crosshair and human silhouettes along the bottom ranging from smaller to bigger. You can place your target inside one of the silhouettes and range him instantly. That's pretty trick. Just need to incorporate BDC into it and throw it on a rifle scope.
