First impressions, not a super detailed review as I’ve only had it 3 days or so. It’s awesome. Great step up over the silencerco radius I’ve been using.
It’s very well thought out. It has a lot of great features like internal weather sensors and compass. I’m already comfortable recommending it to anyone who needs an LRF in their life.
Form factor is an A+. Kinda heavy and chunky but solid. Unfortunately as you can see in the pics below my spuhr raptar rail isn’t tall enough for it to clear my thermal so I have to mount it on the side of my rifle. This is exposing both some nice features and also some irritating drawbacks related to the screen being tall instead of wide.
It comes with a remote which is very handy and well thought out. It’s a Bluetooth connection though instead of a wire. Several fancy holders to attach the remote to various rail systems.
Battery is easy to install without tools and not oriented in line with recoil so that’s good.
Ranging is an A-. Hit targets out to 3832 yards (repeat on same target stays within 5 yards). In the daylight that’s pretty dang good for an LRF <$2000.
It also will either give you horizontal distance or line of sight + angle to enter into your calc. Or you can use the onboard calc GeoBallistics.
However the radius that was 1/3rd the MSRP 10 friggin years ago was smart enough to return up to 3 different ranges (eg if you’re looking through trees or your target is on flat ground and your laser is hitting both the target and the ground that might be 40 yards behind the target). It would show the strongest return and then up to two other ones. That seems like a feature this LRF should have. Maybe they can add it in a future software release. And the laser itself appears to be set on an angle where most LRF are horizontal beams. That’s going to occasionally make it difficult to figure out just what you’re lazing.
GeoBallistics is an A-
I was a little hesitant about switching from shooter to GeoBallistics. However, I went ahead and tried it. Entered my rifle and ammo just like I have in shooter (in this case, for my 6.5x47L) then I threw it on a game changer bag on the back of the kubota and pointed it out into the mountains at trees with no leaves and hit the button. Came back instantly with a range 100 yards past a mile and a come up of 25.07 mils. I used my kestrel to get DA of 3300 and entered that into shooter and it gave me 25.0 mils. That’s close enough for me! And it just takes one button to wake it up and press it again to range unlike getting out the kestrel and iPhone etc. also that was using normal mode not ELR. So I’m pretty happy about that.
So the calc works, and the app is moderately decent user interface but definitely room for improvement. But their bullet library is kinda lame. And the way they set up gun profiles is super annoying. But still it gets the DA right and angle right and outputs the right dope and that’s what matters.
Return to zero grade is TBD because I can’t find my paint pen. But I have high hopes. If it doesn’t it’s going to be a pain in the butt because if you move the rifle more than 30 miles you have to do a very annoying complicated compass calibration that involves taking the LRF off the gun. It’s not QD mount. It’s 1/2” nuts that you need a torque wrench to return to zero (we hope). So you may need to rezero every time you go to the range.
Lots of things I haven’t been able to try like how the app works when you have multiple LRFs (eg on 2 or 3 guns for example).
And I kind of wish that since I went to all the trouble of calibrating an inclinometer and compass that it would show me a bubble level on the display so I could tell if I’m canting the rifle. Heck it would be super cool if it would give me dope based on cant but it doesn’t.
But overall so far it’s awesome. Try one if you get a chance.
It’s very well thought out. It has a lot of great features like internal weather sensors and compass. I’m already comfortable recommending it to anyone who needs an LRF in their life.
Form factor is an A+. Kinda heavy and chunky but solid. Unfortunately as you can see in the pics below my spuhr raptar rail isn’t tall enough for it to clear my thermal so I have to mount it on the side of my rifle. This is exposing both some nice features and also some irritating drawbacks related to the screen being tall instead of wide.
It comes with a remote which is very handy and well thought out. It’s a Bluetooth connection though instead of a wire. Several fancy holders to attach the remote to various rail systems.
Battery is easy to install without tools and not oriented in line with recoil so that’s good.
Ranging is an A-. Hit targets out to 3832 yards (repeat on same target stays within 5 yards). In the daylight that’s pretty dang good for an LRF <$2000.
It also will either give you horizontal distance or line of sight + angle to enter into your calc. Or you can use the onboard calc GeoBallistics.
However the radius that was 1/3rd the MSRP 10 friggin years ago was smart enough to return up to 3 different ranges (eg if you’re looking through trees or your target is on flat ground and your laser is hitting both the target and the ground that might be 40 yards behind the target). It would show the strongest return and then up to two other ones. That seems like a feature this LRF should have. Maybe they can add it in a future software release. And the laser itself appears to be set on an angle where most LRF are horizontal beams. That’s going to occasionally make it difficult to figure out just what you’re lazing.
GeoBallistics is an A-
I was a little hesitant about switching from shooter to GeoBallistics. However, I went ahead and tried it. Entered my rifle and ammo just like I have in shooter (in this case, for my 6.5x47L) then I threw it on a game changer bag on the back of the kubota and pointed it out into the mountains at trees with no leaves and hit the button. Came back instantly with a range 100 yards past a mile and a come up of 25.07 mils. I used my kestrel to get DA of 3300 and entered that into shooter and it gave me 25.0 mils. That’s close enough for me! And it just takes one button to wake it up and press it again to range unlike getting out the kestrel and iPhone etc. also that was using normal mode not ELR. So I’m pretty happy about that.
So the calc works, and the app is moderately decent user interface but definitely room for improvement. But their bullet library is kinda lame. And the way they set up gun profiles is super annoying. But still it gets the DA right and angle right and outputs the right dope and that’s what matters.
Return to zero grade is TBD because I can’t find my paint pen. But I have high hopes. If it doesn’t it’s going to be a pain in the butt because if you move the rifle more than 30 miles you have to do a very annoying complicated compass calibration that involves taking the LRF off the gun. It’s not QD mount. It’s 1/2” nuts that you need a torque wrench to return to zero (we hope). So you may need to rezero every time you go to the range.
Lots of things I haven’t been able to try like how the app works when you have multiple LRFs (eg on 2 or 3 guns for example).
And I kind of wish that since I went to all the trouble of calibrating an inclinometer and compass that it would show me a bubble level on the display so I could tell if I’m canting the rifle. Heck it would be super cool if it would give me dope based on cant but it doesn’t.
But overall so far it’s awesome. Try one if you get a chance.
