6
5
Primary Arms Athena BPR
Sightmark PRS
Sightmark Latitude 6.25-25x56
Primary Arms GLx 6-24x50 FFP Rifle Scope - Illuminated ACSS Athena BPR MIL Reticle
What’s Important? When scoring the scopes, I gave the most weight to glass clarity, turret tracking, and build durabil- ity. Clarity is important in finding your targets, reading wind con- ditions, and seeing impacts. The better the glass, the sharper the image, the wider tonality of colors, and finer details you will see. You can’t hit a target you don’t see. Reliable and repeatable tracking will give you consistent impacts shot after shot as you zip up and down the elevation. If there is slop in the turret or it fails to return to zero, it will cause misses and make you doubt your rifle’s DOPE. Without a durable build, a common bump or fall can cause the lenses to shift, erector assemblies to bind, or the turret system to go out of whack. A great warranty will not save a scope that keeps breaking. Price carried weight only after the above performance stan- dards were met. If I can’t trust the scope, I will not recommend it, no matter the price. Testing Before evaluating the scopes, I meticulously leveled them, set the turrets at the optical center, and adjusted the diopter ring to get a crisp reticle.
Glass
Low dispersion
Low dispersion, multicoated
Tube Diameter
34mm
Glass
in the elevation turret, making it difficult to tell if I dialed 8.5 or 8.4 mils on the closely spaced turret markings. All these little things put the Sightmark at the bottom of my list. MSRP: $840 sightmark.com 5. Primary Arms GLx 6-24x50 The best features of this Primary Arms are the reticle, the push-but- ton zero stop, and the knurled turret caps. The ACSS Athena BPR reticle has everything you need, including two ranging reticles, a chevron center, and .2 mil marks on its horizontal stadia. The grid- ded dots are the right size to not obscure your impacts. In brightly lit conditions, optical quality was very good, but with gray skies, the image started to get washed out at 9X. Above 17X, it was degraded too much to be useful. I found the eyebox finicky and would lose the image with little head movement. When you are shooting high and low positions, its beneficial to have an eyebox that is lenient with head position. MSRP: $850 primaryarms.com
Total Elevation Adjustment Total Windage Adjustment
31 mils
Tube Diameter
30mm
Total Elevation Adjustment Total Windage Adjustment
17.5 mils
20 mils
Turret Features
Zero stop
11.6 mils
Adjustment Per Revolution
10 mils
Locking, zero reset, zero stop, hardened steel
Turret Features
Parallax
20 yds.
Adjustment Per Revolution
Eye Relief
4.2 to 4.7 in.
10 mils
before performing another optical tracking test.
I tested the optical quality by looking at dense vegetation and trees as well as high contrast structures. The many shades of greens, browns, and grays, leaf shapes, and branch sizes tested the scope’s dynamic range, contrast, resolution, and depth of field. High contrast areas revealed any chromatic aberration. I looked at objects from 100 yards to 800 yards. I ran three head-to-head com- parisons on different days under different lighting conditions and compared each scope to a $2,000 U.S.-made Burris XTR Pro. Spoiler alert: the XTR Pro was always the better scope. I tested tracking two ways, optically and physically. For the optical tracking, I have a system that is reliable and repeatable and can see .1-mil deviations. I ran ele- vation the full length of the reticle
Reticle
PRS
Parallax
25 yds. to infinty
Illuminated
Yes
Pressing the return-to-zero lock’s button allows you to move the turret up or down.
Revolution markings on the turret body make dialing simpler.
Eye Relief
3.5 in.
Length
13.77 in.
Results: Good to Best All of the scopes had a great image at low to mid power and on a brightly lit day. What separated the good from the best was how they performed on gray days, when looking into shadows, and when magnified beyond 12X. The scopes that found the top spots had the best images across the magnification range and in good and poor lighting conditions. The optical and tall target tests agreed with each other. The Athlon and Arken tracked per- fectly in both cases, and the rest varied from 1 to 2 percent, which is acceptable and can be compen- sated for in a ballistic solver. All scopes passed the durability test with no effect on tracking or the reticle.
ACSS Athena BPR MIL
Reticle
Weight
33.1 oz.
Illuminated
Yes
Field of View @ 100 yds.
16.1 to 4 ft.
Length
15.3 in.
Weight
24.5 oz.
Field of View @ 100 yds.
15.2 to 4.2 ft.
and the windage to 5 mils on each side of center. For physical tracking, I performed a tall target test. Using the same point of aim on a round sticker, I shot three shots then dialed 10 mils and shot again. If the shots were 36 inches apart, it tracked perfectly. If it was more or less than that, I noted the difference in a percentage. A 2 percent difference in 36 inches is an acceptable deviation. For durability, I pounded each optic on a dense material using a force similar to that of dropping a rifle. I hit the scope on all axes
6. Sightmark Latitude 6.25-25x56 This is a beefy scope and rated to handle .50 BMG recoil. I had an issue with this scope right out of the box. The finish was uneven and discolored. The glass fared well in bright light, but on gray days, the weaknesses came out. Some areas were sharp, and other areas were soft. During the track- ing test, I noticed some backlash
Precision Scope Roundup
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Budget Guns
2023
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