Night vision scope info

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Django11

New member
I'm somewhat interested in acquiring a night vision scope, but I don't know much about them nor do I personally know anyone who has one. While searching the Internet I've noticed that some products are <$1000 (which is where my budget would probably be) but then jump to a few grand.

The main questions I have are whether the affordable ones are any good and worth messing with or not or do you need to fork out the cash? How use able are they during the day? What brands would you suggest and which ones you wouldn't?

The main purpose of of this would probably be coyote/predator hunting at night. It would most likely be mounted on and AR. Any additional information would be great. Thank in advance.
 
Both of those are digital night vision which means you can use them in the day time as well as at night. I am not a fan of ATN because of their history of terrible customer service, however, the X-Sight II ironed out a lot of the bugs of the original X-Sight which was a piece of garbage scope that jaded a LOT of people who purchased it. The X-Sight II has a really nice, color daylight image. The biggest problem I see with the X-Sight II is that there is a lag between when the motion occurs and when you see it in the scope. There is some lag with all electronics, but the amount of lag with the X-Sight II is pretty darn noticeable. You can't see that in watch videos on YouTube. You would have to experience it in person.

The Photon gives you a lot more magnification, but the image isn't as refined as the X-Sight II. Daylight image is in B&W and not color. IIRC, the Photon is besed used ith the cap on in bright sunshine as it tends to overload the sensor and you get some image flicker as a result. Sightmark is backed up by Sellmark distributor in Mansfield, Texas. They have the absolute best customer service around.

For night hunting, they are both pretty pathetic as NV without IR illuminators and each comes with one and I would suggest that you buy a supplemental external IR illuminator to help each scope better attain their potential. I don't know why both companies put on crappy illuminators that fail to make the scope as capable as it can be, but they do. Go figure.

Check out videos on YouTube for both of these scopes. Look for videos that are more recently released to see what the current models are doing (versus older videos as even when the X-Sight II came out, it still needed upgrades and you want to see what you might be getting now, versus what was being made in the past).

Let me just say that the X-Sight II has a LOT of bells and whistles. Chances are, you won't use most of them...sort of like in the 80s when you bought a home stereo with an equalizer with 10 channels on each side and you played with them a lot for the first week or two and eventually set them and forgot them. Like that.

Now, if you want to get into quality NV gear, it isn't digital, and you end up in the price of lower end thermal scopes such as the Pulsar Apex XQ50 that will work quite nicely and in many cases, work much better than night vision.
 
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