What is the fascination with a LPVO on an AR?

[Eurodriver]

God help us if the average police officer is going to be running into a walmart in full gear and then make a standing 300 yard shot with his AR.
Most people don't shoot past 100 yards ever, officers don't even shoot their ARs in the academy past 100 yards. Love all these dudes who shoot at 50 yards and then think they are magically going to make a 300 yard head shot. Even if you have a 1 MOA AR with good ammo, from a bench, you're looking at a 3 inch group at 300 yards. You think an officer with an LPVO at 6x who does almost no training should be taking 300 yard head shots?

Come on guys, I like LPVs but 90% of these scenarios I read online are ridiculous.
LPVOs awesome for LE for PID and yeah they are a jack of all trades for someone who isnt hiking far with their gear.
Aimpoint for home defense, for 99.99% of people.
ACOG for hiking around. They are light, perfect magnification, good glass, cheaper than most quality LPVs. I have lots of optics but find myself grabbing an ACOG when heading out into the desert. I can blast a rabbit at 10 yards and I can see far out. LPVs are heavy and a pain when using in a buggy or vehicle. Aimpoints and ACOGs are hard to beat.

I really hate how people use the military as their justification also. These dudes overseas using LPVs are in a completely different situation than anyone at home. At home even as an officer you are accountable for the rounds you fire, in a way that people overseas are not.

This is fax.

[AKDoug]

6 years after I got rid of my broken TR24, I tried LPVO again. This time with a Steiner p4xi... It made it a week and two trips to the range. It now sits on my wife's bench shooting range toy. I'm no wimp, but packing that extra weight around compared to my not-so-light Aimpoint Pro sent me right back to a red dot on my self defense rifle.

[Mustang31]

6 years after I got rid of my broken TR24, I tried LPVO again. This time with a Steiner p4xi... It made it a week and two trips to the range. It now sits on my wife's bench shooting range toy. I'm no wimp, but packing that extra weight around compared to my not-so-light Aimpoint Pro sent me right back to a red dot on my self defense rifle.

Just out of curiosity, what do you do at the range?

[AKDoug]

Just out of curiosity, what do you do at the range?

Redback One carbine shooting standard several times to try and get the feel for it. I can shoot the Steiner pretty well on 1x using the red dot with both eyes open, but I wasn't any faster or more accurate as a lighter weight RDS sight.

Ran three VTAC 9 hole drills with the VTAC barrier.. way easier to do with the Aimpoint Pro.

Shot standing, kneeling and prone at 50 and 100 yds. For quick shots using 1x there really wasn't much difference in accuracy either. For slow fire, the LPVO cranked up to 4 was the only place the LPVO shined.

[MegademiC]

6 years after I got rid of my broken TR24, I tried LPVO again. This time with a Steiner p4xi... It made it a week and two trips to the range. It now sits on my wife's bench shooting range toy. I'm no wimp, but packing that extra weight around compared to my not-so-light Aimpoint Pro sent me right back to a red dot on my self defense rifle.

I still use a vxr patrol. Its still 1/4lb lighter than anything (lpvo) on the market.
I just spent a few days going over all the new options and ended up figuring an aimpoint/eotech and a 2-12 in qd mounts is the only other thing Id buy right now.

[Circle_10]

I ended up taking my Steiner P4Xi off my midlength several months ago and it's currently not being used. I couldn't get past what I felt was the very clunky handling of the overall rifle/optic setup. (I also don't like the P4Xi reticle, but that's another issue)
That being said, the gun I had the Steiner mounted on was probably not a good fit for it in the first place and I'll eventually try the Steiner again (despite my dislike for the reticle, because there's nothing really "wrong" with it, I just don't care for it) when I have a gun more suited to it, as the LPVO does definitely bring something to the table in terms of capability.

Or who knows, I may end up giving it another chance on the gun it was on previously.

[1168]

I ended up taking my Steiner P4Xi off my midlength several months ago and it's currently not being used. I couldn't get past what I felt was the very clunky handling of the overall rifle/optic setup. (I also don't like the P4Xi reticle, but that's another issue)
That being said, the gun I had the Steiner mounted on was probably not a good fit for it in the first place and I'll eventually try the Steiner again (despite my dislike for the reticle, because there's nothing really "wrong" with it, I just don't care for it) when I have a gun more suited to it, as the LPVO does definitely bring something to the table in terms of capability.

Or who knows, I may end up giving it another chance on the gun it was on previously.

What do you not like about the reticle?

[Five_Point_Five_Six]

"A man's got to know his limitations"

Whenever the LPVO vs red dot debate comes up, it's always interesting the hear the reasoning behind people's choices.

I'm sitting on my front porch drinking coffee and reading M4C on my laptop. All around my house is thick vegetation and trees. From where I'm sitting, it's 50 yards give or take to the bend in my driveway. On either side of my house I have about 25-35 yards of visibility, and in the back it's about 50 if I'm on the back porch. If I go up to the balcony off the bedroom, I can see a bit further out into the woods but not much. If I walk to the bend in the drive way, I can see another 75 yards. If I walk a little further beyond that, it opens up to farm fields and houses. Since home defense is the primary purpose of my rifles, a red dot is more than adequate for me and the distances that I would need to use a carbine. The likelihood of me having to engage anyone out in the open is pretty slim. If I lived in the southwest or other wide open area, my needs may be different. I do shoot at much further distance at my spot in the woods than I would have to at home and do so with a red dot.

The positive ID thing is kinda funny to me. We harp on people about the 4 rules and not pointing a gun at anything you're not willing to destroy and being aware of your target and what's beyond it, then we tell them to crank up the magnification and point their rifle at something and make sure it's not the neighbor or one of their kids.

I know that there are people who may encounter a scenario where they need to take a 300+ yard shot, but it makes me wonder if that is a practical concern or not for many of the people using it as a reason, especially given the weight penalty of the optic. I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong at all with using a LPVO, I'm just not sure that many are being honest with themselves about the reasoning and I wonder how much time they spend shooting at distances greater than 300. Most people I see shooting rifles are shooting at 100 or less. Anyway, just food for thought.

[feraldog]

been using acogs since the year they were offered ('91). in past ten years everyone had been pushing lpvo scopes so i tried a few (spending over to $3K on some).

sold them all.

too big, too heavy, too complicated, too many screws in mount/rings to loosen, took up too much rail real estate, never set on magnification i needed when i shouldered the rifle, required i remember to reset ranging & wind dials constantly, first/second plane issues, battery illumination problems (leakage, dead batt, constant brightness adjustments, needing spare battery...), etc

and on top of that i wasn't much more accurate with lvpo on 8x than i was with a 4x32 acog, even at ranges out to 800yds (past that, a high quality lvpo with dials does better), yet i can still handle CQB ranges with them.

so i'm back having all my rifles carry acogs, and my ar pistols have trijicon's dual-illum rmr (w/ folding co-witness buis) - super simple, fast, easy, dependable, proven, and battery-less.

to each their own....


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[Circle_10]

What do you not like about the reticle?

Coming off of using an ACSS type reticle, I didn't like the conventional crosshair arrangement of the Steiner. I felt like it obscured too much of the target for my tastes. It's a SFP scope that only goes up to 4x, so even at max magnification the reticle is going to be pretty big in relation to the target if you are trying to hit, say, a 3" bullseye at 100 yds or something. You can still do it, and get good groups doing it, but it felt harder than it should be.
Granted, shooting small groups on small targets at 100 yards us probably not what the scope is really intended for, I'm assuming the P in "P4Xi" stands for "Patrol", but I still found it annoying.
I think I would have preferred if the top vertical crosshair were omitted entirely and instead of the other crosshairs actually intersecting , having a central dot instead or perhaps a chevron.

Not an unusable reticle by any means, I just wasn't thrilled with it. I didn't dislike it enough to get rid of the scope entirely, as like i said, the reasons for my removing were due to the way it affected the handling of the rifle vs any actual issue with the scope's performance.