Hi all,
I've been mulling a cheap NV set-up for a while.
I like the idea of being able to see and shoot in the dark, but I'm high drag and low speed... I'm almost 50 and have never ridden in a helicopter, much less rappelled out of one or fired a machine gun from one.
This is not for me to deploy to Ukraine or to fend off an attack by Spetsnaz. This is for me to shoot the odd varmint, or in case of TEOTWAWKI, to pick off zombies after dark...
DACK was selling the 2-16x28 Wraith for cheap (≈$400). I also bought a Streamlight TLR-1 IR, because I like the user interface and mount (see photos), which is the same as the visible TLR-1 I have on my KISS rifle, and I figured that Sightmark's included illuminator would suck.
I was skeptical of "Sightmark," but they're in the same corporate group as Pulsar, which makes good stuff, and other reviews were glowing.
To Sightmark's credit, they don't market this as a "tactical" option, but rather for hunting pigs or whatever. Again, I don't foresee betting my life on this.
I now have a dedicated "precision" rifle and a KISS rifle, so I had a lightweight BCM with a 2-8x32 Nikon Monarch3 on it that didn't really seem useful. Exit the Nikon, enter the Wraith.
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There are a bunch of reviews on the errornet, with lots of photos, so I'll just post what occurs to me...
Good:
— The night vision works really well, much better than I expected.
On a dark night, with the Streamlight on, at 75-100yds I can clearly see the details of a bicycle (wheels, seat, handlebar). It would be a cinch to identify animals (nevermind humans) at the same distance.
— The included illuminator is actually decent. It has three settings (vs. the Streamlight's on/off), and the beam is focusable, just like a real decent flashlight.
On high with the beam focused tightly, I can see the electrical box on the side of my neighbor's house at 125yds or more, which is more than enough for my purposes.
— Neither illuminator puts out much red signature; I doubt that anybody would notice it from 50-75+ yards away. (Critters certainly wouldn't.)
— Turning on and using the Wraith is easy and intuitive. There's a simple "quick start" guide enclosed, but it's hardly necessary.
— Pick your reticle (and its color): There are a dozen or so options, and switching is easy and quick.
— Zeroing a rifle was never so stupid-simple... Fire a round or a group, toggle the "zero" mark to the PoI while keeping the crosshairs on the PoA, press "enter," and it's done. I changed the zero when I moved from 25yds to 100yds and when I changed ammo, and it seemed very repeatable and precise.
Bad:
— The field of view seems narrow, and it doesn't help that what you see is a rectangular screen, rather than a circle (like a normal scope). The specs say that the FoV is 42' @ 100yds, vs. 46' for my old Nikon, but the difference seems greater.
— The eye relief is short: 2 inches. (Compare that to 3-1/2" or 4" for the Nikon it replaced.)
— The rail mount is simple, but inflexible... There's no way to shift the optic fore/aft on its mount.
I have orangutan arms and don't like my nose on the charging handle, and the Wraith's eye relief is short, so even using the rearmost slots on my AR's receiver left it mounted too far forward for me.
Sooo... I drilled a couple new holes in the mount and moved the optic back almost 1". It seems stable enough like that. (It hasn't shot loose, yet!)
— With the optic hanging off the back of the mount, there's no room for a BUIS behind it.
I had to mount my MBUS forward of the Wraith, and also mount it backwards, so it flips up from front to back... It's odd, I know.
I removed the Wraith and checked the BUIS before re-mounting the Wraith and zeroing it, and the BUIS was useable like that.
— Bring batteries. Claimed battery life is 3-1/2 hours, and that's about right. Running 4 rechargeable NiMh AAs, after ≈90-120 minutes of diddling and shooting, the battery indicator turned yellow. I now have a set of 4 AAs in the storage in my stock saddle.
— It's slow. Pop open the lens cover, look through the scope, and... nothing. It takes a couple interminable seconds for the exposure to self-adjust and for the image to resolve.
Ugly:
— It sucks as a day scope, though it's not unworkable: I shot several <2" groups @ 100yds, which is as well as that lightweight BCM has ever done.
I'm hardly a scope snob: I own and shoot several Nikons (nothing else), none of which cost more than $350, some of which were <$200 brand new, but the Wraith has literally the shittiest resolution I have ever seen through any scope.
To explain:
— The image is pixelated or fuzzy all the time. Even at 2x, aiming/shooting at 25yds, it's pixelated and fuzzy.
It's not like looking through a riflescope; it's like playing a 1980s video game about looking through a scope.
I've never found it necessary to focus my normal riflescopes after initially setting them up, but I was constantly working on the focus ring on the Wraith, trying to make the image better. It only gets so good (which isn't very good at all).
— Examples: The cheap Nikon "shotgunner" scope that I have on an old .22lr is ten times more clear, whether at 2x or 7x.
— Looking across my well-lit 4-car garage with a regular riflescope on 2x 3x or 4x, the posters 40-50' away are more clear than with the naked eye. With Wraith, even set at 2x, they're no more clear than without.
— I couldn't even see .22 holes on plain paper @ 25yds through the Wraith. I had to break out the binoculars to zero it.
— With every other scope I own, I can see .22 (or even .17) holes in shoot'n'see targets @ 100yds or even 150yds. With the Wraith, I couldn't even see the scoring lines on the bullseye target @ 100yds, and the bullseye itself (the size of a quarter) was barely visible as a fuzzy dot. (If I hadn't known the bullseye was there, I would not have seen it.) I had to use my spotting scope to see where I was hitting.
— The resolution is good enough to identify larger targets (say, a skunk), but not enough to see anything like the details on a paper target or to be able to differentiate between individual people (not that I was pointing it at people).
— It's susceptable to glare. The generic shoot'n'see targets that I use are crystal clear through a regular riflescope, but the glare of the sun off the target (otherwise invisible) makes them half obscured through the Wraith.
On a sunny afternoon, too, looking towards the ocean, the colors fade and the image is obscured as the Wraith tries (and fails) to deal with the glare off the water.
It reminds me of old film cameras that couldn't take decent photos of scenes that looked great to the naked eye.
— The digital zoom is largely useless. Like my old phone's digital zoom, going past 3x or 4x (6x or 8x, total) just makes for a blurry mess. 12x is hardly useful. 16x is a joke.
(This is not so bad, because I see this as a short-range system, but it's just stupid to market this as a 16x scope.)
Final Grades:
Night vision: A.
Electronic user interface: A.
Mount: B-.
Daytime scope: D.
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Originally Posted by DixieGuns
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