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Posted: 4/17/2026 6:31:58 AM EDT
[Last Edit: hoody2shoez][Edited]
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What optic dissappinted you the most? For me it has to be the gen 1 plxc in ffp and sfp. |
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Aimpoint T2: The tint was stronger than anything I had previously used, and it’s still the worst optic I used with my astigmatism. The real issue was me trusting the internet on using my rear sight to force an astigmatism correction. That turned out to make it the slowest and worst optic experience I’ve ever had. I still shake my head when I see people recommend this. Trijicon Credo: The hype train has died down, but people acted like this was a Razor for a few hundred bucks cheaper. Optical quality, I found it to be closer to a PST for a few hundred bucks more. It’s not a bad optic by any means, but I expected a flatter 1X. Arken EP8: Another one that isn’t a bad optic, but the hype train was stronger than the delivery. Some had good illumination, some didn’t, and the 8X was pretty distorted. Holosun 407: The go to pistol dot for most people. I have three of them. My first issue was the shake awake on one going belly up after a day in the cold. Never came back so I set it to always on. My second had a turret detent break at about 200 rounds. The zero suddenly shifted with every shot, and eventually when trying to adjust it back, the turret just started slipping in free spins. My third one has had no issues but is low round count. A way back one, the Nikon P223: Lots of guys claimed this was like a cheap ACOG. The glass quality was that of looking through a glass vase someone pissed in and drew a reticle on. Everything was dark yellow, or purple from the terrible chromatic aberration. To this day it still stands out as the worst optical quality I’ve ever spent my money on. I had some really bad stuff in my early days too. |
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Originally Posted By -OdieGreen-: A way back one, the Nikon P223: Lots of guys claimed this was like a cheap ACOG. The glass quality was that of looking through a glass vase someone pissed in and drew a reticle on. Everything was dark yellow, or purple from the terrible chromatic aberration. To this day it still stands out as the worst optical quality I've ever spent my money on. I had some really bad stuff in my early days too. The CA you describe is how I saw the Vudu 3-9x shorty at the gun store. |
"Technique isn't something that can be taught. It's something you find on your own." - Bunta Fujiwara
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Swampfox KL 2-12x. The Swampfox is lighter than my Burris XTRII 2-10x, but still a chonk. The illumination is not as bright as the sample C-DOES got. As in same as the Burris and every other not expensive/non-fiber scope. Useless for anything but dawn/dusk. The exit pupil is small making 12x dark and hard to stay centered in - the native magnification is 5x. The eye relief is just 0.5" too long and more fitting for an AR10. The Recce Mil reticle is the best part, but even that is too busy for my preference. Half Mil marks should not be included under 18x. |
"Technique isn't something that can be taught. It's something you find on your own." - Bunta Fujiwara
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Most LPVOs. Its stupid that an optic weighs over a pound even without the mount. I wish more manufacturers would make them without all the electronics inside. That damn near doubles the weight. ACOGs. Trash eye relief for something that costs more than my truck. |
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| I have a couple Vortex PST line scopes and I think they are excellent for the money. I also have several of their $300ish level red dots and I have had a number of issues with them. They do warranty them, but my personal failure rate is kinda high. Compared to a similar level of PA red dots, they have been better performers. |
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Originally Posted By HighpowerRifleBrony: Which ones? I honestly couldn't tell you the models I tried. They were just average size. Not the micro, mini, or jumbo ones. I went down the line at a dealer display and tried a handful of them. Heading into the building, I had money burning a hole in my pocket and was gonna get an acog. All they had to do was not suck and the deal was done. |
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Originally Posted By giantpune: Most LPVOs. Its stupid that an optic weighs over a pound even without the mount. I wish more manufacturers would make them without all the electronics inside. That damn near doubles the weight. ACOGs. Trash eye relief for something that costs more than my truck. Honestly feel the same towards LPVOs, tho we differ when it comes to ACOGs. I’ll trade the eye relief for a lighter and more rugged optic. The Delta Stryker 1-6 I had was okay but the weight was too much for what really seemed to do nothing better than an ACOG. MPVOs are where it’s at for me. If I want more mag than 4x, I wanna have more magnification on tap than 6x or 8x. Don’t need to use it for everything, but if I’m gonna be paying a weight penalty I want more capability for it in trade. |
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Originally Posted By giantpune: I honestly couldn't tell you the models I tried. They were just average size. Not the micro, mini, or jumbo ones. I went down the line at a dealer display and tried a handful of them. Heading into the building, I had money burning a hole in my pocket and was gonna get an acog. All they had to do was not suck and the deal was done. You can be a full two feet behind any ACOG and still have a sight picture. You can’t do that with most LPVO’s at magnification. A little objective shadow never hurt anyone. Especially with ACOG’s as they’re less sensitive to parallax shift compared to LPVO’s too. |
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Sig Romeo 3Max slide mounted; this was a relatively early design with two big problems; durability and what became a proprietary footprint. I broke a bunch of them and unfortunately had one slide milled to direct mount it; today I'd need to buy a custom adapter plate if I wanted to use that slide again. Later designed slide mounted dots are so much better. ACOG, TA31 and TA11, bought TA31 in my early days of AR ownership for the "clone" effect, and it does look cool, light weight for what it is, great image, but... once it came time to actually shoot the gun, the extremely short eye relief, tight eye box, reticle, no ability to quickly and easily adjust illumination were all downsides I didn't like. Got the TA11 chasing better eye relief; a little better, but not much, they both got sold. |
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Primary Arms 1-8x. Forgot the model. It was about a decade ago. Sent the first and second ones back. PA was good with the return shipping and refund, so I can't complain about them. Still order from them once in awhile. The fisheye effect at 1x made it unusable at that power and the lack of edge 'crispness'/distortion at 8x ate up a lot of usable lens area. Magnification adjustment was extremely stiff. I've never been impressed with their subsequent offerings, but then I'm a Nightforce guy now.  
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Originally Posted By 556Cliff: T2 and T2 style optics. The lenses are just too tiny for me. Also pistol dots, those are even worse… And LPVOs (all of them), they’ve been a bad concept from the beginning. No idea why any of these are so popular. If you focus on the target you hardly notice the small window, you just get a dot superimposed on the target. That's what's great about having all these choices though, what works for might not work for the other. |
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Originally Posted By gunner76: If you focus on the target you hardly notice the small window, you just get a dot superimposed on the target. That's what's great about having all these choices though, what works for might not work for the other. Originally Posted By gunner76: Originally Posted By 556Cliff: T2 and T2 style optics. The lenses are just too tiny for me. Also pistol dots, those are even worse… And LPVOs (all of them), they’ve been a bad concept from the beginning. No idea why any of these are so popular. If you focus on the target you hardly notice the small window, you just get a dot superimposed on the target. That's what's great about having all these choices though, what works for might not work for the other. My issue with them is that they just require a very precise cheek weld/eye placement to have the dot appear within the tiny little lens. It's a much bigger issue with pistols than rifles though because with a pistol the presentation has to be perfect to make that happen. At least with a rifle it has the stock to index off of. Sure it can all be trained into muscle memory, but I just like the bigger more forgiving lenses that allow me to see the dot more quickly without having to search for it. A large lens pistol dot isn't really a thing yet as far as I know, but I'd probably have more interest in the pistol dot concept if there was. |
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Originally Posted By HighpowerRifleBrony: Did you try it at the rear of the receiver? Pistol-wise, no matter what, gotta git gud. All have been more forward mounted over the ejection port. I'm sure the small lens red dots would be a bit better mounted all the way back. |
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Trijicon MRO. The distortion and slight magnification sucked. Trijicon TA01-NSN. Had one because I wanted to make my transferable Colt M16 lower into a GWOT correct m4. The eye relief was so terrible. I sold it a few months after purchasing it. |
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Originally Posted By hoody2shoez: What optic dissappinted you the most? For me it has to be the gen 1 plxc in ffp and sfp. Plx c for me in SFP. First impression was not great. I was baffled at how much praise everyone here gives it. But after a good range day and a few hundred rounds that day later it grew on me. Still dont love it but I dont hate it. Glad I got it on sale. Won't buy another. Steiner still my go to. Plx going on a hand out rifle |
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Vortex strike eagle 1-6. The hype was so strong on this release and I was super excited. Daylight brightness was a joke, and the glass quality was well below the Burris 1–4 X. I have never had such high hopes for an optic, and then such massive disappointment. The Youtubers were paid shills, obviously. |
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Originally Posted By -OdieGreen-: Trijicon Credo: The hype train has died down, but people acted like this was a Razor for a few hundred bucks cheaper. Optical quality, I found it to be closer to a PST for a few hundred bucks more. It’s not a bad optic by any means, but I expected a flatter 1X. @-OdieGreen- In your experience is the Viper PST G2 the scope to get for that price bracket for a 1-6? I was planning on buying a Credo just to get a nicer 1-6 to play around with - compared to my RT6. It’s not a “need”. |
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Originally Posted By Redman556: Vortex Strike Eagle 1x whatever. Biggest POS I've ever owned. Sent it in to have it repaired, and they sent me a new one. It had the same issues, but worse as far as the turrets. Glass and eye relief was horrible. Funny you mention this. I bought one online without ever looking through one after all the glowing reviews here about how awesome they were. Once I looked through it, that’s when I realized that there’s a lot of people on arfcom whose only experience with scopes must be low end Tasco, Simmons, Barska, etc. The fish eye on the Strike Eagle’s lense was so bad even a photographer specializing in trippy band photos would’ve rejected it. I’m sure it was functional, but even at $200 I couldn’t find a good reason to keep it. Lesson learned, the people here are basically identical to what you see at a gun show. There’s bullshitters, mouth breathers, know it all’s, guy’s broke as hell that just like finger fucking things, and then some really knowledgeable people that know what they’re talking about and have the experience to back it up that we should all pay attention to. The problem is, on online forums, it’s much harder to figure out which one of those you’re dealing with. Also, the simplest lesson, you get what you pay for. |
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Originally Posted By theguymontag: @-OdieGreen- In your experience is the Viper PST G2 the scope to get for that price bracket for a 1-6? I was planning on buying a Credo just to get a nicer 1-6 to play around with - compared to my RT6. It’s not a “need”. At the Credo’s price I’d be watching the EE for a reputable seller with a used Razor. The Credo is better than the PST, but it’s a hard question to answer on if it’s worth it. I’d say the Razor price difference is though. Truth be told, I’ve kind of gotten away from LPVO’s and my shooting crew and I are all busy with family and work life, so we don’t go do goon shit nearly as much. As such, I don’t buy or get exposure to anywhere near the options that I used to. There are a lot of new options out there that I have no experience with so I can’t speak on them. |
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PA Slx 1-6x gen II: Wow that had bad fisheye at 1x, and lots of purple CA at 6x. Maybe newer gens are better? SWFA 1-4x: Eye relief changed so much between 1x and 4x that it was hard to use. SWFA 12x: I've used the 10x and been happy, but for some reason the 12x had terrible scope shadowing with the slightest head movement. Swampfox 3x Trihawk: I had high hopes as the FOV was huge for a 3x prism but the glass clarity and illumination was garbage. |
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Sounds like 2/3 of these are: People who need PRK but simply refuse fix it Bad set up Bad training / technique For me it was: 1.5x and 2x mini ACOGs (not enough magification to help, FOV too small to ignore the 1x around it. Burris XTR 5-25x50 Gen1 (great mechanics but glass so bad it was like the wrong lenses were installed) RMR gen1 (tiny blue window with crazy distortion/magnification) |
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NF ATACR 1-8 and VCOG 1-6. The 1 on the atacr was dogwater and the vcog evidenced terrible diopter or parallax shift, whichever, but it couldn't be made crisp at 1 and 6x, had to choose. Vortex setting their AMG parallax to 250 was god tier. |
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Originally Posted By Trucker69: Funny you mention this. I bought one online without ever looking through one after all the glowing reviews here about how awesome they were. Once I looked through it, that’s when I realized that there’s a lot of people on arfcom whose only experience with scopes must be low end Tasco, Simmons, Barska, etc. The fish eye on the Strike Eagle’s lense was so bad even a photographer specializing in trippy band photos would’ve rejected it. I’m sure it was functional, but even at $200 I couldn’t find a good reason to keep it. Lesson learned, the people here are basically identical to what you see at a gun show. There’s bullshitters, mouth breathers, know it all’s, guy’s broke as hell that just like finger fucking things, and then some really knowledgeable people that know what they’re talking about and have the experience to back it up that we should all pay attention to. The problem is, on online forums, it’s much harder to figure out which one of those you’re dealing with. Also, the simplest lesson, you get what you pay for. A lot of people only use their optics in full daylight aiming at high contrast, known-distance targets from stable positions. All but the worst optics work fine for that. I think most of these shooters are just relaying the experience they've had, which just doesn't reveal much about an optic's performance. I bought a Leupold LRP that's been a bit of a dud. The glass and turrets are actually quite good. However, the eye relief varies a lot from the low end to the high end, the eye box is tight on the high end, the reticle is too busy, and the mil numbers are too small to read until at least 10x. The end result is that it's just not much fun to shoot with. It works, but it's taxing and slows you down. It's a $1,000 scope trying to be a $2,500 scope, and that ain't happening. |
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Interesting to hear others complain about the PA PLxC 1-8. I really like the one I have. Razor II 1-6. I have a 1-4 Razor, and while the eyebox on the 1-6 is good, the glass and reticle aren't that great. There have been a few on friends rifles that have fallen apart. PST II 1-6 is okay, but a lot of people praise it and I don't see why. Some of the SWFA stuff is overrated. |
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Vortex Razor HD Gen 2 3-18x50 on a short action bolt gun. Slowly shifts zero a couple of clicks over the course of about 1000 rounds (at about 4500 now and had to adjust it 4 times and can show targets that show it shift as more rounds are fired) Light transmission and clarity of the glass both are lack luster for the price range. I've pretty much sworn off vortex because of the price to performance ratio of that scope. A buddy went through two PST 1-6 or 1-8 scopes in three range trips, and that pretty much finished off any interest I had in their products. |
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Originally Posted By Wangstang: Vortex Razor HD Gen 2 3-18x50 on a short action bolt gun. Slowly shifts zero a couple of clicks over the course of about 1000 rounds (at about 4500 now and had to adjust it 4 times and can show targets that show it shift as more rounds are fired) Light transmission and clarity of the glass both are lack luster for the price range. I've pretty much sworn off vortex because of the price to performance ratio of that scope. A buddy went through two PST 1-6 or 1-8 scopes in three range trips, and that pretty much finished off any interest I had in their products. You should contact Vortex. They'll probably replace it. My only Vortex scope (Razor HD LH) had the interior lining flake off pretty quickly. Vortex sent me a new one, no problem. I'm not real likely to buy another Vortex. I don't want to have to send scopes back, but at least it's good to know you can. My experience with Primary Arms has been similar: The first one might not work, but you'll eventually get one that does. |
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Originally Posted By cttb: You should contact Vortex. They'll probably replace it. My only Vortex scope (Razor HD LH) had the interior lining flake off pretty quickly. Vortex sent me a new one, no problem. I'm not real likely to buy another Vortex. I don't want to have to send scopes back, but at least it's good to know you can. My experience with Primary Arms has been similar: The first one might not work, but you'll eventually get one that does. 100% same. My Razor 1-6 started dimming over time. Vortex fixed it. My workplace ordered 15 or so of the PST 2 1-6's. About 4-5 of them have dimmed significantly or just stopped turning on. I think we sent one back and then just realized its not worth bothering. When they break, we just replace them now. Personally, I won't be bothering with them anymore. With that said, their CS is awesome. With *that* being said, you'll likely have to use it. |
| A cheap, oddball 1-4 Bushnell on an SBR. I really liked the combo. The illumination knob got a little loose & they told me to send it in. “Not fixable” (bullshit), so they sent me an “AR 1-4” - no choice. Unusable POS FFP reticle in a 1-4 w/ exposed turrets. I didn’t even take it out of the box. |
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These were from over 10 years ago... Springfield Armory scope. Don't remember which exact model. Bought it from SWFA. The glass clarity was awful. Aimpoint 2x. I can't believe that Aimpoint made something this bad. Even the Chinese haven't made an optic with a worse fisheye distortion. |
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Zeiss Conquest. Everyone claimed bright and great light transmission. I thought it absolutely blew chunks at dusk or cloudy days. I wasn’t asking for perfect vision for that magic 20 minutes after sunset, it was grey looking long before that. By the time ten minutes to sunset hit and you’re waiting for that big buck to step out none of the holdover stadia are usable. You couldn’t see them. Ironically, I replaced it with a Leupold VH6 that others panned. Granted I got it at a hell of a discount. I also got a very good price on a Credo. I seldom use it though as it’s on the magnum rifle. I like it for the price. I paid way under market price for it so no big deal. The Zeiss conquest? It’s back in the box on the shelf. |
The only hyphenated names I like are cartridge names......30-06, 30-40, 38-55 etc.
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Sig Tango MSR 1-10. Learned my lesson to not go budget with any LPVO with more than 1-6 magnification range. It's not a terrible optic, but it's just not something you should spend $500 on when you can get a used/demo Viper PST 1-6 for roughly the same price that will likely make you far happier. Same issue another poster had with another optic: you had to set the diopter for 1x or 10x, because it wouldn't be clear for both. Eye box at 1x was pretty freaking bad. I will say that the reticle on the MSR Tango was a pleasant surprise. That was the only thing I really liked about it though. Managed to sell it for a decent price. |
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Nightforce LPVOs. Both the ATACR and NX8. I don’t doubt the durability, it’s everything else. The ATACR was fine (but for the price, ‘fine’?), the NX8 was the worst ‘premium’ LPVO I’ve ever had. It’s small, it’s got a bright dot, and that’s about it. In general, Vortex will be where I get my LPVOs and NF will be where I get my MPVOs. |
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