So not a critter in sight this evening. I may have to start grabbing a nap and heading out later at night. The deer didn't even make an appearance but it gave me time to fiddle with settings and the like. It was suprisingly sticky for April and I am dreading summer! Condition were as follows...
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So with nothing moving all I could do was snap a pic of the garden. This is at the 2.8x native magnification looking at my friends corn feeder behind his garden. Full disclosure... I snapped this on my phone via the app that lets you control the sight remotely and by control I mean you can adjust every setting you can access on the sight itself down to magnification and the location of the PIP. Feeder is at 60 yards and yes, my varminting is done up close and personal. Mostly raccoon and opossums but I have seen bobcats and foxes (but they are smart and wary so seeing is all I have had the chance to do)...
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And same feeder on 10.2X. You can see the solar panel charge cord. Still at 60 yards. BTW, I zeroed during a thunder storm and had no issues getting it done!
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Took my trusty iRay MH25 HMT (V1 with a PVS-14 eyepiece) for scanning and the TR650 whipped up on it pretty good! And the phone pic doesn't do it justice (SAYS everybody but really!) So pros and cons.
Cons...
1)The front lens cap is meh. Just a snap-in cover teatherd by a rubber band like strap. The cap is fine but the teather sucks! Easy fix is to cut it off and when you pull the cap off stick it in your pocket. The cool fix is to get a cover from one hundred concepts. BTW,
@SkyScrapin told me about this so no suprise.
2) The rear accordion eye cup also gets in the way. One again I was warned and you can just fold it over on itself and be good to go!
3) This one is a pro and con so grain of salt. Battery life is an unknown. As you can see I used about half (18650) in 3 hours BUT I was running WiFi the whole time and that kills battery life regardless of the thermal so I think 8 hours is doable just being out and about. Need more? Carry an extra cell or do like my buddies do. Get the round Anker power bank. It will fit in a standard Amazon M-lok weapon light mount. Extra juice, simple mounting solution!
4) Focus requires a light touch as the sweet spot isn't as forgiving as, say, my RH25 but at almost 3 times the base magnification I don't think that should suprise anyone.
5) One small gripe that I will quickly learn to ignore but after you zero the scope the cross hairs mis-align with the cross hairs in the PIP at base magnification. Notice the location of the green dot in relation to the same dot in the PIP. Increase the magnification and and they line back up with each other (See the red crosshairs). Again, being extra critcal here and I will forget/ignore it quickly. Damn my OCD!
That's all I've got for cons so onto the pros...
1) Not really about the performance but the TR650 is fairly compact and light especially for an alloy housing. Dedicated is waaayyyy mo' betta than clip on. Lighter and better balance for the win! This is on a Tippmann M4-22 Elite (AR22)...
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2) I don't want to say the resoltion is better because 640 is 640 and 12um is 12um but perhaps the abilty to resolve (I think thats the term I am looking for) is great! That pine tree on the left? Solid white on the MH25 and not much better on the RH25 (and I have spent hours tweaking the RH25). The TR650 manages to pull some bark detail and that is impressive seeing as it glows like a nuclear fuel rod! Does iRays Martix III algorithm widen that gap? I can't say but who knows what the next TR650 firmware update will bring. When I updated mine it was a 500-ish MB down load! Lots going on there. BTW Guide, some release notes would be nice. What exactly am I updating?
3)Lots of features. 10 rifle profiles, 10 reticles with 5 color options and 10 brightness settigns, and indiviual zeros for 50, 100, 200, 300, 400, and 500 yards. Not sure why unless the optional BT LRF can tell the TR650 which zero to work off of?
@SkyScrapin Thoughts? You can even select the postion of the PIP (Yes, it has it) at top left, top middle, or top right. And the hot spot tracking is neat-o!
4) I think battery life will be great if you aren't blowing it out with the brightness setting or using WiFi non-stop! There is a selectable power saving option in the quick menu as well. Not sure what that throttles so extra battery for me or external power.
5) Not a ton of buttons. One for power (doubles as a NUC button and screen off), one for picture/video and one on the selector dial for menu inputs. Along those lines the dial for magnification is nice! Much smaller increments that the standard 1x, 2x, 4x, and 8x and no cycling through. Want more zoom? Turn the dial one way. Want less zoom? Turn the dial the other way! Easy.
6) Personal pro but I think this thing punches above its price! Very peronal opinion but dang! $3200.00? I'm keeping it for sure.
As an aside... I'm not bashing iRay. Love both of mine and don't regret dropping $10K combined on them but not sure they will get it done at 200+ yards thumping 'yotes. And that is where the TR650 will live. On a 22ARC AR-15 I'm having built for the purpose. The RH25 will live on one of my 22s for smaller critters or as a hand held (PVS-14 on the helmet) or HMT scanner when calling. The MH25 will do the same when the RH25 is playing clip-on. All in all I am impressed and I've shown it to the fella with the garden and he runs an iRay RS75s (The iRay 1280 $18K beast) and other expensive thermals. Seriously, dude has (3) RH25s for loaners and I just helped him pick out a pair of L3 harris high spec PVS-14s just because he liked mine. High praise I think? I like the TR650 and I'm not regretting my purchase!
