Just out of curiosity I picked up an Arken 5-25x56, I wanted to see what the hype was about. Mind you I have have had some high end glass, SnB, Kahles, Zeiss, NF blaaa blaaa..etc.. And I am not a big fan of Chinese wears but I figured the other guy did the dirty work for me already so second hand ain't so bad. Ok, all this said, here's my 2 cents on this optic.
Turrets: Pretty good, they are easy to set, and the feel is nice and positive, with very discernible clicks, I like them, besides the fact that any turret with just white lines as rev indicators kinda suck. It tracks spot on so far, to me this is one of the most important features. A second rev indicator would take the turrets to another level. Score - 7/10
Retical: Very good, it's not too fat at max magnification, it does not obscure your image, it has nice subtensions right where they should be, a nice center dot for precision application. Score 9/10
Parallax: Is not accurate, it's got that Nightforce issue where the numeric value on the turret is no where near the actual distance value of your focused parallax unison. Granted accurate parallax settings are one of the hardest things to recreate. Score - 5/10
Glass: Not bad at all, sure it's not like my higher end optics but it's clear enough to see blades of grass at 500y, at a mile I can just about read the company name on a porta potty. It's got a wide field of view and a pretty forgiving eye box. I would say it's about the same clarity as the NX8 NF series and maybe just a pinch under the MK5HD but closely behind. Score - 6.5/10.
Build Quality: Seemingly pretty good, it's got a solid 34mm tube, it has a solid feel and the accessories that you can get for it are solid like the scope caps and throw lever. The mounts and rings are pretty good as well. A big plus is if it shits on you then it has a lifetime warranty, that beats the SnB warranty by a long ways. Score 7/10.
If you just laid the optic in my hands and didn't tell me anything about it, besides the fact that it's got Japanese ED glass, and just said "test this out," I would have come back to you and said it's probably worth about $1200 to $1400 bucks. Then if you told me that it came in at under $600 bucks I would be shocked. It gets projectiles down range accurately and very affordably. The moral of the story is that this optic is going to shake things up for the competition, maybe Riton, Sightron, Burris, Athlon and Vortex..etc, is it a good scope? YES it is! is it an SnB or ZCO, no it's not, that said it doesn't have to be.
Turrets: Pretty good, they are easy to set, and the feel is nice and positive, with very discernible clicks, I like them, besides the fact that any turret with just white lines as rev indicators kinda suck. It tracks spot on so far, to me this is one of the most important features. A second rev indicator would take the turrets to another level. Score - 7/10
Retical: Very good, it's not too fat at max magnification, it does not obscure your image, it has nice subtensions right where they should be, a nice center dot for precision application. Score 9/10
Parallax: Is not accurate, it's got that Nightforce issue where the numeric value on the turret is no where near the actual distance value of your focused parallax unison. Granted accurate parallax settings are one of the hardest things to recreate. Score - 5/10
Glass: Not bad at all, sure it's not like my higher end optics but it's clear enough to see blades of grass at 500y, at a mile I can just about read the company name on a porta potty. It's got a wide field of view and a pretty forgiving eye box. I would say it's about the same clarity as the NX8 NF series and maybe just a pinch under the MK5HD but closely behind. Score - 6.5/10.
Build Quality: Seemingly pretty good, it's got a solid 34mm tube, it has a solid feel and the accessories that you can get for it are solid like the scope caps and throw lever. The mounts and rings are pretty good as well. A big plus is if it shits on you then it has a lifetime warranty, that beats the SnB warranty by a long ways. Score 7/10.
If you just laid the optic in my hands and didn't tell me anything about it, besides the fact that it's got Japanese ED glass, and just said "test this out," I would have come back to you and said it's probably worth about $1200 to $1400 bucks. Then if you told me that it came in at under $600 bucks I would be shocked. It gets projectiles down range accurately and very affordably. The moral of the story is that this optic is going to shake things up for the competition, maybe Riton, Sightron, Burris, Athlon and Vortex..etc, is it a good scope? YES it is! is it an SnB or ZCO, no it's not, that said it doesn't have to be.
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