Night Vision ATN Then Vs. Now

[Longshot231]

I'm just curious and asking from folks experienced with ATN thermal scopes. I don't own any but curious about the quality and workmanship now.

Years ago, I didn't want to buy ATN because of the mixed reviews and many, many complaints about customer service. My experience with Chinese manufactured thermals is with the Burris line.

Even though many would criticize people like me for buying stuff made in China, realize that most of the USA made optics are priced way in the stratosphere. I do buy US made products but when it's something that is unobtanium from US businesses, we have no choice but to buy from overseas companies.

One thing that I was amazed to learn was that, according to ATN's website, their thermal scopes list USA as the "country of origin."

Now that probably means that parts are made overseas and some manufacturing processes are done here in the states. ATN isn't the only company that does that. Besides, almost 99% of the glass, IIRC, is ground in China.

I say all of this because I don't want to get into the "cheap Chinese POS" debate.

What I am curious about is the quality of ATN products now versus several years ago. I remember seeing reviews that were all over the map. There were just not enough good reviews to justify spending four figures on a thermal that had a good chance of breaking down and almost now chance of getting repaired.

I am seeing better reviews on the ATN thermal scopes now; which makes me curious.

Are the ATN scopes better than they were several years ago and has their customer service improved?

 

[shoots100]

I've been using ATN NV and Thermal optics for a long time.
While their thermal scopes have improved a lot and have a lot of nice features, they're still hit or miss in the QC and CS dept's.
With so many other thermal scope manufacturers offering quality optics with 5 year transferrable warranties for cheap prices, ATN isn't even a good cheap alternate choice anymore.
I so wanted the Thor5 X 1280 res scope to impress me, but it failed.
The Thor 5 scope's have a better function percentage rate over the past Thor scopes, but several 640 res scopes costing thousands less have better image quality than the 1280 res scopes.
Even the 640 res Thor 5 scopes looked better than the 1280 res scopes.
ATN took the 1280 res scopes 3/4's of the way and then didn't go that extra step needed to bring it over the finish line.
I've had no issues returning optics or getting refunds with ATN lately.

SJC

 

[TheHorta]

I paid $10,000 for a Thor 640 back in 2014 (or maybe it was 2015).

I chose poorly.

 

[robbin]

ATN is pretty awful. I have two, a low end and high end. the low has a reticle that at base power is in the bottom right hand corner. I'm talking 3/4 down from the top and 3/4 over from the left side. Now let me quote the ATN rep for you.... It's perfectly normal for a thermal scopes reticle to be off center at base power.... So they won't fix it and the reticle is so far off center it's hard to find. Now I have two other Thermals, One is a really nice ATN 640 and I can assure you, the reticle isn't off center at base power. The other is a Wraith Mini 320 and I can assure you that it's reticle is not off center at base power.

My take is ATN doesn't want to fix it under warranty so they just give me the finger. I'll be looking else where for my Thermal scopes in the future. I offered to trade it in and buy another higher end model, they won't even return my emails.

For the record. this happened the week of Jan 10 2025...

 

[Longshot231]

Thanks for all the replies. I have purchased several PARD products in the last couple of months and am very pleased.