Yep I have two of them, one went on my SPR and the MK4HD went down the road. They’re surprisingly good as is the 4-20 version. The worst part about them is feeling like a disgusting POS for buying chinesium and liking it.
I've met and talked to some of the owners and factory heads that make Athlon products. One, a wealthy guy owning multiple factories, who is of Chinese descent but also a half century long American citizen, was a very nice and humble person, having a sense of humor, being light hearted, liberal with his money to us, and also just pleasant to be with.
So is the head of Athlon a nice person.
I look at it like this - those regular Chinese people need jobs to support their families just like we do. I'm sure a large portion are like us in how they are disgusted how their government is. They're trapped in a corrupt system like we are.....
Of course I personally would rather support USA made but... BTW my $80,000 2023 Ford F250 is at the dealership getting fixed, twice now it wouldn't start in the last two weeks which is total BS. Also mentioning that our old Ford Explorer's motor seized in the driveway with only 122,000 miles on it. Yes it was well maintaned.
My Toyota's just keep running year after year without problems. What I'm getting at is I want value per dollar spent.
I don’t have a MK5 on hand currently to compare it to but have owned enough and spent enough hours looking through them to have a pretty solid memory. Without putting them side by side I’d say the resolution on the Ares UHD is a little better and Helos a little behind it but slightly better colors on both. The glass on both of them are really good.
The eyebox is very good on all 3 models I have. It’s very forgiving in the eye relief as well as side to side and up and down. You see a little more black ring around the image than some scopes that just seem to suck you in, but it’s not a lot and it’s more so the Helos 4-20 than the 2-12 and the Ares 3-18. The latter two still have some ring but they’re closer to a large immersive image. None of them have much apparent distortion from not being centered up but the Ares does have a slight rolling globe effect whereas the two Helos have a pretty flat image. It’s not heavy but it’s there when panning.
I just bought a Helos G2 4-20 a few weeks ago because I hadn't tried that one yet. It's pretty decent overall and a good fit to the gun I have it on. It replaced a decade old SWFA 3-15 FFP and the Helos destroys it in every way so I'm well satisfied.
Also having a Helos G2 2-12 and 6-24 I can't recommend them enough for the money.
So I set the course record using that 6-24 mounted on my Anschutz 22rf in our Phoenix area Ultimate Field Target match two years ago.
Then last year set the air rifle slug projectile division record in that UFT match with a Cronus G2 4.5-29x56 when they still had the offhand stage.
And 3 days ago I won our state Pistol Field Target match in Hunter class using the Helos G2 2-12 on my Thomas FT pistol as well as two years ago with the same combo.
Needless to say I'm plenty confident in all them however this Helos G2 line of scope has become my go-to if I don't want to spend much money.
Also during our state match last weekend I won the Silhouette side match along with our Unlimited division in FT. Things don't go this well for me often so I'm pretty buzzed about it! Both times I used a Ares ETR 15-60x56 on my Thomas FT rifle. I know most people around here don't use high magnification target scopes much but the glass in these scopes is crazy nice for the money, like right up there near S&B and March.
I've been trying other brands the last three years like Burris, March, Vector Optics, and Vortex to see what's up with them and honestly some of the downsides I've experienced have sorta turned me off. Though each one I bought was for certain attributes that I wanted so I kept them except a Burris XTR2 1-8.
I really don't want to come off braggy as far my shooting goes but I do want to state how good these Athlon scopes have been for me, however imperfect they may seem to be they haven't let me down yet.
