I am going to be one of the first in the country to receive this thermal monocular (on the customer end) and plan on doing a full review here VERY soon. Stay tuned for pictures and commentary. Big shout out to Surgeonshooter for making this a reality in the midst of the current crisis we are all experiencing in one way or the other.
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Night Vision MH 25 by iRay
- Thread starter jstokes1
- Start date
How would you rate the build quality? I heard rumors of the USB port not working for charging, and fragile plastic housings. What are your thoughts?
I haven’t used the port to charge I will try it tonight and confirm. Is not by any means a military grade pice of kit. Beside the diopter not being PVS-14 style every thing eles I can live with. Is super light and the image is very good. I have plenty of other thermals and the image is very very good for being a china pice of kit.
So I read the instruction manual and no where it says is a charge port it says interface port. Nothing about charging the batteries. I personally would not like to charge batteries installed in a device. Here is some pictures for size reference.
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Just a little sneak peek. There is some distortion because of the camera, makes it look like you're taking a picture of a computer screen when the coloration you're seeing isnt there to the actual eye. What I can say so far is that this thing is.... amazing.
And it looks way better in person. There isnt a unit around right now that can perform like this in this price range.... even the skeet IRX would have a hard time keeping up with this image clarity. I'll try and take some good stand still images with higher resolution to try and capture what I'm actually seeing.
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Doubtful and a little optimistic. It might punch above it's weight class, but it's no Skeet.
Rich from UNV posted a vid the other day on another site and just like in these pictures the resolution is amazing but what would really help is seeing actual living things. In the thermal I have just looking at my truck for example I would see a glow from the brakes or engine, but in these pics everything seems to be lacking any heat signature.
I was referring to the price to performance ratio in general. There is nothing close to this that's under 15k. The skeet is a military thermal optic, but I have a hard time imagining that the image clarity is superior, and from the comparison photos I've seen it isnt. Now in terms of reliability and longevity, then that is a different subject. This unit more than exceeds my needs.
Right, nothing compares with that price point.
It's hard to tell yourself something is better when you've already convinced yourself what you have is the best. If you're coming through DFW anytime soon, though doubtful due to C19, let me know. We can compare both images side-by-side on living things, stationary or moving.
I would love to check it out. I know for a fact though that this thing out performs my N vision halo 25mm, especially in degraded conditions. Snowed last night all night and dropped to the teens. Comparing the halo to the MH 25 revealed some massive differences in retained heat. The MH 25 was FAR more sensitive and still produced a very nice crisp image. Then halo.... not so much.
The conditions last night eye terrible (5 degrees) and snowing, but this thing still gave an amazing image; much better than my n-vision halo 25
I wonder what kind of subsidies the chinese government is giving these companies to make it impossible for Americans to compete. I'm surprised so many people are supporting them.
Buy American. Fnck china.
Buy American. Fnck china.
Well, when the only quality 640 handheld scanner on the american market is 16k, what other options do you have? I'd pay a little more for an all american product, but at the price of 4500, what other options are there? There are no other options.
The IR-Patrol is quality imo. It's a tank compared to the Skeet and IRay but definitely a quality image.
The ir patrol doesnt stack up to this unit in terms of image quality; the MH-25 or the SKEET IRX. The N visions halo performs better than the ir patrol and this performs better than my Halo. Also, this is a cheaper unit.....with a better image quality. It has automatic NUCing, focus adjusting, better color pallets, a better OLED display, smaller and lighter, larger lens (25 mm vs 19mm), the works.
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The video quality isnt the best, but it highlights about what you would see through this unit, even though it looks a little better to your eye than the camera on my phone.
Went to see if I could see any animals close up.... had a doe laying in my back yard bedding down.
Does look like a nice image.
I’d agree that the Skeetirx (and based on what you’re saying about the China-Skeet) Has a superior image to the Reap.
I’d agree that the Skeetirx (and based on what you’re saying about the China-Skeet) Has a superior image to the Reap.
I do however wish when trying to video through this thing that there wasn't that weird prismatic distortion, because you dont see that through the thermal when looking at the display, just a crystal clear picture. And yes, it does. The reap/ir patrol is an impressive optic when comparing it to other options on the market (like the Pulsars), but it falls short to the true kings of thermal imaging like the skeet/utm. So far I've been VERY impressed with this little gadget. Id loved to do a direct comparisons with the Skeet IRX, but alas, I do not have one handy. I can compare it to my Halo, and it blows it away in adverse conditions..... it's not even close. During good thermal conditions, the image is slightly comparable, but the MH 25 does have an objectively smoother image and shows more detail on living objects while still retaining a good amount of contrast for the environment. If you turn the contrast up to match the MH 25 on the N Vision Halo, the finer details on the N Vision becomr skewed.
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Some more video. Getting the chance to really test this optic in a wide range of environments and I can say that so far I have been thoroughly impressed. The image quality is beautiful.
It might be how the settings work and “tuning” the IRay, but one huge difference that I notice with the SkeetIRx and the video you post is, living things pop much brighter or darker on the display in white and black hot respectively. Granted the live environment data is more than likely different, but I’m also guessing your conditions are favorable due to cleaner/colder air where as in Tejas it’s always warm/hot/humid in my AO. My assumption anyway.
I’m curious what the weather was like when documenting these videos.
I’m curious what the weather was like when documenting these videos.
Well, it was cold and snowy. Comparable to a rainy day. I compared the performance of this optic to the N. Vision like I stated above, and it blew it away in less than favorable conditions. Now granted, I can play with the settings here and turn the contrast up and really make a living creature stand out, but I leave the contrast down to the lowest setting to retain as much detail as possible, with the sharpness turned to setting 8 of 9.
Has anyone figured out the Bluetooth capability is there an app that needs to be downloaded and if so where.
The big difference maker for the skeet is that it is a true 1x unity optic which for me on a helmet based application is huge. 1.2x 1.1x .08x etc all are noticeable and distracting to me when used for mobile helmet based apps......especially if paired on a bridge with a 14.
What were you using the Reap for? Just as a spotter. The Reap is a weapon sight and this is a Mini spotter. I agree, the image quality on this looks insane.But the 2 devices fill different roles. Or maybe you got rid of it because of the QC issues?
I had issues with the OLED display having dead pixels, dust in the unit after only a couple of uses, random freezes, and I heard that their customer service department was terrible. After I sold it, I bought an N vision, which has better image quality and well.
I hate that they only show it in white hot, to me the best performance at night is with black hot. The contrast is much greater and details stand out more.
Very good. I have a Halo LR coming on Monday. It will be joining my Trail XP50. I can’t decide if I want to keep the XP50 or not. It would be nice having a second thermal sight, but one of these iray’s would be sweet too. I already have DTNVGs to navigate, etc. But I think a handheld thermal like this would be awesome for scanning for heat signatures rather than getting on the rifle to do that.
Got a pretty good video of some yet to be processed steaks in really poor thermal conditions (overcast, rainy, mid 50's all day) notice how smooth the image quality is
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