I was able to compare this scope side by side to a Gen 3 razor at my LGS yesterday. I’m by no means an expert and I was just handholding the scopes and looking through a dirty window into the city so this is far from technical but I’m going to attempt to summarize my observations.
Was this at a store or did you actually have the scope to play with for a while and setup the diopter appropriately?
Scope Body: Before even looking through it I was immediately struck by just how massive the eyepiece on the 328 is. It’s literally bigger than the objective bell. As others have said the turrets are so far forward on the body that mounting is going to be more challenging especially with standard one piece mounts. Construction and feel was typical Kahles.
Strange design, will definitely turn off those looking for good aesthetics
Controls: The DLR 10 mil elevation turret felt fantastic. Very positive clicks with the perfect level of resistance. Only thing I would have liked is a little bit more aggressive knurling to help me spin it. A serious step up from the Vortex turret. Although not locking the windage turret was extremely stiff in a good way, I would never worry about accidentally bumping it. The zoom control felt perfectly damped with a nice level of resistance, felt no need for a throw lever. Parallax was great, perfect level of resistance and no need for the massive clamp on throw wheels. Illumination and diopter were typical Kahles nothing noteworthy.
I thought Kahles always had some of the best turret feel outside of TT, I can only imagine that 10 mil per rev would be even better with wider spacing.
Image/First Impression: The thing that immediately stood out to me when bringing the scope up to my eye was the size of the image. It was huge. I’ve heard a similar phenomenon described when looking through a ZCO. The razor felt like watching a tv and the 328 felt like looking at a big screen in the movie theater. If I had to put a number to it I’d say the Kahles image felt at least 30% larger. Very immersive. One thing that was odd to me though was the image at 3 power looked like it was off center. The other thing that immediately stood out to me was just how much distortion was visible at low power. Major fish eye especially towards the edges. Like I’m talking 2000s skateboard video levels of fish eye distortion.
This fisheye effect is not uncommon especially with wide angle eyepieces, you are seeing the optical distortion of the curved lens element and with any off axis eye placement you will see the curve and if you wiggle your head a bit you'll likely see the reticle do a little dance.
I suppose the only time you’d be shooting this on low power would be for hunting and at the point who cares about the distortion but still. No tunneling noticeable at all. Practically edge to edge image at the lowest power setting, almost no scope body visible. The reticle was a little challenging to make out at lower power, but that’s to be expected with an 8 power FFP scope.
I do not see this scope as a "crossover" scope as I feel it is too heavy (for that use) and most would likely prefer 56mm objective for more light gathering. This is more of a competition oriented scope and starting at 3.5x was a strange marketing choice because most competition shooters care little for going below 10x.
FOV: Looking at the specs it’s pretty clear this thing has a monster FOV. It seemed to beat the razor at any equivalent magnification range and I think the big FOV also contributed to the immersive feel of looking through the scope. Hard to quantify this by just looking through it in a store for 5 minutes. Maybe Swarovski is finally putting that dumb patent to use.
Seems like Swaro did just that given the popularity of some of the new wide angle eyepiece scopes over the past few years.
Optical Clarity: Again this was challenging if not impossible to properly quantify in the viewing environment but I’ll give my first impressions. Right away it’s the typical European vs Japanese glass experience. The Kahles being brighter, more vibrant and more pleasing to my eyes. I can’t say if the 328 was actually able to out resolve the razor but it felt less straining to make out details and micro contrast at distance with the Kahles just due to the bigger image size. I was viewing buildings from about 100-400 meters away. Looking through their older models and knowing their reputation the next thing I looked for was signs of chromatic aberration. I tried to induce it by pointing the scope at the edge of a dark building with a white cloud behind it but there was no obvious color fringing. Maybe slight if I was off center or out of focus. The razor felt maybe slightly better in this regard but it definitely felt like a step up from their older models. More testing would be required to say anything definitive. If I had to choose to sit behind one all day based off what I saw in the store I would choose the Kahles. That opinion could easily change if I actually got out and shot through them at distance though.
Sounds promising, I keep debating on whether I should grab one of these for a review.
Eyebox: When this scope was first announced my immediate thought was “The eyebox will probably be shit.” I was hoping I’d be wrong as Kahles has definitely fallen behind their competition and I feel like they need a win. Well glad to say I was wrong. The eyebox on the 328 is fantastic. Very forgiving. Better than the Razor at any equivalent magnification. Even at full 28 power just handholding the scope it was easy for me to get in; and stay in the sweet spot. Very impressive. Outside of the big image the eyebox was the part of the scope I was most impressed with.
There were mixed comments based on the SHOT show experience, I find the Vortex RG3 6-36 to be pretty forgiving with eyebox so encouraged to hear that Kahles somehow figure out how to get an 8x erector to not be so finicky, could be the extreme FOV may be playing a part here.
Final thoughts: It remains to be seen how this scope will perform mechanically in terms of tracking and reliability. Assuming they’ve nailed those two things it’s still a bit of an odd ball in my opinion. The magnification range and construction are just weird to me. For a compact general purpose scope I’d rather have a true 3-20 and by giving up some range maybe lose some of the distortion on low power and have a more useable reticle as well. The FOV on this design is so good if they made a 3 power it would feel like 2x on a lot of other scopes. It would be fantastic for hunting or on a DMR especially paired with that big image. For a true high powered scope a 6-48x56mm would be a lot more useful and I could live with a longer body. Seems like they kind of split the difference here. Overall I won’t be purchasing one as I think the price is too steep (I’d rather get a ZCO) and the current configuration doesn’t necessarily appeal to me, but I do hope they use this new eyepiece design in some other models as it really seems like they might have something here.
Appreciate your time to provide some feedback. Sounds like another design from Kahles that was "almost there", not sure who their target audience is here but I would agree with you, given the unusability of the reticle at lower mags there just won't be much appeal to the crossover market, but the competition market may have some interest even if they don't care about the lower mag range, if this scope excels in the 10-20x range where most dynamic long range shooters find themselves then it may not matter it can go down to 3.5x as long as FOV stays extreme in that Goldilocks zone which based on your above findings sounds like it does.
