Pulsar thermion with BAE sensor?

[GreenMushroom]

Buddy at work is looking to get into thermal. He and his son have Springfield hellions which have a high rail height which makes mounting a standard thermal impractical. I recommended that they look into the scope body thermals like the thermion and iray bolt for their applications especially since they would probably mount on a bolt gun as well.

They found the xg50 that's been for sale on europtic for ever. I thought I remembered their being some significant issues with these but a quick search yielded positive reviews. The only negative I found was proprietary batteries and a 42mm lense rather than the implied 50mm. Anyone live with one of these for awhile and have an opinion? They were probably looking at models with 384 cores due to price and the xg would get them into a 640.

 

[RHutch]

I bought one in January 2023. It developed an issue at the first range session. The image was grainy and ”opaque”. Couldn’t see shit.
Pulsar swapped me out with a new one and an extra battery for my trouble and this one has been trouble free for a year.
A guy I hunt with bought one late summer last year and his has been trouble free.
Both scopes purchased from EuroOptic.

 

[diggler1833]

I have a couple friends who do thermal optics reviews. Their words: "run".

That being said, I managed to buy a Thermion XP50 that came to me DOA about 4 years ago.

 

[Jnull]

My step dad has had one for about 1.5 years, also bought from euro at a substantial discount. The only issue with them is they eat batteries. Between the internal, external it comes with and a larger external we got him it’s not an issue.

 

[RHutch]

We’ve not experienced the issue with battery life and we typically hunt for 4-5 hours.

 

[GreenMushroom]

I have a couple friends who do thermal optics reviews. Their words: "run".

That being said, I managed to buy a Thermion XP50 that came to me DOA about 4 years ago.

Did they give any explanation? Iirc the sensor is a bae but the core is not resulting in image quality an depth perception not up to the usual bae standard. Thought there was a post on here that gave an in depth explanation but couldn't find it. Could be I'm thinking of the pulsar clip-on maybe?

Proprietary batteries don't seem like a huge issue if you can run off plug power. Pulsar has a pretty good reputation for customer service so not super concerned about major issues so much as it sucking and that's just how it is.

 

[diggler1833]

Did they give any explanation? Iirc the sensor is a bae but the core is not resulting in image quality an depth perception not up to the usual bae standard. Thought there was a post on here that gave an in depth explanation but couldn't find it. Could be I'm thinking of the pulsar clip-on maybe?

Proprietary batteries don't seem like a huge issue if you can run off plug power. Pulsar has a pretty good reputation for customer service so not super concerned about major issues so much as it sucking and that's just how it is.

I should have said that in my first post, sorry. My bad for being too brief.

It was the large percentage of optics that needed to be returned due to sensor issues. It's not like other Thermions are impervious as one of my buddies had an XQ50 that also crapped the bed...but his was power related (as was mine on my XP50).

I had a landowner's son get one of the XG50s as well, and he sent me a video asking me about what was going on. He recorded a hunt where it looked like he was using a first generation 320 resolution thermal in a rainstorm. I managed to get him to return it, and he did before buying an XQ50 himself. They were the same price basically...but one is a 640 resolution with a 12 micron sensor, while the other is a 384 with a 17 micron sensor.

^ You don't get anything for free in the thermal world. If it's cheaper, there is a reason...and the XG50 came with a track record of malfunctions that far exceeds the other models. BUT , if you get one that works like it should, then you have a pretty good unit. They stopped carrying the XG50 as far as I know too...while the other models are still available...that should tell you something as well also.