After a few months of searching for the perfect optic for my coyote rifle (Howa Mini 6.5 Grendel), I settled on Trijicon's new 2-10 Credo. I wanted something near 20oz in weight, FFP, illuminated with a usable MRAD tree-type reticle, a max power of around 10x, and a price tag in the mid-range of $1-1.5k. There aren't many options that have all of those features, there are several that have some of these options, but only the Credo had them all. I searched the interwebs for a deal and found one at DVOR at just under $1k shipped. Fortunately, I didn't have any fulfillment issues and had the scope at my door inside of a week from placing the order.
Before getting into this mini review, I wanted to ensure everyone was aware that this is my first optic review. Also, any photos taken through the scope were shot with my iPhone without any sort of adapter. They turned out alright but don't give a 100% accurate representation of image quality...this thing is impressive and I wish the photos could show all of that.
Unboxing
Initial impressions pulling it out of the box were great. Box and foam inserts are high quality. Included with the scope are your run of the mill caps, neoprene scope coat, allen wrenches for the zerostop and throw lever hole plugs, a battery, manuals, warranty cards, stickers, and a lens cloth.
Exterior Features
As you can see from the outside, this thing is a no-frills optic. Being parallax free, your illumination knob is located conveniently along the left side of the saddle. The settings run 1-10 with an off setting in between each and it moves with very positive clicks and no mush. On the right side is a capped windage knob and on top is an exposed elevation turret. The coolest feature is the throw lever, which can be installed in two separate locations (between 5-6x or 3-4x) on the magnification ring or removed completely. There is an extra set screw to fill the hole if you choose to remove the throw lever. I didn't have to move it and chose to keep it between 5-6x. If it came installed in the 3-4x, I would've had to move it since it would have prevented me from working the bolt on my rifle. The magnification ring moves with the perfect amount of tension, not too hard and not too easy, with no gritty feeling. The diopter is not locking, which I would've preferred, but it was easy to adjust to find the right setting for my eye.
*Fun Fact: PS 119:105 says "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path."
Installing the battery was a breeze. The top of the illumination knob screws off easily while holding the lower portion of the knob. You can see its sealed with an o-ring too, just like the other knobs.
One of my favorite features is the ability to reset your turret to zero without tools. I don't always set my zerostop on my scopes and this makes it easy to check and adjust your zero without fumbling with allen wrenches and tiny screws. Just unscrew the top cap of the elevation knob, pull the lower adjuster body up and off the post, and spin it to align the 0 and push it back down. You can't make adjustments when the adjuster body is removed from the post and with how the post is cut, you can't mis-align the turret+, so the 0 is always perfectly inline with the lines on the scope body. The clicks on the elevation knob are positive with no creep. They aren't as audible as I'd like and they certainly aren't as audible as the windage knob but I don't have any complaints.
Return to zero is easy to set. Once you expose the mechanism, you loosen the three set screws on the black zero disk (you can only see one screw here), then let the disk drop down the adjustment housing, then spin it clockwise until the the disk stops, then tighten the three screws and reinstall the adjuster body. Done. You can see the two steel pins that create the "stop". Once set, it's a very positive CLUNK when you hit the stop. Very happy with that.
Mounting
Mounting was obviously a straight-forward endeavor. I was very happy with the eye box and the eye relief at all magnification levels. It's not finicky and doesn't require you to have absolutely perfect alignment with the tube in order to get a good sight picture with no shadow. The weight, at 23oz, feels amazing on top of my little Howa Mini. I've got it sitting in 1" Vortex PMR rings if you're curious.
Some Specs:
Eye Relief: 3.4 - 3.9 inches
Exit Pupil: .41 - .13 inches (10.5 - 3.4mm)
FOV @100yds: 50' - 10.1'
Total Adjustment (Windage and Elevation): 26.2 MRAD for each
Dimensions: 13.1 x 3.24 x 2.6
Weight: 23oz
Glass Quality
*** Again, the photos below were taken with my iPhone without any adapter. They don't give a 100% representation of image quality and reticle sharpness. Both were outstanding in person.
I've dropped all the shots through the scope below with some comments and final comments after those.
From 2x through 10x, I was extremely impressed with the image quality. Very bright and sharp with no defects. You can see a bit of green-ish chromatic aberration on the top edges of the paper target but I struggled to find more CA even when looking at edges of the mountains against the blue sky. I don't get overly worked up about CA but I understand it's one of the telltale signs of lower quality glass. This had very, very little. The image is crisp edge to edge (lost in these photos) and the reticle is equally crisp across its' entirety (again, lost in these photos).
The illumination is bright enough to be visible during the daylight and would be useful to get pointed onto a target at low power during the day. It's not overpowering and the shots you see here with illumination are on max power.
The reticle is plain awesome. The only thing I would change is to add some more wind holds along the half mil portions of the tree. The dot is larger than my SKMR3 and my EBR-7C but is not so large as to obscure a target. When shooting my plate at 786, I was able to spot misses from 5x-10x. Granted, its a sandy dirt range, but I was even able to pick out dust plumes in the shadowy area to the right of the target. Winds were 12-15 from 7 o'clock and my stupid slow Grendel load with 95VMAXs were getting shoved awfully hard so it was nice to be able to see those misses to the right of the target. I think this reticle is one of the reasons this scope stands out so well. It's extremely usable and offers a full 12 mils of elevation holds and up to 6 full mils of windage. Definitely an SPR-worthy optic/reticle combo.
*I couldn’t find a diagram of reticle subtensions on Trijicon’s website or else I would’ve put that data in here
After zeroing, I ran out of elevation at 13.2mils. I don't have any MOA built into my scope base and with 13.2mils I was able to get out to about 800yds with my rifle/load combo.
Wrap Up
For everything that I was looking for, this thing knocked it out of the park. I think a lot of us were asking for a 2-10x range scope with FFP and a great reticle, that doesn't weigh as much as a brick. I'm glad to see Trijicon delivered with this one. There was another thread someone started months back asking if this was SPR worthy, I would say hands down without a doubt that this thing would be wonderful on top of an SPR. If there is anything else I haven't covered or if you have other questions, feel free to ask! Thanks everyone.
Before getting into this mini review, I wanted to ensure everyone was aware that this is my first optic review. Also, any photos taken through the scope were shot with my iPhone without any sort of adapter. They turned out alright but don't give a 100% accurate representation of image quality...this thing is impressive and I wish the photos could show all of that.
Unboxing
Initial impressions pulling it out of the box were great. Box and foam inserts are high quality. Included with the scope are your run of the mill caps, neoprene scope coat, allen wrenches for the zerostop and throw lever hole plugs, a battery, manuals, warranty cards, stickers, and a lens cloth.
Exterior Features
As you can see from the outside, this thing is a no-frills optic. Being parallax free, your illumination knob is located conveniently along the left side of the saddle. The settings run 1-10 with an off setting in between each and it moves with very positive clicks and no mush. On the right side is a capped windage knob and on top is an exposed elevation turret. The coolest feature is the throw lever, which can be installed in two separate locations (between 5-6x or 3-4x) on the magnification ring or removed completely. There is an extra set screw to fill the hole if you choose to remove the throw lever. I didn't have to move it and chose to keep it between 5-6x. If it came installed in the 3-4x, I would've had to move it since it would have prevented me from working the bolt on my rifle. The magnification ring moves with the perfect amount of tension, not too hard and not too easy, with no gritty feeling. The diopter is not locking, which I would've preferred, but it was easy to adjust to find the right setting for my eye.
*Fun Fact: PS 119:105 says "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path."
Installing the battery was a breeze. The top of the illumination knob screws off easily while holding the lower portion of the knob. You can see its sealed with an o-ring too, just like the other knobs.
One of my favorite features is the ability to reset your turret to zero without tools. I don't always set my zerostop on my scopes and this makes it easy to check and adjust your zero without fumbling with allen wrenches and tiny screws. Just unscrew the top cap of the elevation knob, pull the lower adjuster body up and off the post, and spin it to align the 0 and push it back down. You can't make adjustments when the adjuster body is removed from the post and with how the post is cut, you can't mis-align the turret+, so the 0 is always perfectly inline with the lines on the scope body. The clicks on the elevation knob are positive with no creep. They aren't as audible as I'd like and they certainly aren't as audible as the windage knob but I don't have any complaints.
Return to zero is easy to set. Once you expose the mechanism, you loosen the three set screws on the black zero disk (you can only see one screw here), then let the disk drop down the adjustment housing, then spin it clockwise until the the disk stops, then tighten the three screws and reinstall the adjuster body. Done. You can see the two steel pins that create the "stop". Once set, it's a very positive CLUNK when you hit the stop. Very happy with that.
Mounting
Mounting was obviously a straight-forward endeavor. I was very happy with the eye box and the eye relief at all magnification levels. It's not finicky and doesn't require you to have absolutely perfect alignment with the tube in order to get a good sight picture with no shadow. The weight, at 23oz, feels amazing on top of my little Howa Mini. I've got it sitting in 1" Vortex PMR rings if you're curious.
Some Specs:
Eye Relief: 3.4 - 3.9 inches
Exit Pupil: .41 - .13 inches (10.5 - 3.4mm)
FOV @100yds: 50' - 10.1'
Total Adjustment (Windage and Elevation): 26.2 MRAD for each
Dimensions: 13.1 x 3.24 x 2.6
Weight: 23oz
Glass Quality
*** Again, the photos below were taken with my iPhone without any adapter. They don't give a 100% representation of image quality and reticle sharpness. Both were outstanding in person.
I've dropped all the shots through the scope below with some comments and final comments after those.
From 2x through 10x, I was extremely impressed with the image quality. Very bright and sharp with no defects. You can see a bit of green-ish chromatic aberration on the top edges of the paper target but I struggled to find more CA even when looking at edges of the mountains against the blue sky. I don't get overly worked up about CA but I understand it's one of the telltale signs of lower quality glass. This had very, very little. The image is crisp edge to edge (lost in these photos) and the reticle is equally crisp across its' entirety (again, lost in these photos).
The illumination is bright enough to be visible during the daylight and would be useful to get pointed onto a target at low power during the day. It's not overpowering and the shots you see here with illumination are on max power.
The reticle is plain awesome. The only thing I would change is to add some more wind holds along the half mil portions of the tree. The dot is larger than my SKMR3 and my EBR-7C but is not so large as to obscure a target. When shooting my plate at 786, I was able to spot misses from 5x-10x. Granted, its a sandy dirt range, but I was even able to pick out dust plumes in the shadowy area to the right of the target. Winds were 12-15 from 7 o'clock and my stupid slow Grendel load with 95VMAXs were getting shoved awfully hard so it was nice to be able to see those misses to the right of the target. I think this reticle is one of the reasons this scope stands out so well. It's extremely usable and offers a full 12 mils of elevation holds and up to 6 full mils of windage. Definitely an SPR-worthy optic/reticle combo.
*I couldn’t find a diagram of reticle subtensions on Trijicon’s website or else I would’ve put that data in here
After zeroing, I ran out of elevation at 13.2mils. I don't have any MOA built into my scope base and with 13.2mils I was able to get out to about 800yds with my rifle/load combo.
Wrap Up
For everything that I was looking for, this thing knocked it out of the park. I think a lot of us were asking for a 2-10x range scope with FFP and a great reticle, that doesn't weigh as much as a brick. I'm glad to see Trijicon delivered with this one. There was another thread someone started months back asking if this was SPR worthy, I would say hands down without a doubt that this thing would be wonderful on top of an SPR. If there is anything else I haven't covered or if you have other questions, feel free to ask! Thanks everyone.
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