I got my Garmin Xero in about 10 days ago, courtesy of Strohman, and then it sat under the Christmas tree for a few days. Finally got it out today, just in time for temperatures of 1-2 degrees F, with about -5 to -10 degrees of wind chill. But, this is winter life in Alaska, what can you do.
It ran great, I had it on for about 2 hours, sitting on a table, exposed to the wind. It picked up every shot. I rotated through three rifles, 6mm PPC, .223, and .308. For comparison, I also have a Magnetospeed, which I can't even imagine having tried to use with this weather. Between the alignment on different barrel profiles, tightening the strap down, making sure the display doesn't move around, taking gloves on and off... And I love the Magnetospeed. But I'm not sure I'll ever use it again. The Garmin screen stayed bright throughout. Plenty of electronic devices start fading in really cold weather because they are pulling less voltage than they are designed for, for example, Aimpoints, Eotechs, etc.
The Garmin is a set it and forget it. If you want to end sessions/start new sessions, then you need to use the buttons. On mine it is about 6-8 button clicks to do that (press back button, press down button until you select "end session", select "new session", select "rifle", select "1700-5000 fps", click through positioning description. Even though the buttons run along the top, the tripod is well designed enough that it never felt like I was going to tip it. The buttons stayed responsive despite the cold. There may be some shortcutting I can do in the settings, but it did feel a little clunky to move between sessions.
Some interesting observations - my first rounds with the 6mm PPC had WAY higher velocity than the rest, like 100+ FPS. The extreme spread on these (handloads) was nearly 300 FPS, with ~70 SD. And despite this the rounds shot into groups ranging from .5 MOA to 1 MOA. I'm a little skeptical that the first velocity reading was correct, but who knows. Average velocity was around 2900.
On my .308 (Solus action/Solus barrel), shooting 168 FGMM, the ES was 40 FPS, SD was around 12, groups were around .75 to 1 MOA, with an average velocity of around 2600. This is across 20 rounds, and felt like a great advertisement for FGMM.
On the .223, I was shooting some new 77 grain Hornady training rounds. Group was around 1.5 inches, SD was around 7 (crazy). Velocity was around 2700.
What is notable about all of this is that in most shooting sessions, the only information I would have is group sizes. I really only ran the Magnetospeed to get initial velocities; it wasn't a regular thing because the setup was inconvenient and I didn't want to break the thing. I was also worried that it might change point of aim/impact if I took it on and off. But with the Xero, I can just drop it on the bench and now I have a bunch of extra information. For example, on one of my handloads, I got a click-bang. My assumption was that I had too low of a powder charge, maybe a grain below where things should have been. Well, the Xero caught that too - the velocity on that shot was lower than all the others by a fair margin.
I tried angling the Xero by a few degrees left and right, and it didn't seem to have any impact on its ability to read the shots.
This feels like one of those transformative shooting technologies - now it's almost no effort or weight for the shooter to have the ability to pull chronograph data on demand, something that just wasn't possible before. You just need to drop one small device on your shooting table.
It ran great, I had it on for about 2 hours, sitting on a table, exposed to the wind. It picked up every shot. I rotated through three rifles, 6mm PPC, .223, and .308. For comparison, I also have a Magnetospeed, which I can't even imagine having tried to use with this weather. Between the alignment on different barrel profiles, tightening the strap down, making sure the display doesn't move around, taking gloves on and off... And I love the Magnetospeed. But I'm not sure I'll ever use it again. The Garmin screen stayed bright throughout. Plenty of electronic devices start fading in really cold weather because they are pulling less voltage than they are designed for, for example, Aimpoints, Eotechs, etc.
The Garmin is a set it and forget it. If you want to end sessions/start new sessions, then you need to use the buttons. On mine it is about 6-8 button clicks to do that (press back button, press down button until you select "end session", select "new session", select "rifle", select "1700-5000 fps", click through positioning description. Even though the buttons run along the top, the tripod is well designed enough that it never felt like I was going to tip it. The buttons stayed responsive despite the cold. There may be some shortcutting I can do in the settings, but it did feel a little clunky to move between sessions.
Some interesting observations - my first rounds with the 6mm PPC had WAY higher velocity than the rest, like 100+ FPS. The extreme spread on these (handloads) was nearly 300 FPS, with ~70 SD. And despite this the rounds shot into groups ranging from .5 MOA to 1 MOA. I'm a little skeptical that the first velocity reading was correct, but who knows. Average velocity was around 2900.
On my .308 (Solus action/Solus barrel), shooting 168 FGMM, the ES was 40 FPS, SD was around 12, groups were around .75 to 1 MOA, with an average velocity of around 2600. This is across 20 rounds, and felt like a great advertisement for FGMM.
On the .223, I was shooting some new 77 grain Hornady training rounds. Group was around 1.5 inches, SD was around 7 (crazy). Velocity was around 2700.
What is notable about all of this is that in most shooting sessions, the only information I would have is group sizes. I really only ran the Magnetospeed to get initial velocities; it wasn't a regular thing because the setup was inconvenient and I didn't want to break the thing. I was also worried that it might change point of aim/impact if I took it on and off. But with the Xero, I can just drop it on the bench and now I have a bunch of extra information. For example, on one of my handloads, I got a click-bang. My assumption was that I had too low of a powder charge, maybe a grain below where things should have been. Well, the Xero caught that too - the velocity on that shot was lower than all the others by a fair margin.
I tried angling the Xero by a few degrees left and right, and it didn't seem to have any impact on its ability to read the shots.
This feels like one of those transformative shooting technologies - now it's almost no effort or weight for the shooter to have the ability to pull chronograph data on demand, something that just wasn't possible before. You just need to drop one small device on your shooting table.
