First impression - Armasight Zeus 336 3-12x50 (60 Hz) Thermal Imaging Weapon Sight, FLIR Tau 2 336x256 (17µm) 60Hz Core, 50mm Lens

I have been waiting for the thermals scopes to come down in price for 10 years to what I thought was a reasonable price. Now that I have one I am glad I waited. I bought the OPMOD Armasight Zeus Thermal Scope 3-12 336 60hz scope when it was 10% off which I thought was a good price. Then a few days later Optics Planet had them for 15% off. I called Optics planet and asked for the additional 5% off and they gave it to me. So I bought the scope for $3140 with free shipping on top of that. I have been using night vision for over 30 years and know its capabilities very well. I have the first ATN PS-22 clip on scope with a Pinnacle ITT with a 72 lines of resolution and a signal to noise ratio of 27.6 for a FOM of (1987.2). With the ATN clip on scope I can shoot a 2” steel spinner at 400 yards with no moon and cloud cover using a Luna IR laser illuminator. So this is the scope I am comparing the OPMOD Thermal scope and its capabilities too. The first day I took the scope to the range it was day light and I used steel plates to sight in the scope. I was disappointed I could not get the normal quarter MOA group out of the gun that I normally get with day optics and when the clip-on scope is used on the rifle. But at least I had the scope almost sighted in. On my next trip to the range it was night and I brought some hand warmers to use as targets which are about 1 1/2 inches by 2 1/2 inches in size. While adjusting the scope at 100 yards I noticed I was getting 1.5 MOA or 1 and a half inches of movement with each adjustment of the scope. However I was also getting my normal quarter inch groups at 100 yards. I had two quarter inch groups going switching the elevation up one click and then down one click.
Since the groups were consistent with the moment in the scope I could say the scope tracks extremely well however 1.5 MOA movement per click sucks for adjustments.
I ended up sighting in the scope 2 inches high at 100 yards to give me a good 200 yard zero. The scope could see the hand warmer really well at 200 yards. My group at 200 yards opened up some to one inch and a half inch higher than I wanted on target but I still kept all the bullets on the hand warmer. I would have preferred to sight in the gun only 1 inch high at 100 yards and 1 inch low at 200 yards but I could not do it with the 1.5 MOA elevation adjustments. Also the movement of the adjustments on the scope is backwards from every other scope I have ever used and that is a lot of scopes. The adjustments move the crosshairs to the impact not the impact to the crosshairs like all other normal scopes.
As far as clarity and seeing things on the range and targets out to 500 yards. At 100 yards the clarity is really good but the farther you go the clarity goes down. I could shoot a 4 foot tall by one foot wide steel tank at 300 and 500 yards but I could not see the same size tank at 400 yards. With my night vision I can see everything on the range clearly. Changing reticule, reticule color or magnification have no impact on the zero of the scope. The scope still shoots where it should regardless of the scope settings. One thing I did notice is you have to fine tune the scope settings every time you use it because of the different heat signatures of things down range to get the best results. I found the only useful settings to be black hot, white hot, and Fire & Ice. With black hot being the best to recognize things down range. One day there was a big dust storm here and you could not see more than 200 yards, however the thermal scope saw straight through it to the mountains 10 miles away. I did put a Butler Creek scope cover (28 Obj) 1.890” 48.0mm that fit perfect. The original cover on the scope always gets in the way. For the money you might be better off buying a 3rd generation night vision scope and a good Luna laser illuminator they are in the same price range. If you buy a clip on scope the better the day optics the better the results! If you want to hunt 200 pound pigs this scope should work great at distances further than you can make the shots. However if you want to shoot coyotes you are limited to about 300 yards and with rabbits at about 200 yards if you know your distances and hold over’s. For me this scope is just going to be another tool in the tool box. The 540 scopes don’t look much better from the videos I have seen. And one last thing this scope has a 25mm Flir Tau 2 thermal imaginer installed in it. It was clearly visible when I placed the Butler Creek scope cover on it and I could see through the reflective surface on the scope lens because of the shadow the cover made on the lens. The 42mm lens advertized is the focal length of the lens not the diameter of the lens like other manufactures advertize. The battery life is about two hours with the gain set on the high end and a pain to change the batteries in the dark. To finish on a positive note, the amount of light present has no effect on the scope unlike night vision.