Good, high performance nv clip on - EOTech Clip Night Vision LR Monocular

Pros: Has a sturdy housing; solid well made rail mount; battery compartment opens and closes smoothly and easily while also sealing well; intuitive controls that are easy to manipulate in the dark; excellent image quality; nearly zero optical shift to the daylight scope. Good value compared to other clip-on options. Rubber on it seems to be of good quality but smells strange.

Cons: Tech manual doesn't cover some key aspects of the device well, like the fact that there appears to be a black bar on the left side of the screen that protrudes into the viewble area at low magnification (< 4x). In my setup the bar was no longer visible above 4x which is what Eotech lists as the lower end of the usable magnification range. (This will vary depending on how far the objective lens from the daylight scope is from the collimator lens of the clip-on.) Also, I don't think the useful magnification range is as broad as Eotech says. I found it useful down to 2.5x, which was the lower limit of my testing, but above 6x image quality deteriorates quickly and there's not much reason to increase magnification beyond that other than to make a 1FP daylight optic reticle more visible. At 20x it's difficult to see much image detail at all. And of course the price.

Overall I'd this is an excellent clip on but I would consider it best suited for medium range rather than long range use. Also, anyone considering getting an NV clip on should consider thermal instead. NV and thermal each have their own advantages and disadvantages and depending on your needs, thermal may be a more useful technology. Be careful with thermal though, because many of the lower end devices on the market have high image latency which limits the usefulness of these devices. Image latency is not an issue with Gen 3 NV.