Good glass. poor illumination. horrible reticle. - Firefield 1st Focal Plane Waterproof Illuminated 1-6x24mm Rifle Scope

I was pleasantly surprised by the clarity and field of view. I can see only the tiniest trace of edge distortion at 1x. And if it isn't true 1x, it's close enough that I can't tell the difference. The eye box and eye relief are excellent from the bottom of the magnification scale to the top, which is something I cannot say about every LPVO, including some at 10+ times the price. The magnification ring has a little stub on it that makes it much easier to grasp and rotate in a hurry. All the adjustments move smoothly, neither too tight nor too loose, and the clicks are crisp and very tactile, though I would really have preferred low profile capped turrets for something intended for use in the field. The build quality seems excellent, especially for the market segment (*cough* airsoft *cough*) we're talking about here.

And that is the extent of the nice things I can say about it.

The reticle does NOT look like what's in the pictures. At least on the one I bought used, it doesn't. I have seen reviews saying that the etched lines are too thick for best use at 6x. Mine has the opposite problem. The pictures show a sort of duplex with a mil scale or maybe mil dots in the thin section, with thick lines at 12:00, 3:00, 6:00, and 9:00. That's not what mine has. Mine has a mil scale in the center, made of razor-thin lines that are perfect at 6x and inadequate at any lower magnification. They are so thin that the entire reticle becomes completely invisible below around 2.5x magnification. The portions at the sides, that the picture shows are thick lines, are hollow. That is to say, surrounding the mil scale in the center are two hair-fine lines outlining where the thick part of a duplex is supposed to be, going "north," "south," "east," and "west" to the edges of the field of view in all directions. Those outlines look like the thick part of the duplex was supposed to be about two mrad thick, which is a bit thinner than optimum for 1x. If they had been filled in to be opaque thick lines like a duplex is supposed to have, it'd be sort of usable. It would still have been too thin. Lines around three mrad thick at 1x are about right as coarse aiming indicators for fast work at close quarters at 1x, if we are talking about the thick part of a duplex reticle, or a ring surrounding the thin central portion that is for precision shooting. As it is, it's an LPVO that is useless at 1x. It can only be used as a fixed 6x scope, for which it doesn't have nearly enough objective lens area to be competitive when compared to any "real" fixed 6x scope I know of. Did mine have a defective reticle? Were those areas supposed to be filled in? I got it used. We'll never know.

The illumination doesn't help much. It has both red and green illumination that is as weak as a newborn kitten. Outdoors in sunlight it is just barely noticeable on the highest settings, only usable if you're shooting at a black target and need a little contrast. A little contrast is all you're going to get. Maybe replacing the battery would help. Or stacking two CR2016s, like some people do, rather than using a single CR2032. It could not possibly make it any worse. Also, the illumination knob has brightness settings of 1-5 but there is very little difference between the brightest and dimmest settings. The red illumination is noticeably a lot brighter than the green, too. Usually it's the other way around. Also the entire reticle is illuminated and it's noticeably brighter in the center.

Lastly, the reticle is in milliradians, but the adjustments are in MOA, a bizarre juxtaposition. Half minute clicks plus mrad reticle equals seven clicks to the milliradian, I guess, very approximately. Why would they do this? Would 0.1 mrad clicks have cost so much more to manufacture? I yam disgustipated.