Great if you know what you're doing. - Pulsar Challenger GS 1x20 Nightvision Monocular

If you're expecting something like a PVS-14 out of this unit, you need to look somewhere else. This is not something you can use tactically outside of very limited training environments. For familiarization, it can be a good tool. That being said, it is a great piece of kit for what you pay for. It works great indoors if you use the IR beam, but it can very clearly be seen as a red light, so I would question its usefulness in a home defense scenario or other such things. It does mount perfectly to my helmet with the use of a rhino mount and J-Arm, so transition from a high-end pair of nods to this is pretty natural. It does not suffer as greatly from fish-eye distortion, though it is there. It also has a much more limited field of view. My main gripe is that the tube holds power like a capacitor after being turned off, so I would be careful with exposing it to light even when turned off. This is my first gen 1 device, so I wasn't aware of this before going into it. I am now wondering if a bleeder resistor can be installed or if there is a limitation why this cannot be done. It's not a huge problem in the long-run, but it is there. The tube is pretty blemish-free and the images are clear out to 150m by my own count, however details start to go quickly. You can spot things at longer ranges, but it becomes more difficult. The body is good, but it isn't as hardy as a PVS-14. I wouldn't hit it too hard. A hard case might be something to pair with it if you're going to be roughing it outside. For my uses, it works. I wanted something that I could use without worrying about ruining my expensive set of nods and it certainly succeeds. I'm not worried about others spotting my IR beam in the night simply because I'm not going to use this on a raid of any sorts. In a good night, this device is great and can help you if you're doing early morning rucks or other things. Everyone should try out something like this if they aren't going to be wanting a more expensive device down the line. If you are eventually thinking of a gen 3 unit, I would simply skip this and save your dollars.