Probably the first thing I noticed about the scope is the nice solid feel and construction
of the scope. Everything had a very nice uniform finish, tight tolerances, no slop and
just excellent quality everywhere. The tube is a 34mm tube, which obviously is not a
standard tube diameter. But there are a few ring manufacturers that make 34mm rings and
luckily the scope had a set already mounted and spaced for a picatinny base, so mounting
for this particular review was effortless. All of moving parts are precise, smooth, and
lacked any "slop". Just an overall feel of quality everywhere on the scope
The power adjust ring was very easy to grip and did not require a whole lot of effort to
adjust, which is actually a little less common than you might think. There is a typical
European fast focus eye piece (diopter adjustment), which worked well, and there should not be
too much of a problem to use a flip up scope cap once you have the eye piece adjusted
for you. The tube is a solid one piece tube, as you would expect, and the exterior finish
is a fairly typical anodized finish that you would see on any number of decent quality scopes.
The eye relief on the scope is also generous providing ample room to use the scope on
high recoiling rifles without problem, and it appears to cover a wide range allowing for
quick full sight picture alignment.
Of course, when you pay the big dollars for an S&B scope, the thing you are paying for is
the optical quality, and this scope does not disappoint. The optics on the scope are
exceptional, and probably the best I have looked through. I have said it a thousand times
and I will mention it again here, it is extremely difficult to compare optics on modern
scopes, BUT, occasionally you will look through a scope and say "wow", which is what
happens here. Of course, I had it side by side with many other high end scopes from
Leupold, Sightron, Nikon and others, and there is not any one thing that you can point at
say "wow... that is clearly better", but looking at the picture as a whole, it is better.
Is the optics twice as good? No, obviously not. Are they so much better it is worth the
extra price? Hum, perhaps if you have the money, but again, it is hard to say, and maybe
not. But, all of that being said, the optics are better.
This scope has a traditional mil-dot reticule, where as the new USMC adopted scope uses the
"Gen-2" mil-dot with half mil hash marks. This good ol' traditional mil-dot reticule gets
the job done though, and it is located on the first focal plane as most European scopes
do. This means the mil-dots are accurate at ANY magnification settings. The picture below
is taken at 4x where as the picture of the reticule up above was taken at 16x. For those
of you that have never seen a first focal plane scope, this
clearly shows that the reticule itself appears to shrink and grow with the different
power settings. So, you can be scanning the area of operations at any power and can get
your mil reading without having to change the scope power. It is a handy feature and even
USA based Leupold now offers several scopes with the reticule in the first focal plane. I
really do not know why there is a different philosophical difference between hunting and
shooting practices around the world, but there is.
The knobs on the scope are also excellent with a few very notable features that require
some mention in this article. The turrets are a larger design that are intended for external
use and do not have any dust covers. The ends are knurled for easy gripping and there
is a side focus knob for parallax adjustment. The most amazing thing about the knobs is that
there is a full 30 MOA of adjustment per single revolution, and that is with 1/4 MOA clicks!
Remarkable. This is without having a huge knob like the US Optics ERAK knob and without
1 or 1/2 MOA clicks like the Leupold M2 and M3 knobs. This is quite
impressive and allows S&B to offer yet another very unique feature, which is the upper or
lower scale indicator. If you look in the picture below you will see a series of "windows"
on top of the elevation knob. Well, when you rotate the knob around with up elevations,
when you pass the 30 MOA mark, one full revolution, those windows fill with yellow to
indicate to the shooter that he/she is now using the "upper" MOA scale marked in yellow on
the top portion of the knob.
This eliminates the potential of confusion that is so common with long range shooting and
forgetting how many times you have rotated past zero. With this combo, the knobs are setup
to rotate a total of 56 MOA. I believe the scope actually has more MOA available than that,
and when you zero you slip the rings to zero, and then have your 56 MOA of up from there.
I do not know what the total elevation MOA may be, but I know that 56 will get a 308 from
100 to well past 1000 yards/meters.
The windage knob counts up in both directions and gives you a full 15 MOA in each direction
before crossing, which is plenty for all but the most extreme shooting conditions. The
windage adjustments are also 1/4 MOA per click and there is an arrow indicating which
way is right. There is no indicator for the elevation as to which direction is up, and the
direction is backwards from most scopes. Though I suspect you can tell by which way the numbers are
counting up, and there are always several numbers visible from behind the scope. Another
unique feature is with the spacing on the side focus knob. On most parallax adjust scopes, the
spacing between the range settings for focus gets smaller and smaller the further you go
out. So the spacing is fairly large between 100 and 150 yards, but is extremely small
between 300 and Infinity. Not so with this S&B scope, the spacing is the same between
200 and 400 as it is from 800 and 1000. Not to mention the fact that it even goes up to
1000 before going to infinity. This allows for more precise focus and parallax adjustment
at the longer ranges compared to 99% of the other scopes out there that have very small
adjustment movement to cover the long ranges. This translates to increased long range
focus, crispness of the image, and reduced parallax.
Everything about the scope is geared toward long range shooting. Whether it is the
Superb optics, 30 MOA per revolution, evenly spaced side focus, indicator windows on
the elevation knob, windage markings that count up both directions, or any of the other
features, the focus is for long range shooting, and it is an excellent scope for that.
With the scope mounted on a remington for shooting evaluations, we were no less impressed.
The adjustments were extremely accurate and repeatable and a full and complete sight
picture was easily achieved when shooting. I have already commented on the optical clarity
and in low light shooting conditions it really helped. The scope shot the box extemely
precise and everything functioned as a scope should during all of the shooting portion
of the test.
Beyond the oddball 34mm tube diameter and maybe no up indicator on the elevation turret,
there really is not much else I can find wrong with the scope. But with 34mm rings
available and clearly marked turrets that self explain which way is up, those issues
are not real issues. So the question remains, is the scope worth $2500? Or what many people
always ask, is it twice as good as a Leupold mark 4 or Nightforce as the price indicates?
Well, no, it is not twice as good, but neither is a Nightforce twice as good as a
Nikon. But, as quality goes up, it takes more and more effort to get the smaller gains,
and that is where we are at. It is not twice as good, but you know, it is better, it just
depends on what you can afford to spend. These scopes are some of the best that money can
buy.
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