Minox ZP5 5-25x56 MR4

[finner]

If anyone ordered two and needs to unburden themselves of one, I'll do you a favor!

 

[rbutcher1234]

Unboxing

I received the two ZP5 scopes from Jake today. Upon opening, I noticed something interesting: the foam packaging was different for both. As one poster earlier noted, mine came in red boxes. Whether the foam differences or the package color matter to anyone remains to be seen, but they don't make any difference to me. Just something interesting to note. Clearly these are spanning different times for production or packaging.


Mounting

Tonight, I will be pulling off a SWFA 3-9x42 from my R8 and putting on one of the ZP5s. The SWFA is moving back to my 223 Tikka, so this needed to happen anyway.

The first thing I noticed was the size. The SWFA 3-9 is a nice size I think. It isn't tiny, but it isn't huge. Immediately, I noticed that the ZP5 is a much bigger scope. This isn't surprising: Form mentioned this in the original post and several follow up posts. Tomorrow, I can pull several other optics if people want to see size comparisons. Subjectively, (and because I do not feel like going to grab them right now to confirm this), the ZP5 feels larger to me than a NF 7-35 and right in line with a ZCO 8-40. It is a large scope.





Everyone here should be familiar with how to mount a scope. SWFA pulled off, NF rings put on, all screws degreased with acetone, paint pen, torque to 25 in/lbs. Reticle leveled with the stock, confirmed with a Send it and plum at the end of my yard, eye relief dialed in (more on this in a minute):



Scope all mounted, torqued, good to go. Because this is Rokslide, and exactly how this would go, our own little drop test happened right as I took this picture of the rifle* against my breakfast table:

Small tumble, rifle impacted on the elevation turret and rolled to the side (Remember the ZP5 is a big scope, so the higher center of gravity caused the rifle to pivot along the bore axis and orient dorsal side down). Fall less than hip height, not high velocity, onto a carpet with rug pad. @Formidilosus take a guess how this will turn out.....

Oh no, will the ZP5 fail? Will the R8 be the problem? Can't lose zero if you haven't zeroed it yet right gentlemen? Both will be confirmed. I'm sure the R8 fans are interested to see how the mount retains zero with an optic this size.

*Technically, I snapped the picture, grabbed the rifle to look through it again, popped the scope caps, then sat it back down to retake a more zoomed out picture of it against the table when it fell.

 

[slm9s]

Initial impression - very impressed.

 

[HuntHarder]

Humongous compared to the swfa!

 

[rbutcher1234]

Initial impressions before shooting

I said I would come back to the eye relief part. The second thing that occurred to me immediately was how forgiving the eye relief is on this scope. It seemed like the "sweet spot" for full field of view was much larger than other optics that I have looked through, and I have heavily used a lot of scopes (primarily NF, ZCO, SWFA, Trijicon, Elcan).

I found that in basically every position, from prone, sitting, kneeling, squatting, standing, no matter what position I tried and dry fired in, I noticed minimal change in visual perception across magnification range and position. I even tested it with positional par time dry fire on a DFAT reduced target scaled for the distance of my living room: optically, this is a great scope to get behind quickly and efficiently across all positions.

One poster said he/she was having trouble focusing the diopter for clarity across min and max magnification. I did not experience this issue

Reticle

A lot has already been written about the THLR reticle, so I will not rehash this. I will simply say this reticle is the most useful reticle across min and max magnification that I have seen.

My one complaint about the SWFA milquad (that does not actually show up as an issue on a shot timer, but has always bothered me) is the inverted german post. I always wished the reticle was flipped 180 degrees. So, without repeating all the advantages of the THLR, I'll just say I'm glad it's a 1.5mil off center german post at 5x.

I'll probably have a lot more to say about this after a few thousand rounds at higher magnification.

Next Steps

The next step is to shoot it. A lot.

When I zero this gun, I will bring my AIAT with me just in case the steel R8 rail gives any issues. Absolutely everything on the AI is torqued and glued together and nothing can move without catastrophic failure.

Special late season white tail runs for the next 10 days and we have a lot of management does to rightsize... this scope will be used heavily over the last 7 days of the month.

 

[nm.otter]

My one complaint about the SWFA milquad ... is the inverted german post. I always wished the reticle was flipped 180 degrees. So, without repeating all the advantages of the THLR, I'll just say I'm glad it's a 1.5mil off center german post at 5x.

This is my issue with them as well.