Nightforce NX6 scopes.

[Formidilosus]

I’ve been shooting with two prototype NF NX6’s for a while. A 3-18x50mm and the 5-30x56mm versions. Both in MOA as that was the first ones made. We were asked not to release anything until the 14th. We supposedly will get sent one the first production 2-12x versions when finished- having said that, most of the general “feel” of the line is the same between them.

What does prototype mean- in this case the outside of the scope is what production scopes will be. The turret design, glass, etc are all the same. What was relayed was that some parts of the erector system will be different on the production scopes- we cannot say what those are. Just that I was asked to not do the drop eval on the prototypes as it would not be inductive of production scope performance.



Weights:

3-18x50mm is 27.3oz



5-30x56mm is 31oz-






Turret:

“Fieldset” is what NF is calling them. They are easy to slip and replace in the field, and configurable by the user.


Elevation is 20moa per rev-



To slip the turret you loosen the top inner ring, spin turret to zero, tighten back down-




It’s a pin on pin zero stop design.



Windage is standard NF. Same/same functionally as the NX8. Not rotation limited.






Reticle:

The 3-18x has the MOA-C

3x-



3x max illum-





18x-



18x illum-




Cont…

 

[Formidilosus]

RETICLE cont:


5-30x MOA XT-

5x (no this is not a bad image, I’ll explain later)



5x illum-



30x




30x illum-



I initially turned the scope to 30x and focused the reticle as normal. While shooting, 30x was very clean and clear. However below about 18x the reticle became completely blurry and unusable as in the 5x pictures above. Like this-

5x



30x-



Below 18’ish magnification- completely unusable. I played with the ocular focus, the parallax; all the tricks and could not get it to correct itself. However, in trying to take pictures of the reticle, I wanted to see how much difference there was between focused at 5x and focused at 30x- it was a lot of turns.

Now reticle focused at 5x-




Then to see how bad it was at 30x I turned it up….. and the reticle was perfect. Playing with it back and forth- on high powers above 18x there are two spots in the ocular focus where the reticle is sharp- and they are at opposite ends of the adjustment range; but only one where the reticle is in focus below 18x. When the ocular is adjust to the low power focus- the reticle is in focus from 5-30x. This is probably an optical anomaly due to the prototype nature, but something interesting all the same.





Eyebox:

Decent. The eyebox issue of the NX8 was always overblown, however these two NX6’s are better than the NX8’s. Not “awesome” but nothing critical or abnormal.


Glass:

It’s a Nightforce. It’s quite good. Nothing to complain about- it’s what you would expect from the replacement for the NXS in 2026.



Other:

Size- they’re not compact scopes. Back is the Maven RS1.2 2.5-15x (a not small scope itself), middle is the NX6 3-18x and front is the 5-30x:



A better size comparison between the Maven and the 3-18x NX6-







Conclusions:


For the bit that I’ve used them, and no abuse or zero retention testing- they are exactly what I would expect a 6x magnification ratio from Nightforce to be. They are not “oh my god game changing”, but they seem good. If the durability is there, and I expect it will be- they are a good replacement if that’s possible, for the NXS series.

Their biggest downfall as it is with all Nightforce scopes, are the reticles. These are MOA, but the mil reticle in these scopes are no better- they’re the same reticles NF has had. Now, NF is offering a #4 style reticle in the SFP versions - but other than the FC-MRx reticle for the 2-12x (basically the 1-8x FC-DMx reticle), there is no real advancement here.