I spent today blasting bird shit and swapping glass. I hauled two 6XC's (the two folders) and a 308win to play with. I recently acquired some of the zp5's in x15 and x25 and my two x25's were duds so I bought a used one here which is 100% functional. The x15 is simply rad. I pulled my Sightron SV8 in hopes of being able to digiscope the longer shots and use the reticle... but the focal length didn't work out for my phone. I have recently plopped an Arken EP5 on the 308 replacing it's trijicon 10mile.....and I brought one of my NX8's in 4-32 for comparison sake.
I zeroed everything at a 100yd prone in a gravel pit and moved out to bird rocks. Today's cliffs were from 550-1160yds.
Immediately on the 100 line I was shocked at how good the image and eyebox was on the Arken. It rivaled the two ZP5's in eyebox and surpassed everything but the Sightron in resolving holes. To keep it fair I tried at max mag and 20x on all except the x15 obviously.
On the 1160 bird shit the resolution of the ep5 was second only to the Sightron, and was much beter contrast. The x15 was the best in class at contrast and held it's own in resolution. The x25 Minox was certainly better than the nx8 4-32 in both contrast and resolution of the rocks, moss, impacts and shit.
In all I had a heck of a lot of money in glass and shockingly the cheapest scope by a LONG WAY performed arguably better than the rest save the SV8......which is a 40mm tubed 56mm with a lot of magnification.
If the Arken will stay together they have a winner. Mine may be that anomaly and perhaps it's just better than the rest....but it tracked right on the money and hung at the top of the pack optically.
I zeroed everything at a 100yd prone in a gravel pit and moved out to bird rocks. Today's cliffs were from 550-1160yds.
Immediately on the 100 line I was shocked at how good the image and eyebox was on the Arken. It rivaled the two ZP5's in eyebox and surpassed everything but the Sightron in resolving holes. To keep it fair I tried at max mag and 20x on all except the x15 obviously.
On the 1160 bird shit the resolution of the ep5 was second only to the Sightron, and was much beter contrast. The x15 was the best in class at contrast and held it's own in resolution. The x25 Minox was certainly better than the nx8 4-32 in both contrast and resolution of the rocks, moss, impacts and shit.
In all I had a heck of a lot of money in glass and shockingly the cheapest scope by a LONG WAY performed arguably better than the rest save the SV8......which is a 40mm tubed 56mm with a lot of magnification.
If the Arken will stay together they have a winner. Mine may be that anomaly and perhaps it's just better than the rest....but it tracked right on the money and hung at the top of the pack optically.
