The testing on the Zeus 3 was not as rigorous as on the IR Hunter (http://www.lonestarboars.com/threads/ir-hunter-320-2x-19mm-review.1497/#post-19894). The Zeus was provided to me for the purposes of comparison with the IR Hunter and was not the focus of my attention.
To be perfectly honest with you, I expected it to fail early on and basically have nothing to report but the failure. Previously, I had been able to look at 2 different Armasight NV scopes that did not hold up during recoil and would try to reboot after firing, and not always successfully. So I didn't expect the Zeus to do so well on a .308 bolt gun.
Here are my thoughts...
Likes:
1. Compact size/lower profile
2. Image quality
3. Temperature sensitivity (able to see less hot items much better than with IR Hunter or FLIR PS32)
4. Objective focus, clarity of image
5. Sepia tone color palate option which seems to be a decent alternative to the typical white hot palate.
6. Ease of changing batteries
Dislikes:
1. Menu system is a bit cumbersome, though I did not have time to learn some of the shortcuts. The menu has a lot more options that one would normally leave (a lot of set and forget stuff) that I wasn't familiar with and I didn't have an instruction book to know which things to bypass or not, so I did a lot of navigating through menus which did not go real quickly.
2. Buttons to change selections were tough to use, not with good tactile feedback, and there was a delay between when the button was touched and the selection on the screen changed. In short, there is a bit of lag in the menu system.
3. A multitude of bizarre color options for the palate that I think virtually nobody will actually use for hunting.
4. Wish the display size could have been larger, though it was quite good.
5. Could not get the scope back far enough on my Rem 788 to get a proper eye cup shooting position. The scope seems better suited for an AR with a collapsible stock in order to get proper eye relief.
6. If you are not at the correct eye relief distance and are too far back, you get a bit of fisheye effect (this happens with some other scopes as well and is not unique to this unit).
So the scope was put onto a REM 788 bolt action rifle chambered in .308. I fired 9 rounds through it to get an approximate zero using mil surp 7.62x51 ammo that my rifle did not like (had trouble opening chamber after firing). I had planned on using a lot of this ammo for more extensive testing, but stopped using it when I had to use a cleaning rod to drive the case from the chamber. So I moved to my secondary quality ammo, Silver State Armory 150 gr. of which I didn't have as much (was just going to use it for zeroing after running a bunch of the mil surp through the rifle) and zeroed the rifle at 100 yards plinked using 16 rounds. So the total round count was 25 and I did not notice a single hiccup with the Zeus. After zeroing, it held zero just fine.
I took the rifle out hunting. Saw no hogs during the hunt. It really did a good job of letting me identify targets that I initially spotted with my FLIR PS32 but could not identify. Also, it showed vastly superior thermal sensitivity to everything. Hot items were much more of a visual "pop" than with the FLIR PS32 or IR Hunter. The image was more vibrant.
I had no trouble telling the differences between deer, cattle, and horses at 300+ yards in open, low grass terrain, though a sounds of hogs I spotted in high grass at about 150 yards took a few seconds of study before getting a solid ID. This was all on the drive home, so no footage of me shooting hogs. :-(
I don't know what the run time on the batteries is. It uses 2 sideways mounted cR123 batteries that I did not change (but did take out when I examined how to change them).
The Zeus looks like a promising scope. I knew nothing of Armasight's thermal line before being loaned this scope other than they had thermal scopes for sale. I still don't know much, but the unit I tested seemed to work very well.
To be perfectly honest with you, I expected it to fail early on and basically have nothing to report but the failure. Previously, I had been able to look at 2 different Armasight NV scopes that did not hold up during recoil and would try to reboot after firing, and not always successfully. So I didn't expect the Zeus to do so well on a .308 bolt gun.
Here are my thoughts...
Likes:
1. Compact size/lower profile
2. Image quality
3. Temperature sensitivity (able to see less hot items much better than with IR Hunter or FLIR PS32)
4. Objective focus, clarity of image
5. Sepia tone color palate option which seems to be a decent alternative to the typical white hot palate.
6. Ease of changing batteries
Dislikes:
1. Menu system is a bit cumbersome, though I did not have time to learn some of the shortcuts. The menu has a lot more options that one would normally leave (a lot of set and forget stuff) that I wasn't familiar with and I didn't have an instruction book to know which things to bypass or not, so I did a lot of navigating through menus which did not go real quickly.
2. Buttons to change selections were tough to use, not with good tactile feedback, and there was a delay between when the button was touched and the selection on the screen changed. In short, there is a bit of lag in the menu system.
3. A multitude of bizarre color options for the palate that I think virtually nobody will actually use for hunting.
4. Wish the display size could have been larger, though it was quite good.
5. Could not get the scope back far enough on my Rem 788 to get a proper eye cup shooting position. The scope seems better suited for an AR with a collapsible stock in order to get proper eye relief.
6. If you are not at the correct eye relief distance and are too far back, you get a bit of fisheye effect (this happens with some other scopes as well and is not unique to this unit).
So the scope was put onto a REM 788 bolt action rifle chambered in .308. I fired 9 rounds through it to get an approximate zero using mil surp 7.62x51 ammo that my rifle did not like (had trouble opening chamber after firing). I had planned on using a lot of this ammo for more extensive testing, but stopped using it when I had to use a cleaning rod to drive the case from the chamber. So I moved to my secondary quality ammo, Silver State Armory 150 gr. of which I didn't have as much (was just going to use it for zeroing after running a bunch of the mil surp through the rifle) and zeroed the rifle at 100 yards plinked using 16 rounds. So the total round count was 25 and I did not notice a single hiccup with the Zeus. After zeroing, it held zero just fine.
I took the rifle out hunting. Saw no hogs during the hunt. It really did a good job of letting me identify targets that I initially spotted with my FLIR PS32 but could not identify. Also, it showed vastly superior thermal sensitivity to everything. Hot items were much more of a visual "pop" than with the FLIR PS32 or IR Hunter. The image was more vibrant.
I had no trouble telling the differences between deer, cattle, and horses at 300+ yards in open, low grass terrain, though a sounds of hogs I spotted in high grass at about 150 yards took a few seconds of study before getting a solid ID. This was all on the drive home, so no footage of me shooting hogs. :-(
I don't know what the run time on the batteries is. It uses 2 sideways mounted cR123 batteries that I did not change (but did take out when I examined how to change them).
The Zeus looks like a promising scope. I knew nothing of Armasight's thermal line before being loaned this scope other than they had thermal scopes for sale. I still don't know much, but the unit I tested seemed to work very well.
