A buddy of brought one of these. Don't think he will keep it.
He brought it out (NIB) and we set up handwarmers at various distances out to nearly 200 yards and then also just used it to look around a general features in the immediate area (not much animal activity where we were last night). I brought along my FLIR PS32 (320x240 also, 1x, smaller lens) spotter for comparison. Both are a fixed focus setup which has worked very well in the PS32 for me. ACOGs have fixed focus and the concept works great on them as well. I had considered this unit for purchase because of my experience with the PS32 (which I really like still after 1.5 years and hundreds of hours of use). It is a 320x240 low magnification rifle scope at a fairly reasonable price of $4500. It isn't at the bottom of the scale of the RS offerings.
The fixed focus is not a great concept on the RS32, of which only 2 units seem to offer focus in the RS line. You can focus the diopter which focusses the internal display and so you can see the lines of the display, reticle etc. very sharply, but the imagery was absolutely terrible. I wanted to focus the scope to refine the image, but there is no way to do this. When I compared it against my PS32, the image of the PS32 was actually clearer than the RS32. What???
So the RS32 is 2.25x optical magnification. To be honest, it looked like poor digital magnification. The PS32 will digitally magnify to 2x and the image was still better than the 2.25x RS32 optical image.
There was some benefit to the optical magnification of the RS32. It was able to see the handwarmer better at 100 and <200 yards than the PS32, but only slightly better. Especially at 200 yards, you had to know the handwarmer was there and about where to look with the PS32 to see it. Strangely, however, you could see the fence and brush behind the fence better with the PS32 at <200 yards than you could with the RS32.
Well maybe using the digital zoom will help. OMG! What a difference that made. The image on the RS32 went from POOR to UNBELIEVABLY HORRIBLE. When you digitally zoom an image, the pixilation of the original image simply blossom so that you get bigger pixels. Some firmware smooths this and I assume that is going on in the FLIR, but that just meant that what would be blocky edges were then rounded off fuzzy edges and so actually being able to determine what was an actual edge versus fuzzy outline edge (which may not be the same) was problematic.
Movement was smooth. At 60 hz, the image movement in the RS32 was fine, for blurry, blobular images. The PS32 is all of 7 hz and the image is a bit jerky, but is clearer.
Aside from the distance testing with the handwarmers, we looked around at the trees, creek, buildings, vehicles, each other, etc. and found the RS32 to be awful.
Bottom lines? I love my PS32 at (now) $3000, it is a very reasonable thermal spotting optic. You can buy better units for more money, but for the distances I deal with (usually less than 200 yards), it has been terrific. The RS32? It isn't what I would consider to be good enough to be a spotting scope. I certainly would not want to hunt with it. You could, but actual target identification (not detection or recognition, but actual identification) could prove to be exceptionally challenging even inside 200 yards.
I know all this sounds terribly harsh and unkind, but I was expecting much more out of the RS32 FLIR based on my positive experience with the PS32 and the RS32 simply didn't even compare well with the PS32 which should have been the poorer performer.
He brought it out (NIB) and we set up handwarmers at various distances out to nearly 200 yards and then also just used it to look around a general features in the immediate area (not much animal activity where we were last night). I brought along my FLIR PS32 (320x240 also, 1x, smaller lens) spotter for comparison. Both are a fixed focus setup which has worked very well in the PS32 for me. ACOGs have fixed focus and the concept works great on them as well. I had considered this unit for purchase because of my experience with the PS32 (which I really like still after 1.5 years and hundreds of hours of use). It is a 320x240 low magnification rifle scope at a fairly reasonable price of $4500. It isn't at the bottom of the scale of the RS offerings.
The fixed focus is not a great concept on the RS32, of which only 2 units seem to offer focus in the RS line. You can focus the diopter which focusses the internal display and so you can see the lines of the display, reticle etc. very sharply, but the imagery was absolutely terrible. I wanted to focus the scope to refine the image, but there is no way to do this. When I compared it against my PS32, the image of the PS32 was actually clearer than the RS32. What???
So the RS32 is 2.25x optical magnification. To be honest, it looked like poor digital magnification. The PS32 will digitally magnify to 2x and the image was still better than the 2.25x RS32 optical image.
There was some benefit to the optical magnification of the RS32. It was able to see the handwarmer better at 100 and <200 yards than the PS32, but only slightly better. Especially at 200 yards, you had to know the handwarmer was there and about where to look with the PS32 to see it. Strangely, however, you could see the fence and brush behind the fence better with the PS32 at <200 yards than you could with the RS32.
Well maybe using the digital zoom will help. OMG! What a difference that made. The image on the RS32 went from POOR to UNBELIEVABLY HORRIBLE. When you digitally zoom an image, the pixilation of the original image simply blossom so that you get bigger pixels. Some firmware smooths this and I assume that is going on in the FLIR, but that just meant that what would be blocky edges were then rounded off fuzzy edges and so actually being able to determine what was an actual edge versus fuzzy outline edge (which may not be the same) was problematic.
Movement was smooth. At 60 hz, the image movement in the RS32 was fine, for blurry, blobular images. The PS32 is all of 7 hz and the image is a bit jerky, but is clearer.
Aside from the distance testing with the handwarmers, we looked around at the trees, creek, buildings, vehicles, each other, etc. and found the RS32 to be awful.
Bottom lines? I love my PS32 at (now) $3000, it is a very reasonable thermal spotting optic. You can buy better units for more money, but for the distances I deal with (usually less than 200 yards), it has been terrific. The RS32? It isn't what I would consider to be good enough to be a spotting scope. I certainly would not want to hunt with it. You could, but actual target identification (not detection or recognition, but actual identification) could prove to be exceptionally challenging even inside 200 yards.
I know all this sounds terribly harsh and unkind, but I was expecting much more out of the RS32 FLIR based on my positive experience with the PS32 and the RS32 simply didn't even compare well with the PS32 which should have been the poorer performer.
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