Okay, this is an opinion piece based on information I am gleaning from new owners on Texas Hunting Forum, ATN, and videos put out so far.
ATN released a new line of thermal scopes, building on their previous Thor line, but radically changing it to include the X-sight fiasco-based Obsidian computer system. Y'all may recall the 2015 rollout of the X-sight of digital night vision scopes that were plagued with problems. Just ask Frank about his. This year brings the X-sight HD II and the Thor HD that use this system.
Like the plagued X-Sight system, the Thor HD promises a myriad of electro-magical features, 90% of which you don't need and that never worked properly on the X-Sight...
Thermal Rifle Scope ThOR-HD with Camera for Night hunting
I am not sure why you need a magnetometer, but it has this and some other weird features.
What is really cool about the new Thor HD line is that ATN seems to have been the first to break the sub $2000 barrier for offering a thermal weapon sight. It is their lowest end unit with the smallest lens and least magnification, but by golly, the resolution and capabilities are not unrealistic for use in short range hunting. This would basically put you back about 5 years technologically when this would have been considered pretty darned good.
The bottom line benefit of these units, aside from low cost, is that they do onboard recording of video, which is a really slick idea. The X-sight had all sorts of issues getting image and sound to work through the various firm ware upgrades and while the X-sight HD II may be better, it still suffers screen flickering.
So what is great about the Thor HD other than that it records video? You would think you are getting HD quality video and it does record in HD, but it is an HD recording of the typical resolution images. Imagine that you had an old photograph from the 1800s that was blurry, so you scanned it on an HD scanner to make and HD image. You now have a blurry HD image. The point here is that the two sensors 384x288 and 640x480 are basically the same resolutions we are seeing with other thermal scopes by Pulsar, FLIR, Armasight, Eotech, and IR Defense. So the HD thing is a bit misleading. The resolution is never better than the sensor. You can make the recording use up a lot more memory, but the quality of the image won't improve as a result.
So far in the units I have seen discusses, two have died. One unit never powered up a second time and another unit would not power up again after a battery change. The other units seem to either have image quality issues or sound quality issues. Here are some videos submitted by various folks. These first videos are from 384x288 resolution units because ATN has not released the 640x480 resolution units yet. Nobody has gotten around to testing the other features you pay for when you buy one of these scopes.
This first video won't embed, so you have to click on it. It has a huntable image, but there is no sound for some reason and there are a lot of dead pixels. Dead pixels are not a good thing. The Thor HD can record in sound. Why no sound?
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3552650/Thermal/ATNX0026.MOV
This video was provided by an ATN vendor. It is not in focus (or maybe it was?), looks like it needs to be NUC'd, there is no sound, and generally looks like the unit doesn't function well. It was only shot at 20-30 yards.
The ATN rep wanted to post a better video and offered this one to show how good the unit is. It is of a dog at 5 yards. The sound does not appear to be synced with the action. There are gray flashes. At 5 yards, this should be a spectacular video.
Video from this poster looks pretty darned good. However, the sound cuts out before the video does, seemingly indicating that sound and image are out of sync.
The vendor posted this video. Looks like hogs in high grass, so it is difficult to assess the image quality except to say that the quality looks about right for the resolution and seeing hogs in high grass. Basically, it looks fine. However, the sound and image are not in sync here either.
This guy decided to do a comparison between a Pulsar Apex XD38a and a Thor HD. In defense of the Thor HD, the quality of the image should not be quite as good as it has a smaller 25mm lens and slightly less magnification. However, these differences do not represent the problems found by the guy making the video. Note the bright line in the image and that this is one of the Thors that died, not to be able to be revived. This is a pretty good video.
Bottom line - The new Thor HD line, as indicated by the few examples out in the real world right now, has issues. Unless you just have a lot of money you don't need and want to buy thermal scopes that suffer from ATN Syndrome, spend your money elsewhere.
ATN released a new line of thermal scopes, building on their previous Thor line, but radically changing it to include the X-sight fiasco-based Obsidian computer system. Y'all may recall the 2015 rollout of the X-sight of digital night vision scopes that were plagued with problems. Just ask Frank about his. This year brings the X-sight HD II and the Thor HD that use this system.
Like the plagued X-Sight system, the Thor HD promises a myriad of electro-magical features, 90% of which you don't need and that never worked properly on the X-Sight...
Thermal Rifle Scope ThOR-HD with Camera for Night hunting
I am not sure why you need a magnetometer, but it has this and some other weird features.
What is really cool about the new Thor HD line is that ATN seems to have been the first to break the sub $2000 barrier for offering a thermal weapon sight. It is their lowest end unit with the smallest lens and least magnification, but by golly, the resolution and capabilities are not unrealistic for use in short range hunting. This would basically put you back about 5 years technologically when this would have been considered pretty darned good.
The bottom line benefit of these units, aside from low cost, is that they do onboard recording of video, which is a really slick idea. The X-sight had all sorts of issues getting image and sound to work through the various firm ware upgrades and while the X-sight HD II may be better, it still suffers screen flickering.
So what is great about the Thor HD other than that it records video? You would think you are getting HD quality video and it does record in HD, but it is an HD recording of the typical resolution images. Imagine that you had an old photograph from the 1800s that was blurry, so you scanned it on an HD scanner to make and HD image. You now have a blurry HD image. The point here is that the two sensors 384x288 and 640x480 are basically the same resolutions we are seeing with other thermal scopes by Pulsar, FLIR, Armasight, Eotech, and IR Defense. So the HD thing is a bit misleading. The resolution is never better than the sensor. You can make the recording use up a lot more memory, but the quality of the image won't improve as a result.
So far in the units I have seen discusses, two have died. One unit never powered up a second time and another unit would not power up again after a battery change. The other units seem to either have image quality issues or sound quality issues. Here are some videos submitted by various folks. These first videos are from 384x288 resolution units because ATN has not released the 640x480 resolution units yet. Nobody has gotten around to testing the other features you pay for when you buy one of these scopes.
This first video won't embed, so you have to click on it. It has a huntable image, but there is no sound for some reason and there are a lot of dead pixels. Dead pixels are not a good thing. The Thor HD can record in sound. Why no sound?
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3552650/Thermal/ATNX0026.MOV
This video was provided by an ATN vendor. It is not in focus (or maybe it was?), looks like it needs to be NUC'd, there is no sound, and generally looks like the unit doesn't function well. It was only shot at 20-30 yards.
The ATN rep wanted to post a better video and offered this one to show how good the unit is. It is of a dog at 5 yards. The sound does not appear to be synced with the action. There are gray flashes. At 5 yards, this should be a spectacular video.
Video from this poster looks pretty darned good. However, the sound cuts out before the video does, seemingly indicating that sound and image are out of sync.
The vendor posted this video. Looks like hogs in high grass, so it is difficult to assess the image quality except to say that the quality looks about right for the resolution and seeing hogs in high grass. Basically, it looks fine. However, the sound and image are not in sync here either.
This guy decided to do a comparison between a Pulsar Apex XD38a and a Thor HD. In defense of the Thor HD, the quality of the image should not be quite as good as it has a smaller 25mm lens and slightly less magnification. However, these differences do not represent the problems found by the guy making the video. Note the bright line in the image and that this is one of the Thors that died, not to be able to be revived. This is a pretty good video.
Bottom line - The new Thor HD line, as indicated by the few examples out in the real world right now, has issues. Unless you just have a lot of money you don't need and want to buy thermal scopes that suffer from ATN Syndrome, spend your money elsewhere.
