I asked about these a while back just to get opinions on their performance and what folks thought about how well the Ballistic program functioned.
I managed to get my hands on a set of them yesterday and have been playing with them off and on since.
Lets talk about the good first. They are optically about as good as it gets and are in the same league as my Swaro 10X42's Bino's. I used them around the house yesterday evening to watch birds etc and was quite impressed.
The only Rangefinder I personally have used that would range like these was the Vectronics Terrapin. They are amazing as Rangefinders and while it has been mostly cloudy which helps performance they were fast on every reading and rarely missed.
I took them down to a ranch and cruised around for an hour or so ranging cows/calfs and other stuff. It came a big storm and then continued raining for about an hour. During the slow but steady rain I sat in the truck and ranged out the window cows out to 1368 yards. I saw deer and pigs but all were pretty easy to range as they were inside 400 yards which was a piece of cake for these.
Now the bad. If you are considering these for the Ballistic program capabilities then you may possibly be disappointed.
I played around with programing the RF using both the pre-programed options that are built-into the RF and I also used the option of downloading onto a furnished micro-SD card the data for a 6.5 Creedmoor with a custom load.
It is a relatively simple process that worked once I re-read the directions and quit trying to rename the program as that is not allowed.
That is when I discovered that even though it allows you to pick 1 MOA or 1/3 MOA or 1/4 MOA(my Choice) and others it does NOT give you corrections in MOA... just number of clicks??? So for example if you ranged an object that needed 10.25 MOA instead of 10.25 showing it gives you 41 which is the number of clicks needed.
Also all you Mil guys(like me) forget about it unless you just want to be "close" and use 1/3 MOA.
I checked my personal programed Sd card many times from 350-1000 yards and it matched my Shooter program perfect until I got 500ish and then as it went further it showed less drop and at 1000 there was 5 clicks difference? Why did I stop at 1000 yards? That is as far as it will give Ballistic Data oh and that's only if you use the SD card.... if you chose one of the 12 pre-programed options they only get you to 500 yards. I guess they are trying to encourage ethical hunting practices.
But what if I want to shoot a rock at 1200 yards? I almost forgot these Leica's also have a cosine giving you instant readout of degrees incline or decline and current temp and station pressure.
My current thoughts are that these are a fantastic set of RF Binocular's and with a little refinement on the ballistic program could handle three things LR hunters need a good set of glass a top notch RF and instant dope.
_________________________