Good basic thermal or night vision scope

Looking for a good thermal or night vision scope for my AR I’m looking to stay under $1000 any suggestions?

No thermal under $1K unless used and low end.

Most NV will be very low end and would suggest you go with digital NV which will allow for day use as well.

Cheapest thermal mounted sight I know of is the Sig Echo-1. It's about $1,300.

My son has one, it works pretty well. Resolution is nothing like what you see in the video's but you can easily identify pigs out to 200 yards. Beyond that it's just a hot blob and tough to tell if it's a deer, cow or pig.

In our pig hunting family we also have ATN X-sights in 3-12x and 5-20x, X-Sight II in 3-12X and a Photon XT 4.6X.

X-Sight II's run $600-$700 the Photon XT's are around $500. X-Sight is color and has a bunch of features like color viewfinder, video recording, GPS, Ballistics Calculator, and a bunch of other stuff I never use. They eat AA batteries for breakfast lunch and dinner and while I haven't had to use it, ATN has a terrible customer service reputation and they tend to spam forums like this with fake accounts saying how great ATN is. The Photon's are B&W only, have a little better night vision capability and are much easier to use, just push a button to turn them on, they boot up faster than the ATN and shoot.

If you don't need the video capability I'd go with the Photon XT.

Sometime early in 2018 Sightmark is supposed to have an new version of the Photon with all the features (and price) of the ATN. If you really want the video capability I'd wait a few months, even if you still want to go with ATN I'll bet their price comes down with the competition.

If you do go with the X-Sight II get the 3-12X. The 5x doesn't have a wide enough field of view in my opinion.

Save your money and get to a $1,900 RXQ30V, $2200 PTS233, or $2500 APEX XQ38. You will be glad that the thermal you own isn't almost good enough to hunt with. Instead, you will own something you will own something you can effectively night hunt with.

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Get the photon if you can not get thermal it works and will be a good unit to lend to friend when you get your thermal

Easy answer. Sightmark Photon.

Best bang for your buck.

Probably a dumb question but I’m a lifetime waterfowl hunter just now getting into hunting the fur bearing animals. Can night vision scopes be used during the day?

My ATN night vision scope performs very well during the day, and the pictures and videos I take with it are first class.

Yes they can no problem.

Depends upon the Night Vision device.

Thermal and Digital Night Vision can be used in the daytime. The light amplification scopes often referred to by their "Generation" (ie Gen 1, Gen 2, Gen3) cannot or should not be used in daytime.