Anyone have any opinions or experience with one of these? Someone I know bought one NIB in 2018 and never used it. They approached me to see if I want to buy it. He's hurting for cash. I've confirmed with Trijicon that it's the real deal and not a knockoff.

Mine is older and I don't know what differences yours may have from mine, but there may be a couple things different on the firmware.

I really like it. However, the battery compartment is stupid and you will likely want to get an external battery kit.

It is 4.5x which seems like a whole lot, but may be a little generous in terms of effective view. It does have a fairly narrow FOV and between that and the fairly high magnification, most people would consider it a poor short range optic for hunting and they would be correct. While you can, you probably don't want to be targeting a sounder inside 50 yards because once the shooting starts, you will quickly loose track of a lot of running hogs fairly close to you. If you look through the scope and feel like they are too close, then they are.

I find that with the FOV, I prefer shots around 100 yards and out to 200 isn't an issue at all.

Eventually you will need to replace the lens cap if you use it very much. There are options for about $20, maybe less, on Amazon.

Pretty much what DNS said. I shoot across open fields and I like mine. I started out with a MK2 35mm IR Hunter and found that I was virtually always shooting at 2X. The MK2 has a native magnification of 2.5X so I was effectively using 5X magnification for shooting. I finally decided I might as well upgrade to the MK3 and get the native 4.5X magnification. It's working okay for my purposes. Most of my shooting is at a range of 75-125 yards. I could take longer shots if I had to but I prefer to get in to ~100yards or so because it's harder to miss. Not that I can't miss at that range, mind you. I have video to prove it.

While you can absolutely get better image quality and features these days, that's still a really nice scope and it's build like a tank. My biggest warning would be, buy it cheap because as I'm sure Trijicon told you, there is no warranty if something goes wrong. However, in the past they've been good about offering repairs for a fee. Just take it into consideration there are optics out there that cost around half the original price that the MK3 and they'll have a very competitive image quality and a 3 to 5 year warranty and all the bells and whistles when it comes to features.

Not trying to talk you out of it because I know you want to help your friend and not play hardball when he's in need but just go into knowing what you're getting and you've got to decide how much of this is you just helping him out (a gift) vs getting a fair deal on a 5-6 year old electronic optic.

Good luck!

What he said.

Trijicon is very high quality but is is an electronic device and is old. The technology in thermals is evolving rapidly. The cheapest scopes today have better specs than high end scopes did not too long ago. I would pass unless it was a really good deal.

Oh, and it will be out of warranty. So you get zero benefit there.

Yes, zero warranty but Trijicon is still servicing them. I made the guy an offer...let's see if he takes it.

Excellent! Let us know how you did.