On a prior thread I became interested in the DNT ZULUS HD, specifically the 5-20 without LRF, please offer up your real world experiences with this scope for night hunting. I have a AGM TS35-384 thermal but may want to set up a rifle with the DNT if it is better than say Wraith DNV…

Dude.. I'm with ya.. seems like nobody has one.. I've been asking on a lot of other forums. It's a big conspiracy to make me spend $700..

We have sold MANY of these, well over 100 in the last month, and the feedback has been extremely positive

It seems like nobody is reviewing them except people with a monetized Youtube page...

No one on THF has hands on experience with this scope?

Sony makes good night sensors - it ought to be a solid scope

I’ve looked through most over the years and the price is a good one for this DNT Zulus

IF I had 700 extra dollars AND I was in need of a digital optic I would definitely be in the same boat as you and be thinking hard about it

Tibasauraus Rex is a pretty reputable reviewer - he liked it , he is monetized but has been doing the YouTube thing for many years . . .

I have the 5x20 LRF. It’s great for the money. Not sure what you want to know. The LRF is spot on. The IR light is good out to about 200 and is adjustable for flood or beam.

My only complaint is the buttons need to be textured instead of just rounded, and the magnification adjustment could be bigger, these all play a role in ease of night time use.

Other than that, it’s a solid optic that I’ve been enjoying. I also have a Pulsar Trail 2 LRF, they each have their own place.

There are so many reasons for this. First of all, you have to ask what the reviewer gets out of the review to do the review. You mentioned YouTube and folks with monetized pages. The folks with monetized pages have met the criteria for monetization (time, subscribers, etc.) which means they have been doing this for at least a short while. While complete newbs can post reviews, what are they going to get from their 38 or 256 subscribers? They might get a couple thumbs-up or comments, but nothing else. Even for many of the monetized channels like mine, most of my videos are NOT monetized because I dare to show the rifle with the thermal/nv optics mounted on it, which is a violation of monetization rules. So the people getting to test these likely are not making a lot of money from them or unless they have a million subscribers or so, aren't really going to the bank. At my peak and before YouTube implemented a lot of new rules, I still wasn't making enough off of monetization to pay my hunting fuel bill. I only had about 8000 subscribers at the time.

I understand the consideration of bias. Why trust a reviewer who has nothing but $$ to gain from the task? Well, we often aren't paid for reviews or are offered chump change for the reviews compared to the amount of time we spend doing them. Sometimes, there is a discounted price product offer for reviewing a scope whereby you might get 25 or 50% discount, then what you want to look for are the using of the optic by the reviewer AFTER the review and see if the reviewer is still using it or not.

On top of that, many of the reviews aren't by hunters who do YouTube stuff form some extra $, but by sellers of the products (who may also be hunters, of course, even if the manufacturer is not). So you know they definitely stand to earn income via their reviews via the sales they make off the units they review. That is why I like looking at the independent reviewers, not that they don't have their own biases. How many reviews can you do of crap products, say as much, and hope to get other products to review? The bottom line is that everybody has some sort of bias in doing reviews, be it financial (direct from sales, indirect from views, direct from profit sharing in some cases), ego, or just for the opportunity to see new gear.

The problem with newbie reviews (either new to hunting, new to night vision, new to thermal, or new to doing reviews) is that their major bias tends to be just being inexperienced. You can give a crappy thermal or night vision device to a person who has never had one and it will freaking rock their world and they will tell you about how great it is, a 'game changer,' etc. but they don't know squat. The result is often reviews that are very kind to the product when the product is crap.

The bottom line is that you can't find unbiased reviews and more often than not, general users don't give one iota about doing reviews, or do very brief reviews that are so lacking of information as to being nearly useless except to learn that the person doing the review probably liked the optic.



I didn't test the Zulus (any of them) but did test the ThermNight which has 1024 resolution on the digital channel (versus 1920 of the Zulus HD) and was very impressed with the image quality. How many hundreds of yards do you want to shoot? Pig_Popper is right. The Sony sensor ROCKS!

I will add this. The 5x native magnification is going to be quite high by comparison. You may want to go with the 3x version. Me? I like a lot of magnification, but most people don't seem to like too much. 5x is pretty high by most people's standards, plus being HD, you would have zoom all day long.

Thanks all for the input.. I actually ordered the 5-20LRF model yesterday. Looking forward to trying it out.

We look forward to your review!

HA! They can suffer like I did.. jk.. I'll post a review..

I saw you were using the coyote cannon to get more distance? I was thinking the new Hyperion 40, that should do me to 5-600 I'd think?

Looking forward to your review of it. I'm currently running a Sightmark Wraith 4K Max with a Sniper Hog light and has worked great for my needs. I'm setting up another rifle for hogs and debating on what optic to run. Thought about going with a 384 resolution thermal but now thinking of sticking with another DNV and getting a handheld thermal just for scanning. Will make it much easier to just grab and scan rather than having to get behind the rifle to see if anything is out there.

Yeah, a thermal scanner is a must in my opinion... My main reason for getting the Zulus is because my friends are too cheap to buy their own damn coyote optics I have one rifle with a Thermion 2 XQ-50 Pro that is the main popper, the Zulus will go on a backup gun for ranging and follow-up shots. Then I have an older Pulsar thermal scanner as well as a Trail XQ-50 (that doesn't keep zero for crap) that also gets use as a handheld scanner. Mostly hunt open fields so a good NV should work just fine.

NO! I was NOT using a Coyote Cannon. That is why it was so impressive. I don't own a Coyote Cannon. I have some generic IR illuminators and a crappy Armasight IR illuminator, but I generally use supplemental gear to what I am reviewing because things like a Coyote Cannon don't come with the scope.

What I was using was the tiny little 850nm IR illuminator that came on the unit. It worked extremely well.

Sorry.. Watched so many videos I got them mixed up.. It was the 301 Night Crew that used the coyote cannon..

LOL, actually, not too mixed up. I stated on one of my videos using the ThermNight that was was not using a freaking Coyote Cannon and was impressed with the performance. So I definitely mentioned it, just not how you thought.

Coyote Cannons are impressive, no doubt about it.