What the real world hands on experience with this thermal monocular? Looked at the K3 today inside a store, it’s seemed pretty good for the money. Main use for this will so my 5 year old can participate and not drop my $4000 thermal scope. I’ll also use it for scanning when he isn’t around.

Semi unrelated but for a 5 year old, this could be good I have been impressed myself with them

My wife always gets some bs stocking stuffers for Christmas because she likes doing that kinda thing

Anyway, she gets me these Chinese made GTMEDIA N4 night vision binoculars

And I figured they be a bust but she says she only paid $100 for them

They aint bad at all I will admit, 150 yard view and pretty dang clear

While things like NetD MKz thermal sensitivity numbers have come down and pixel distance is reduced, resulting in image quality that has improved, 256 resolution is still pretty limited and you get a lot of what I heard Pig Popper refer to as "Vaseline Screen."

You can see a lot of what I am talking about in this video...


If most of your activity is inside 100-150 yards, your 5 year old will be able to see enough to hold his interest.

Why don’t you get him a night vision helmet and put an IR laser on your rifle that he can see? That seems like it would be easier to get him to see things than a thermal spotter.

Well, that would be more expensive than the K2 256 resolution version ($400 list price) or K3 384 resolution version ($800).

What generation of night vision? I can't recall seeing Gen I helmet mounted night vision. Nobody sells it because nobody wants it because digital NV works better and is cheaper. Gen II? Maybe $2000 because he will want the smallest he can find because little 5 year olds don't have strong little necks. NV mounts for helmet? (~$80) Make and model of helmet? ($30 and up) IR laser? ($25 and up). For that kind of money, he could buy the kid a bolt action rifle and Rix Storm S3 384 resolution thermal sight, LOL.

The only way to make that work is by going with digital night vision which means he will need an IR illuminator to use like a flashlight with the DNV. If you are in a blind, turning on the IR illuminator will get you a lot of light inside the blind, partially blinding him due to the contrast of what is over illuminated inside the blind versus what is outside in the world.

Plus, none of that is going to work very well for BigPig to use as scanner. As scanners go, unless you are in a wide open field without high vegetation, trees or anything else to reflect back the IR light other that the target and the ground, you will have troubles using digital NV as a scanner. They flat out suck in the woods because you can't see squat beyond the nearest over-illuminated trees. Thermal will see beyond the nearest trees because it doesn't rely on illumination.

With thermal, the kid will see a lot more activity than he will with digital night vision, but we less detail.

Frist off...I don't disagree with a lot of what you said. However, we are talking BP who is historically cheap AF for no real reason except to be cheap AF.

It's a 5yo...he's not going to see what you see when the stuff is going down. An IR laser on BP's gun will act as a pointer for lil'BP to see what Dad is shooting at. From an interactive point of view and getting engaged in the hunt, that is the way to do it. Will there be downfalls? Absolutely and you did a great job outlining them. BP isn't much on using blinds to varmint hunt he tromps around and calls in different places/sits and hunts that way. Brush and grass will/would be the biggest factor he'd deal with.

Also, if BP needs a scanner...he can buy a scanner and still buy lil'BP a helmet setup

I’m frugal, not cheap

But little man I’ve got free range to spend whatever I want on. That being said, a $3000 scanner is stupid for what I need. The RIX K3 is the answer and will serve us well. He’s spent enough time staring at my phone watching what I’m looking at through my thermal to know what a heat signature looks like. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to have another set of eyes looking around, lord knows I’ve had coyotes sit just yards behind me many times.

Like mentioned above, we walk and hunt, therefore grass and brush is both our friend and enemy. While the idea of him wearing a helmet with DNV sounds great in theory, that’s quite a bit of weight for a little neck, I get tired of wearing them after about an hour, and he still has to be looking in the right direction.

This kid lives to coyote hunt.

Here he is just after we got a new ground blind/cover for daytime coyote hunting

Which would make no sense to suggest to him that he spend more than what he was asking about, which would be $400 for the K2, or even $800 for the K3.

I bought a K3 and gave it to my Dad for Christmas, and two of the guys I hunt with have the K2. My son is 9 and loves using the scanner...we stay after dark in the deer blind and wait for pigs fairly often. One of his favorite things to do is keep an eye out with the thermal. The K3 is pretty dang good for the cost. It's not as good as my 640 Pulsar handheld, but that one was about 4-5x the cost. Your son will love it and it has some great features. You can set it on a tripod mount and Bluetooth to an Ipad and just watch the screen like watching TV. At one of my places we set it up outside facing a feeder and just sit inside the cabin and when something shows up on the Ipad we go outside and shoot, Lol.

Maybe taking into account how the boy wants to participate would be helpful. I think thermal is definitely the way to go, for starters. But after that it becomes a question of whether it's the thrill of discovery or the thrill of identification for him. If discovery is enough, then the cheaper unit would work. If identification is his bag then go with the 384 unit---and it would certainly be no hinderance for discovery purposes.

I've come to think of night hunting as being somewhat like submarine warfare. Sonar tells you there's a target out there (as a low-resolution thermal would do), but before the sub commander issues the order to fire a torpedo he positively identifies the target with the periscope (like using a higher resolution thermal device). You have to know what you're shooting before you pull the trigger, but you also have to know there's something out there to start with before you can identify it.

I dunno...I've just convinced myself that if faced with a similar choice I'd buy the 384 unit.

I’m going to buy the 384 (K3) for some reason I had it in my head the K2 was a 384 and K3 was a 640.