FLIR was smart in buying Armasight. They were the one company relying on cores from FLIR and doing a better job of marketing what the civilian consumer wanted. FLIR blew with the RS line of scopes. I found it very telling when the ThermoSights came out and they look like Armasights (same housing, buttons, eye cup, etc., same core, of course, but with some subtle differences and firmware upgrades).
I agree. The new ThermoSight Pros are definitely just new guts in the old Armasight housing but that's ok, it's sturdy and looks good. The RS series were not very attractive.
It is good for the consumer that there are 3 only choices for thermal, Pulsar, FLIR and Trijicon. 4 choices, if you count ATN. I know that sometimes the mindset of "the more choices the better" but I spend 7+ hours a day talking to customers and too many choices is extremely overwhelming for people. Honestly, the thermal market is small compared to say, daytime rifle scopes. Before, I felt like the market was getting watered down and it was extremely difficult for consumers to make decisions on what to buy and Armasight had a ton of thermal models, honestly too many models, to chose from.
I'm really glad to see where Pulsar took the market in 2017 and I think FLIR is going to hit their stride in 2019 and we can have a good horse race between the two. I don't like to eliminate Trijicon from this discussion but they are just at a whole other price level and unless that changes, they are out of the reach of the average, every day consumer. And that's ok, it's nice to have a crème de la crème option at the top.
- Jason