The work, but you have to realize they have about 50-60% of the mah of regular CR123s (~700-850 mah versus 1450-1550 for quality CR123s) and so won't last as long in heavy drain items like night vision and thermal. For example, a buddy of mine gets about 90 minutes use out of his thermal with the rechargeables but over 3 hours with the CR123s.
Note, you can find cheaper CR123s that have 1250-1300 mah, but they also have a shorter run time.
So, they aren't bad news, but they are a grand solution great savings either for serious hunters when you consider how often you may be needing to change batteries.
I use them for EDC single cell pocket flashlights and find they are quite useful in that regard.
I totally agree. I tell people all the time, you can buy Energizer 123 batteries 50 at a time for $1.40/each delivered. (Batteryjunction.com) If your scope gets 3 hours on 2 batteries, that is less than $1/hr to run it. Running a scope for over 100-200 hours is very long time unless you're a serious hunter who's hunting long hours, multiple times a week. The gas it takes to drive to your hunting spot will cost way more than it does to run your scope all night on disposable CR123 batteries.
So are rechargablebles a bad thing? Not if you get good ones, have plenty of sets of them and are willing to keep them charged and rotated through etc. But for $1/hr, I'm buying disposables, throwing them away when they done and keep on rolling.
It's definitely a personal preference.
Jason