One of the interesting things that happens after SHOT is that people keep asking me what stood out. That is not necessarily an easy question to answer well because we all have different priorities and because some of the stuff that I really liked has not yet been announced and they politely asked me to not go into any real details about it.
One example of that is the Gen2 Revic scope. I liked it and I took some pictures, but until it is announced, I will not say anything more than the fact that I found it extremely promising.
With Revic bipod, while they did not make a formal announcement, they did have it out in the open, so I'll add a couple of pictures. I thought it was very innovative and I plan to do a full review fairly soon. Shooting supports are a big deal. I look at bipods and tripods all the time. What Revic has might be the better mouse trap as far as hunting bipods go.
Tangent Theta 7-35x56 looked REALLY good. However, that is probably the least surprising takeaway from the whole thing. They have been working on it for quite a long time and it will not be cheap. It better be good. How good it really is will be difficult to say until I get my hands on one, but at first blush it retains all of the strengths of the 5-25x, while adressing the few of its weaknesses. It focuses closer while simulataneously improving eyebox.
With Element Optics, I knew what they had on the way and you already know that I liked the 6-36x56 Theos. One of their projects that I could not talk about earlier is the HYPR7. In a nutshell, this technology within a generation or two, will give us a somewhat similar experience, I suspect, to what Vortex has in the XM157 scope. I will be doing a full work-up on that scope, naturally, and I will go into great detail on why it is a big deal.
There were a couple of binoculars, finally, with reticles in them. One was the 12x50 from Apex and the other a 15x56 from Bushnell. I am really happy to see them. I'll try to review both and I hope they do well and encourage more reticle equipped binos in the future.
iRay is doing a lot of things right and with thermals they had some of the more interesting products. Contrary to what you likely expect from me, it is not the $18k HD resolution thermal riflescope, although it does look very good. iRay had a bunch of new products and they all looked well executed and thought out. Whoever is in charge of product development there, knows what they are doing. Still, two products really stood out to me: FAST FAL19 fused sight and RICO Pro.
FAL19 is, essentially, a Steiner CQT for $4k and nicely productized. It fuses a 384x288 thermal with 19mm lens and a red dot sight. Interestingly, Holosun's foray in the same field produced a lot of news, although it is only a prototype. iRay's FAL19 looked pretty polished and it is available now. To be fair, Holosun is promising to be a good bit cheaper for somewhat similar specs ($2300 to iRay's $4k), but I'd like to see how it performs. The prototype did not look great in terms of image fusion, but we can't make any conclusions based on prototypes. What I can say is that iRay looked very good.
Interestingly, the fused sight is distributed through a different company in the US, then most of the iRay products I looked at before: https://visirinc.com/product/dot-thermal-fusion-scope-fast/
The RICO Pro is also somehow fliying a bit under the radar and I'll be damned if I understand why. If it works well without any durability issues, it will immediately jump to the top of my list of dedicated thermal scope recommendations. Naturally, I did not take a good picture of that scope. They did have a few for me to look at...
Simlarly new Rico G has a sleeker look and a very interesting battery setup, RICO Pro lens, however, means everything, if it works as advertised https://irayusa.com/rh50p
It is essentially a switch power lens that gives you either 25mm or 50mm focal length, i.e. optical zoom. Thermal zoom lenses are really tricky to do on a budget. However, if it works well, you have your wide FOV for scanning and close range stuff and narrow FOV for precision aiming all in one device. That's a big deal. People who have not worked within the thermal world seem less impressed. The guy you see me talking to in the picture has been working with thermals for almost as long as I have and we know a lot of the same people in the industry. We were both shocked that RICO Pro is not making more waves.
While we are on the topic of thermals, ATN introduced their HD resolution thermal scopes at the show. The one I looked at had a 50mm lens and there will also be 75mm and 100mm options ranging from $5.5k to $9.5k. The scope they had was a little half-baked. I think they slapped one together for the show to have something, so we do not know how good it reall looks. However, I think the inherent performance is there and they need to do some work to bring it out. Until then, I will withold judgement.
On one hand, I am not really a huge fan of thermals made to look like conventional scopes. On the other hand, 100mm thermal with a 1280 core for under $10k is a milestone.
There was a lot of other interesting stuff of all varieties, to be honest. Spartan Precision has the redesigned Ascent tripod I really want to play with. Field Optics had a production dome top tripod (I actually have one of these in my hands, so a review is forthcoming). Leupold Mark5 2-10x30 turned out to be better than I expected and it deserves a separate post and a dedicated spot in my review plans. S&B clearly wants to play and they are bringing out new products for both tactical and hunting markets. Burris has an updated thermal coming out and sub-$1k scope with integrated display that talks to the turrets. That's a really big deal since you never have to look away from the scope. However, if you ask me what stood out the most to me... that's the stuff above.
