This is the first part of a Hard Air Magazine review series on the ATN X-Sight 5, 5-25 Smart Day/Night Hunting Scope.
Why a series? Well, this is an exciting, complicated product with a TON of features. As a “digital scope”, it’s also a completely new concept to me and – I suspect – many HAM readers. Actually, I have never actually even looked through one before!
So I mounted it onto a KalibrGun Snipe 2 air rifle and began to investigate. Let’s start slow and work our way into it together…
ATN X-Sight 5, 5-25 Smart Day/Night Hunting Scope Basics – 1
Well, the first thing to say is that you don’t actually LOOK THROUGH the X-Sight 5. You LOOK INTO it.
What? Yes, it’s true! You can’t look in through the eyepiece and see daylight at the other end…
In fact, when you look into the eyepiece you will see solid blackness. Nothing. After the scope is turned-on, you do see an image. But it’s a digital image. This is produced by a sensor which collects the light coming in through the objective (front) lens.
Actually, we’re all familiar with this type of image creation – it’s basically the same as the way your cellphone takes a photograph. You see the image on a screen and not directly through the lenses, as we do with a traditional riflescope.
Then there’s the controls. Rather than turrets and dials, most functionality in the X-Sight 5 is controlled using a series of push buttons on top of the scope. We can see them in the photograph above and we’ll talk about them more in a future part of this series.
Moving towards the rear, we see something more familiar. It’s an eyepiece with a focusing ring. It’s used to adjust the view into the scope to match the requirements of your vision. Just like an optical scope.
Then at the front, we see a “round the lens” ring that controls the parallax-correction and focuses the objective lens. Again, similar to the “front AO” of a traditional optical riflescope.
Ahead of that, I mounted the optional, but included lens hood.
On receiving the scope, ATN had already mounted two Picatinny rings around the 30mm tube. The rear ring has an offset, as can be seen from the photograph below.
The front ring is interesting. It has a top section with a mini Picatinny rail on either side. The purpose of this is to enable an infra-red illuminator to be mounted atop the ring for night use.
Like this…
ATN also includes an additional 30mm Picatinny ring that could be used instead if the infra-red illuminator were never to be used.
Of course, standard scope rings could be used instead. But as ATN included and mounted these rings already, it seems a shame not to use them.
ATN X-Sight 5, 5-25 Smart Day/Night Hunting Scope Basics – 2
As an electronic, “smart” device, it’s not surprising that it requires power. Indeed, ATN includes a long, high quality USB charging cable with the unit. You connect it just like you charge your phone, having pulled back the rubber access cover first.
There’s also a slot for a microSD card. Again it’s protected by a rubber cover and we can see it in the photograph above. The card itself needs to be purchased separately. ATN recommends the SanDisk Extreme PLUS card, so that’s what I purchased!
The microSD card is required for video and still image recording, software updates and similar activities.
Now that we are getting into the “digital” side of the product, it’s worth noting that there’s an ATN App available for both iOS and Android. Plus, there’s a reticle creation capability so that you can design your own reticle!
We’ll be looking at these elements of the ATN X-Sight 5 “system” in a future part of this review.
But, at this point, I have to say that the hard copy documentation that’s supplied with the scope is very comprehensive. The online support pages of the ATN website are even better. They’re outstanding! There’s user videos, FAQs, copies of the user manuals and more.
This is very important because it’s essential to read and learn how to use this scope. RTFM is obligatory, in my opinion!
There’s more to come. A lot more…
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ATN X-Sight-4K, 5-20x Pro Edition Smart Day/Night Hunting Rifle Scope
The post ATN X-Sight 5, 5-25 Smart Day/Night Hunting Scope – Part One appeared first on Hard Air Magazine.
