New XQ50 Thermion

JTPinTX

JTPinTX

Custom Call Maker
I got my XQ50 Thermion in and got it mounted up on Sunday. I haven't got to hunt with it yet but I have shot it some and zeroed it, and have played with it quite a bit from my front yard. We have a field across the street with donkeys, goats and cattle at ranges of out to 250 yards. That has let me play with different colors, reticles, and settings while viewing live animals.

First off I will say I really like the American Defense mount I have the Thermion mounted in. It is a very solid QD mount that guarantees return to zero. It is easy to adjust the lever tension and you can also flip the levers to whatever orientation you like. Mine is the Recon mount.

I had a XQ50 Trail LRF for about a month and played with/shot it quite a bit during that time period. I am no thermal expert by far. All of my observations are based on that limited experience, so take them however you want. Even though the Thermion is supposed to weigh about the same as the Trail, to me it balances much better on the rifle. It feels good and looks good on there.

To me the image on the Thermion is slightly better than the Trail as well. Nothing earth shattering, but I do think it is better. Of course that could just be the way I have settings adjusted too.

During the day I think a guy is still going to want to run black hot/white hot color palette because they are a much brighter screen, and that helps overcome the bleed of outside light coming in around the rubber eye cup. However at night I am finding myself really liking the red monochrome color option. It might not have quite the detail of white hot/black hot, but it has other advantages. One advantage is it is a lot easier on the eyes, it does not create near as much eye strain for me during extended viewing. Another benefit is if you wear glasses or prefer not to use the eye cup at night, the red monochrome does not light up your face near as much as white hot/black hot either.

Reticles: Generally I prefer some type of scaled reticle since I do a lot of long range shooting and are used to them. There are two MIL style reticles I like, the M56FI and the M57FI. The one I think I am going to try first though is the X51FI-300. It is scaled for fox, roe deer and boar to give approximate 200 and 300 yard distance reads. I don't really hunt fox, but if you convert cm to inches I think the 23 cm used for roe deer will be about perfect for the 9" chest depth of a coyote. Anyways, that is how I am going to try it for now. If I end up not liking it then I will just go back to one of the std MIL reticles.

Control layout: In the beginning I wasn't sure about the control layout on the Thermion. After using it though I like it more all the time. The rear raised area with power, zoom, and record works very well. You can feel the big raised circle and it is very easy to just go to the correct quadrant (OK, it isn't really a quadrant but I'm going to call it that) of the circle for the function you want. No more trying to feel and count buttons in a row. With the Trail I was always hitting the wrong button and having to try and feel and count buttons in the row, and figure out which was which. As far as the main menu controls on the side I like that too. Pretty easy to just press the button, spin the knob, and then select. Once again, not feeling around and counting buttons in the dark. Very easy to run.

So far it seems to be holding zero very well. I haven't shot it a bunch yet but it is moving exactly how it should and easy to predict where the adjustments will take it. No shift that I have been able to detect so far.

Everyone is going to ask about the battery life. Of course it won't be as good as the Trail but so far it seems ok. Temps are hot here, so don't have cold weather trying to suck the juice out, but the APS-2 is doing ok. I have run it about 1.5-2 hours and it hasn't switched over to internal yet.

Those are my initial reads, I will update as I go along.
 
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Glad your liking it. I suspect you won't have too much of a battery problem or zero shift for that matter in the warm climate. 20°F and lower is usually when the problems like to surface. Hope you have lots of fun! Looking forward to updates.
 
The vast majority of my hunting for coyotes will be 35-40 degrees and up. Occasionally down to about 25 or so, if it hits 20 I am staying home, lol. Most of my pig hunting will be 45-50 degrees or warmer. I think the batteries will be fine for most of the temps I hunt in.

I have tested zero pretty hard the last 48 hours. It seems to be holding very well. Temps anywhere from 65 to 105 degrees, not really letting it warm up too much, just turn it on, give it 2-3 minutes, and shoot. This morning I drove over to my 200 yard target and put 3 shots dead center on a 3" square of aluminum foil. It was also dead money at 5pm last night when the temp was 105. I am very happy with how it is holding.

The more I use this scope the more I like it. I think it is going to be pretty much the perfect scope for my needs.
 
Did the native mag. actually ship as 3.5 power and how do you feel about the FOV with it? Glad you're liking the scope.
 
Yes, native mag is 3.5x. A quick press of the zoom button will bring up the magnification on the right side of the screen. At that point you can use the scroll knob to adjust magnification to any value you want. 3.7, 4.5, 5.3, whatever. It adjusts in .1x increments. The ability to adjust will time out after a few seconds and the magnification will stay where you adjusted it. If you want to adjust again just quick press the zoom button and it will come back up.

Same thing works with PIP. A long press of the zoom button brings up PIP. Baseline is 3.5x main screen, 7x in PIP. As long as the value is displayed next to the PIP box you can adjust the PIP magnification using the scroll knob. Any value from 7x to 14x.

FOV seems good to me for my use. I hunt mostly open country and hunt both hogs and coyotes. We do stalk hogs in crop fields and at 60-100 yards it is fine. If you start getting in to that 30-40 yard range on groups of hogs it might be a little heavy on the magnification side and it could use more FOV for that. If that was all I was doing or heavily biased into that style hunting then I would say the XQ38 would be a better choice, or actually going to one of the XP models with lower mag and larger FOV. But I also do a lot of coyote calling in open country. For that IMO there is no handicap with magnification or FOV whatsoever. That is actually what I really bought it for and to me it is perfect for it. Plenty of FOV for that.
 
Thank you for the info. While I am on the east coast and just call coyotes, most of our hunting is on open fields where shots can be out to 300 with occasional 400, but probably run ave. of 100 yds. I think you can get by with less FOV with thermal because the animals just jump out on the screen and aren't difficult to pick-up as with NV. My hunting buddy uses the Thermion XP50 but always seems to go to 4 power for his shots anyway. Looking forward to some videos from your hunts especially on coyotes.
 
One thing of note that I have mentioned in the past, Pulsar's stated base/native magnification numbers have always seemed high to me. My Helion XP38 was supposed to be 1.9x and when comparing it to other 2x devices, it always seemed to be less magnified. The same applied to my Trail XQ38 at 2.1x and now a Helion XP50 at 2.5x. I recently compared the XP50's 2.5x to the Hogster 35s 2x and they were about the same. I have no scientific evidence besides comparing the Pulsars to other scopes including daytime optics and my previous Flir PTS536 and the Pulsar magnification numbers always seem to be exaggerated. Just my .02.

The FOV is still 9.8 x 7.5 which is still pretty good. This is just slightly less than a Hogster 35'd FOV for instance.
 
The only thermals I have played with are Pulsar, most of those Trails, maybe 4-5 of them total. I have no real basis to compare relative X numbers. I am a thermal newbie. In the XQ50 for sure I like the reported 3.5x of the Thermion better than the 2.7x of the Trail. The Trail did seem a little low to me. If the numbers are low, then that makes another good case for being able to slightly increase the magnification using the scroll knob vs having to take a full step up.

I really have no issue with the FOV on this Thermion. It seems plenty wide for anything except really up close fast stuff.

Taking video isn't a problem. Me getting the video posted online, well, I make no promises. I am not the most technologically adept person, lol.
 
Had the xm38 for a year. Just sold it. Loved the scope. Very user friendly, held a zero all year last year.. made a handful of stone dead shots out past 300yds. Only complaint was fov. Could be a lil challenging when they come in close. Th xq50 I think improves on this.i do however feel where these thermal/ digital scopes lack fov, the contrast helps compensate and make picking up the target faster.
 
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