Burris XTR 1x4 first time out review

[HJ857]

Like a lot of folks, my eyes are aging, so with contact lenses I've been trading distance vision at the expense of close up vision. Of course, the aging process continues on and lately my vision isn't all that great either close up or at distance!

So, holo type sights are great for me up to 50 yards, but if I'm shooting at an IDPA target that's set up with a dirt berm behind it at 100 yards, things get pretty indistinct, unless the sun is at some perfect angle, which it never is.

I decided to experiment with low power scopes to see if this helps my situation. I opted for the Bushnell Banner 1x4 in the cheapest mount possible and fit it on to my Bushmaster M4. Total cost was under a hundred bucks.

A World Of Difference.

The Banner is not a true 1x. I'm not sure what it is really, it's not even close to 1x in any case. Slower engaging close range targets, even with both eyes open. Too much conflict between the two eyes. But still not bad, 50 yards and beyond is where the scope pays off.

I abused the Banner, lots of knocks and bumps and rough handling. It lasted about 5 months before the reticle stopped holding zero. In hindsight the reticle never really held zero, but wasn't horrible for my use until it finally went TU. The Banner isn't designed for this use, so I'm not upset.

OK then, I was torn between the Millet DMS and the Burris XTR, both 1x4 scopes. I have a Burris 2.5x10 Euro that I love. That swung my vote to the XTR, and I really liked the BDC reticle over the DMS' donut reticle.

This weekend was my first outing with the Burris. My loads are 55g soft points in mixed brass with 25.2grains H335. Should be pushing 3100 ft/s easy.

Best grouping with the Banner at 50 yards was around 3/4". Typical groups around 1.5". I figure that's about right and I'm no bench shooter anyway.

Interesting thing is the Burris shoots cloverleafs with the same load. So right off, it's a more accurate scope.

I found the Banner to be "sharper" than the Burris. The Burris doesn't seem to transmit as much light. It was very easy to use the rear focus ring to sharpen the sight picture on the Banner, while the Burris is less distinct and I had to fuss with it a good bit, and I'm still not sure I have set.

The Banner has a larger objective lens (32mm I think) and I wonder that maybe it was wide enough to fight binocular vision. The Burris has a 24mm objective and that certainly will transmit less light, but maybe also helps with both eyes open. I'm just guessing here.

The Burris is advertised as a true 1x and it sure seems like it. The scope body itself almost disappears when using both eyes open. The sight view is very much like an Aimpoint view. However, the rear focus ring does alter that 1x power, so the final value is going to be determined by your eyesight.

I found that my left and right eye did not fight each other and I got a much improved binocular view with the Burris. It is much faster at close range compared to the Banner. This was a key test for me and I'm very pleased with the performance.

At 1x the front sight base is very visible. You can co-witness the front post, and I have a KNS target post which is a lot thinner than a standard post. I think if I painted the tip of the post flourescent orange, it would show up like a holo dot. But in reality I think the scope is going to force me to a low profile gas block and a folding front sight, because I found it distracting. I'll decide that after a couple months more use.

The eye relief is long. I have the Burris in a LaRue SPR-E and I have the LaRue as far out on the rail as I can and the scope is pushed close to max as well. I don't think the Burris will work with a standard length LaRue SPR unless you use a rearward head position. I go nose to charging handle.

The illuminated center horseshoe is what you'd expect. It's not bright enough. It pretty much washes out in full sun, but is visible in overcast. Easy to pick up in overcast on a cardboard target. The illuminated area is not a dot, but a horseshoe with a center dot. I forget offhand what the moa of the horseshoe is - 6 MOA maybe with a one MOA center. I'll have to look that up if anyone is actually interested in this topic.

I found the reticle overall to be plenty fast and when the illumination was visible, it was even better.

I have not had a chance to use the Burris past 100 yards to see how well the BDC works, hopefully this coming weekend. The BDC is calibrated for a 62grain bullet out to 1000 yards. 500yards is enough for me, I'll have a very tough time finding a range that gets past 300 yards. A thousand is silly.

I would be cool to put this scope into a side by side comparison with the Millet DMS. The DMS has a great price, but I just did not like the reticle and all reports say the DMS washes out in sunlight as well.

The adjustment knobs on the Burris are indistinct. Mushy. No tactile click. However they do work the way they are supposed to. I like a distinct click so I'm a little put off by this. The knobs are also tight, there's no way to accidentally move them. On the other hand, with a BDC, I'm hoping that once I'm set up, I'll never touch those knobs again so maybe it's a non issue.

The zoom ring is also tight. Really tight. You can loosen a set screw on the zoom ring and that loosens it a bit. That set screw engages the zoom ring and if you loosen it too much the zoom rings stops working altogether. It's easy to get it back in place though, so no worries there. Hopefully it'll smooth out over time, but it's annoying right now. I often zoom while on the move from cover to cover, I fear that the tight zoom will cause me to look down while moving.

So for right now, with only a small amount of time behind this scope my view is that it it's pretty darn good and will do what I need it to do, but it's not perfect. Too expensive, controls too tight, illumination a bit dim, but a great reticle and I'm betting it's plenty durable.

The perfect 1x4 scope for those with limited funds still does not exist.

 

[ceetee]

Great review!

 

[HJ857]

2nd installment

Got to a longer range yesterday.

First off, I initially had the scope zeroed at 50 yards in the Improved Battle Sight Zero" mode of thought.

The IBSZ and the Burris BDC reticle are not compatible, which makes sense. The BDC has to be zeroed at 100 yards to work at all.

So, if you adhere to the IBSZ idea - the Burris XTR with the BDC reticle is NOT the scope you want. If you don't use the BDC, then there's no point in paying for it.

I'm planning on putting index marks on the elevation turret, one for 100 yard zero and another for a 50 yard zero. If I know that I'm shooting to a max of 100 yards, then I can dial in the 50 yard zero because I'm already used to that and the less thinking I have to do, the better off I am.

The range I used had berms at 25, 50, 100, 150, 200 and 300 yards. My spotting scope cannot resolve .223 hits on paper past 200 yards, the spotting scopes at the range are even worse than my cheapo scope. Fortunately each berm was populated with a lot of clay pigeons to act as targets so the spotting scope became unnecessary.

After re-zeroing at 100 yards hitting the clays was pretty close to a 100% hit rate proposition, even at a reasonably high speed.

At 200 yards I found that using the second dot at a 6:00 o'clock hold gave me a good 70 or so percent hit rate.

300 yards was more problematic in from my bench there was a tree branch that swayed in and out of my sight line, forcing me to time the shots while holding on target. An interesting exercise but one that only got me one hit in 15 shots. Even still, a clay pigeon at 300 yards with a basic M4 is optimistic. I feel pretty good about it.

Wind was running about 15 mph going from 8:00 o'clock to 2:00 o'clock.

The reticle is very easy to use and it gives you a dot to aim with out to 200 yards. At 300 yards the reticle gives you a small crosshair which worked ok, but large enough to obscure the clay at 300 yards. Overall I was pleased with how the reticle worked out. Even though the 55 grain round I'm using is not the same as the 62 grain round that the BDC is calibrated for, I think it's close enough to be effective on, say, an IDPA target.

Update on the mushy knobs. I found that my windage knob is much cleaner than the elevation knob. I may have to send this unit back to Burris for some work.