You need to adjust the brightness, focus knob on the side, and focus on the ocular lens - the right combo gives a very good picture - if you use the night master illuminator you will have a clear picture out to 300m, though the magnification isn't high enough to be regularly shooting these ranges IMO.
The inbuilt IR isn't great in terms of the picture you end up with, and being a laser rather than true invisible IR it does seem to make foxes etc shy.
With any sort of moonlight I found the picture excellent and didn't need an illuminator.
I wouldn't pay £1200 for one as I'm not that excited by them (prefer lamping to NV), but would happily use one confidently for my foxing i was loaned or given one.