Thermal scope upgrade???

Ludders

Well-Known Member
So I already own a pulsar trail 2 XQ50 LRF. I have a birthday coming up and thinking about upgrading my scope. I owned my trail from new in 2021. I like the build quality of the pulsar stuff. I previously had one of the first pard 008 into the country, great unit but the mount was rubbish. I know an upgrade is going to cost me money, but I don’t mind spending out on quality kit.

Low base mag and LRF are essential.

Any recommendations and real world experience welcome.

What would you upgrade too?
 
Always been a fan of the pulsar stuff, but have just jumped ship and gone down the hik route! been impressed with the strella 3.0
 
I’m vey fond of my NOCPIX Ace 50r. Great image and a better user interface than Hik products (I have an Alpex too). I also think the build quality of NOCPIX seems better - less plasticky than Hik. I couldn’t justify the extra £2k for the same thing from Pulsar, having compared the images side by side.
 
I’m vey fond of my NOCPIX Ace 50r. Great image and a better user interface than Hik products (I have an Alpex too). I also think the build quality of NOCPIX seems better - less plasticky than Hik. I couldn’t justify the extra £2k for the same thing from Pulsar, having compared the images side by side.
you and me both, think pulsar unfortunately pricing themselves out of the game. Think the nocpix is infra ray re branded, seems to have good reviews!
 
you and me both, think pulsar unfortunately pricing themselves out of the game. Think the nocpix is infra ray re branded, seems to have good reviews!
Yes, they rebranded as Nocpix to get around some trouble in the US I believe (US/China relations being what they are).

Pulsar is marketing themselves on two main points of differentiation at the moment. 1, European built. 2, being honest about NetD ratings etc. On the first, so what I say. My biggest TV at home is made in Korea, another made in China. Both are superlative offerings. Most things are built in China and having met the Nocpix and Hik guys (most of them Chinese) at the recent shooting show, I was impressed by their technical knowledge and interest in developing even better products in future. Why shouldn't Chinese made products be of high quality? On the 2nd point - they do have a point, anyone can claim to have a sub-15mk NETD or whatever, but nobody is out there checking. If they really want to claim that they are the only ones being honest about it, then they ought to do a proper scientific test of their competitors products and publish the results. There are any number of ways they could do this. However, they won't because they know that they'd likely be sued (even if the claim would be ultimately unsuccseful) and won't want to put themselves to the cost of that. I expect their margins are much tighter (EU labour costs etc being much higher) than the Chinese manufacturers, and so there is little slack in the accounts to cope with such a claim. I haven't looked closely, but it would seem that the Chinese companies are much bigger organisations than Pulsar too.

I was dispapointed though with the latest release from Nocpix. I don't think the world really needed another set of thermal LRF binos without night vision. They needed really to play catch up with Hik's offering.

However, Pulsar really disappointed me at the shooting show. When I asked them when they would be bringing out a comparable product to the Habroks - I got completely blank looks and they didn't really seem to understand the question or why anyone would want multispectral plus LRF. Not just keeping a lid on future plans, but they just didn't seem to have any (or know what the company was planning). That was disappointing.
 
Writing is on the wall for pulsar. They need to move production to China to be competitive both in price and product. They are surviving purely on brand recognition.
 
Night optics is a universal thing nowdays but there are as many national regulations as there are nations. Over all I think most thermal optics go for boar only. NNV is rather useless for boar because they react to IR. Where I hunt (Sweden) thermal spotters and thermal scopes is the only way to go. The binos I use are fully thermal and with LRF only. No interest in NNV because boar are boar and don't show until full dark and run when IR is on them.
Clearly, UK is a different market with foxing all around the clock and deer until sunset + 1 hr. Obviously a set of binos with both thermal and NNV plus LRF would be the thing there.
 
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