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Hey y'all my name is Jason Robertson I'm the owner of outdoor legacy gear and
today I'm here to talk to you about the sightmark Photon RT digital night vision
riflescope and this is going to be a full review so it's going to be rather
long and if you're not interested in that we'll also try to have a short
review that you can check out for just the bullet points and the highlights of
this scope again we'll break this up into several parts but it is going to be
rather lengthy because there is so much to go over with this scope and I want
the viewer to have all the information available to hopefully answer their
questions before they consider making a purchase on this scope so let's jump
right into it the first thing I want to do is I want to highlight some of the
changes from the previous versions of the photon and some of the improvements
that we're going to see with this RT this is a sight mark photon XT this is
the previous version that was discontinued recently so now it is
replaced with this sight mark photon RT you'll see they look very similar
there's a few small changes on the exterior but overall the look and feel
is the same jumping right in we still have the rigid lens cap right here that
hinges we still have the focus adjustment on the front we have the same
focus adjustment on the eyepiece as well the tube is the same here
however one thing that has changed is the tube is just slightly shorter it's
not a big deal it really doesn't matter on ar-15 style rifles but on bolt guns
you're definitely going to need a Picatinny rail on the top so that you
can get this scope far enough back for the proper eye relief one thing that
hasn't changed is you still need the same rings I suggest the sight mark
quick detach rings these are this is an sm-3 four zero zero two they're sold
individually so if you want to get a pair you need to actually buy two of
these and again it's the sm-3 four zero zero two it's a quick-detach ring they
very well if you don't want to quick-detach ring sight mark also makes
a SM three four zero zero seven and this is a pair and they are just a standard
ring non quick detach they're a little bit cheaper so if you don't need quick
detach I would highly recommend getting those they're a very sturdy ring very
popular you might pick a set of those up if you
want to buy your own rings you can do that the thing you have to know is that
it's a thirty millimeter tube but you need a very specific height you need
approximately three quarters of an inch from the bottom of the ring settle to
the top of the Picatinny rail and that is a specific height most rings are not
that tall and so I'll have people call and they say well if I buy extra high
rings is that tall enough it just depends because high medium high extra
high that means nothing and it changes manufacturer to manufacture actually
speaking of that it can actually change within manufacturers this sightmark
calls a medium height quick detach ring these they call a high height tactical
ring they're the exact same height so it's a poor naming system but you get
what I'm saying high medium height means nothing so
again I would just how they suggest staying with the sightmark rings they're
made for these scopes they work very well but if you do want to pick up your
own you can definitely do that moving on we still do have this rubber Ike up here
up some people ask about this they want to know if it's removable
it absolutely is you can pull that right off and you can put it right back on
it's at something that you don't like if you have I glasses or something and it
bothers you to put your eye there so it's just like the old XT models you can
pull that off put it back on moving forward you'll see
right here now there is a battery compartment on the side and instead of
being on the top and holding two doublea's like the X T's this holds four
double a's and so we'll talk about battery life a little more later but
for doublea's on the side on this side right here I know that you can't see it
well on the video but right here there is this pulls open and this is an
external power port you can plug in a USB battery pack to this there is a
cable that is supplied by sightmark so you have that cable also you might
notice on this side right here you also have the same Weaver rail that was in
another location on the XT models that's just for accessories that you might plug
in there you will see right here the infrared illuminator has moved it's on
the right side now one thing you'll notice is that it is adjustable you can
focus the illuminator which is a really nice improvement also on top we now have
the power button and we have this button here which actually controls different
menus and we'll get into a little bit more of that later so let's talk about
again some of the improvements the big things across the board that you're
going to be hearing about with the artis over the old ex T's is now it has
internal video recording so if you want to record your hunt with audio and video
you just press a single button immediately it starts recording it saves
it internally there's no SD cards memory cards anything like that saves it right
there you can also take still images by pressing a button again those are saved
internally as well that same power port the external power port that I mentioned
you can plug in the USB cable there connect it to your computer and pull
those videos and pictures off so that is something that a lot of people are
excited about is to have that high quality video recording included right
there in the scope no need for extra DVRs or anything like that also
now this unit has the ability to connect to your phone or tablet and if long as
you're within a very close distance here they connect together and there's a free
app in the App Store you can download and
connect the scope to the phone or to the tablet and you can control everything
start recording in recordings change any other settings you can also stream live
video to your smartphone or tablet from the scope itself so whatever you see on
the scope you can see on the tablet now I want to say real quick there's two
things that a lot of people get concerned about they say I don't want
video recording I don't want streaming I don't want all these gizmos it's just
something that's gonna get in my way I'm not interested in that
the good thing is the way sightmark has done this it's very simple if you don't
want those features you don't have to use them it didn't create endless menus
and options so they're very easy to ignore if those are features you aren't
interested in so don't let it scare you away from this scope it's still overall
very simple to use just like the older models were as well also another
improvement on this scope is the infrared illuminator we will in another
section talk in depth about the new infrared illuminators but generally
speaking the distance that you can see is much further on the S models you can
see up to 250 yards at night black night no moon and that is a huge improvement
over the s models in the XT series which would only allow you to see around 125
to 150 60 yards depending on the model huge improvement but again stay tuned
you need to hear in the next section about these infrared illuminators
because there's been some big changes and there's a lot of confusion we'll get
to that later I mentioned the four double A batteries
as you can see now there's probably four double A batteries in there because we
have a brighter illuminator we do have the other features of the video
recording and what have you that you might use and drain the batteries
quicker so I think that's why sightmark chose to include four batteries now
everybody wants to know what is the battery life I've been using this scope
for over a month now the battery life is good but I do feel
that these extra features when used especially the the infrared illuminator
do drain the battery some but here's what I found in a controlled test I
don't like to go out and try to use it and tell you how long it lasts because
it's off it's on I'm never timing it I don't know how long it's been on it's
just really hard for me to to without making something up determine how long I
really use the scope in the field so the second best thing is a controlled test
and that's what I did I took the site marked photon RT 4.5 by 42 s and the 6.5
by 50 and I set them side by side I put brand new Duracell alkaline disposable
batteries in them I turned the illuminator brightness to ten which
that's as high as it goes I adjusted the screen brightness to 50% which is really
where I like it so that seemed to be a reasonable amount and again the
illuminator as bright as it would possibly go I did this indoors so the
temperature was around 68 to 70 degrees i sat him down and I watched him both
scopes went for around two hours and ten minutes they quit within one to two
minutes of each other which I thought was pretty amazing but two hours and 10
minutes now in the field actual real-world use I don't think you're
probably going to get 2 hours and 10 minutes if you have the illuminator on
high the reason is powering the unit off and on that boot up and shut down does
use battery life so I think it's going to be shorter than that it would also be
shorter than that if you were out in the cold however if you don't use the
illuminator or you don't have it on 10 I think you could reasonably get 2 hours
or more because the illuminator does suck a lot of juice but again for
double-a batteries they're not expensive they're they're very affordable and
everybody's got them laying around but we do now have as I mentioned the
external power port you can plug in any USB battery adapter or a charger and I'm
actually looking into some stuff right now that we may be offering very soon
for that so there is going to be a battery pack
that is rechargeable that slides right in here and I've got those on the way to
test soon will hopefully have some more info about those but there is a
rechargeable battery pack that will slide right in there and would eliminate
the need for the double-a batteries okay I think that is most of the high points
of the sightmark Photon RT and in the next section we're going to get into the
different models and the differences in the infrared illuminators so stay tuned
for that
so now what we're going to talk about is the different models of the RT series as
well as the difference in the infrared illuminators this is going to be a
little bit long it could get a little bit confusing so stick with me and
listen close because this is really important and you're gonna need to
understand this before you make a decision on which model to buy so there
are four models now there is the photon RT 4.5 by 42 s there's the 4.5 by 42
there is a 6.5 by 50 s and a 6.5 by 50 the models that have the S behind it
that indicates they have an 850 nanometer infrared illuminator the
models that don't have a letter behind it that indicates they have a 940
nanometer infrared illuminator now what this means to you we'll get into the
practicality of that in a second but I want to get into the details of the
difference in the 850 and the 940 the 850 illuminator is number one we need to
understand that that is the measurement of the wavelength on the infrared
spectrum this has nothing to do with measuring the brightness of the
illuminator so theoretically speaking in 810 and 828 50 that doesn't mean they're
getting brighter as they go up again the Nana Mae
measures the infrared wavelength so stick with me the 800 spectrum of
infrared light is one of the best spectrums to be used for digital night
vision rifle scopes and almost all the major manufacturers on all the common
digital night vision rifle scopes have always used infrared illuminators in
that 800 spectrum again be at eight ten eight twenty eight fifty whatever's
coming that is what is in almost all digital night vision rifle scopes in the
past and in the present and again they've told you the reason why is
because it is provides some of the best infrared light for these scopes so we've
got that the nine forty that's in the nine hundred spectrum it does not
provide as much usable infrared light for these scopes thus you cannot see as
far alright so now I'm going to explain the reason why the some people would
want the nine forty versus the eight fifty when you look into the head of one
of these these eight fifty infrared illuminators it doesn't matter if it's
on the photon if it's on an external illuminator if it's on another brand of
optic when you look into the head of it with that illuminator on what you can
see is a soft red glow and that glow is the LED actually lit up inside of there
and so again you have to look head-on but you can see it and it doesn't put a
beam out that you can see nothing like that but it's just glowing softly red
and the negative to that is some people have had issues where a coyote or a hog
or another predator has seen that little soft red glow you know look towards
their scope can't see them but sees that red glow and runs off and so that is a
concern for some people I'm gonna go on the record and say I've used these
scopes for over five years and I've never had a single instance of that
happening and never one time have I had an animal that
I believe saw that and ran away they might have winded me they might have
seen me they might have heard me but never once to turn on the illuminator
and have anything that you know spooked because of it what I'm not saying is
that it couldn't happen to you or it might not you may have a credible story
of it happening I do believe it is possible that there are some coyotes or
hogs that are more wary maybe they've been educated because they've been
hunted hard a lot of different reasons but again it's not something that's
happened to me and I've sold hundreds and hundreds of these photons over the
years as well as a lot of other digital night vision rifle scopes and I have had
very very few credible reports of people telling me that you know they turned on
their illuminator and the animals ran off again I'm not saying that anyone
who's ever told me that's a liar because I do believe some of these people it
definitely seems to happen sometimes but it's extremely rare it's not common so
that's the 850 don't let it scare you now let's go to the 940 the 940 is
marketed as an invisible infrared illuminator and the claim is is that
when it is on and you look right inside here in this head you don't see the soft
red glow and I'm here to tell you that that is not always true it's generally
false and it is especially false on these new sight mark Photon
RTS with the 940 when you look into the head of that you absolutely 100% can see
that soft red glow you cannot see it as far as you can see it on the 850 s but
you can see it I've done some quick testing on them the other night and it
was a long story it was cold and the batteries went dead on one of them and
it was just like a comedy of errors but I did do some testing and what I found
is this I can see this soft red glow if I know where to look and I am really
looking for it I can see it out there at around a hundred yards on this 850 I
might even be able to sit a little bit for
I'm not sure it's getting really faint at that point and again you've got to
know in my opinion almost where it is to look at it I don't think I would notice
it if I was just walking around on the nine 40s that is supposedly invisible I
am still capable of seeing that at over 50 yards I can see the same faint soft
red glow guys in my opinion and take this for what it's worth this is a
non-issue I would not worry myself over this I have killed tons of hogs with
these photons and other digital night vision rifle scopes with 850 nanometer
IR illuminators you know external illuminators like the UN v20 IR that
have a big head and are burning at 850 you can see that red glow even better on
those lights and again it just does not seem to be an issue so here's the reason
that it really matters to you when you're making the choice of which to buy
the s models the 4.5 by 42 s and the 6.5 by 50 s those both with the 850
illuminator can see about 250 yards in the black dark no moon right out of the
box that's a huge improvement over the X T's and it is wonderful I am loving it
they really generally speaking don't need external illumination unless you
want to see really well out there past 250 so I'm very very happy with that if
you decide to go with one of the 940 models what you're going to give up is
you're going to give up that that range that yardage that you can see both the
four point five by forty two and the six point five by fifty with the nine 40s
will only see about a hundred and fifty yards now if that's as far as you ever
want to see then I think that's fine choose that option and you know you
don't have to worry about something out there at 150 yards seeing your you know
soft red glow out of the illuminator but if you do want to see further then I
would definitely suggest staying with the s models if you know that you have a
problem if you've hunted in the asked with 850 or you know 810 820
eliminators and you've had animals spook from it definitely you know consider the
940 but if you don't know anything if you've never had any history of
something running off I would say stick to the 850 it's all we've really ever
had and it's been just fine with very very few complaints or problems so now's
not the time to let it concern you that's my two cents you can take it for
what it's worth one more thing if you do buy the 940s they cost fifty dollars
more per unit currently than the S models so what you'll be doing is paying
fifty dollars more in seeing a hundred yards less and if that trade-off is
worth it for you then definitely go ahead but I'm highly recommending my
customers stick to the S models again I know there was a lot of information
thrown out there in a hurry I hope that explains it well and anyway maybe
that'll help you make your decision when it comes time to make the purchase hey
y'all thanks for sticking with me the wind's blowing some of my stuff around
so hopefully you can hear the wind too much on the microphone we're gonna try
to get this done quickly so we're getting real close to the end thanks for
sticking with me I want to talk to you quickly about which model to choose
that's the question I get all the time when customers call I don't know which
one to buy well I've already explained the difference in the illuminators so
hopefully you've made your decision now whether you need the 940 or the 850
generally speaking I'm gonna say buy the 850 if you want to know whether to buy
the 4.5 or the 6.5 it's really going to come down how far the animals are that
you're gonna be shooting and I know people say well I don't know I might
have them at 20 yards and may have them at 200 well if you believe you're gonna
have very many shots under a hundred yards I definitely say to buy the
four-point-five power and I used to say 70 or 80 yards but I just be honest I
really think under anywhere under a hundred 6.5 powers a lot of
magnification at night it gives you a very limited field of view at those
close distances and if you do have an animal run
at 30 or 40 yards all you're gonna see is hair with six and a half power at
that close distance so the four point five would be much better for that on
the other hand a lot of my guys that you know hunt coyotes and they're in farm
country in the Midwest they're hunting big fields it's very common for them to
buy the six point five model because they may get coyotes that they call in
they get hung up out there at 150 or 200 yards and they may have to take those
longer shots whereas a lot of us hog hunters down here in the south we're
able a lot of times to walk up and get closer to those hogs and so again we can
normally close the distance and get a good shot with the four point five power
the other negative with the six point five on those close shots is that you're
just not able often to get those second and third shots let's say there's a
group of hogs or there's more than one guy out and you know one runs and stops
you just don't have the field of view when they're they're close to you to be
able to see the other ones again once you get over a hundred yards I don't
think it's an issue the six point five is a great option but for close range
stuff generally I just say go ahead and choose the four point five it's not a
decision to stress over there's very few people who buy the four point five model
and then regret it and wish they'd bought the six point five I think you're
gonna know if you're gonna be shooting stuff you know 100 to 150 seventy-five
yards commonly and that's a long ways to shoot at night I'll just be quite honest
with you I try to keep all of my shots under a hundred yards on hogs but I
understand not everybody has the luxury of being able to you know walk up on
hogs that easily so anyway I hope that just helps you make your decision a
little bit better so under a hundred yards a lot of shots they're definitely
choose the four point five a lot of shots over a hundred I would you know
probably tend to lean to the six point five model hope that helps
alright y'all thanks for sticking with me I'm freezing out here so we're gonna
try to get this done and wrap it up but I do want to give you my closing
thoughts I do want to tell you about a few negatives you know one thing I've
always tried to do is my reviews is be completely honest and there's something
that I see as a problem or I don't like I want you to know I don't want it to be
a surprise to you when you get it there are three things and they're all pretty
much minor but I think that I want to call attention to them and hopefully a
couple of them might be something that we could get fixed down the road the
first and this is small but right here I don't know if you can see it well there
is a little rubber piece here it's it will not come off and that covers up
your USB port thank you and that's where your external power pack would go or
your USB cord if you were hooking this to your computer what happens is is that
after this is opened and closed a few times and you close it back I found that
in the field I can bump this and it comes open and that's not a big deal
it's hanging here you're not gonna lose it but it would be a big deal if it was
raining or wet outside because you would not want to get water down in that USB
port so my suggestion would be if you are gonna be out in the rain maybe just
take a small little piece of tape electrical tape or something and tape
that closed again its minor it may not happen to you I have just noticed using
it in the field a lot of times I'll look down there and I've bumped it and that
thing is is hanging open another small issue is that the focus adjustment it's
very smooth and nice I think that's an improvement over the XT but it's a very
very fine and sensitive focus so what I found is I'll try to focus and I'll go
whoop I went too far if I went too far that way and so it's really difficult to
get that sharp focus that you're looking for for videos for just shooting a hog
or a coyote I don't think it's that big of a deal I've never felt like oh it's
way out of focus you know that's bothering me but I have
noticed it on some of the videos where I didn't have quite the focus then I would
have liked for the video and again I think it's really minor I'm being picky
here it's not that everything's blur it's just again it's a sensitive focus
and but it is what it is the third and final complaint that I have and this
one's a little more serious but there's a chance that hopefully one day it could
be fixed the battery life indicator that you see on the screen when you're
looking at it is as of right now February 2018 it is inaccurate and what
I mean by that is it's like having a gas gauge that doesn't work right so what I
found is is after about thirty minutes of use the battery life indicator shows
there's only a 25% of the battery left I've already told you previously I got
two hours and ten minutes in my controlled test but at 30 minutes it's
way down there showing me the batteries are almost dead at 45 minutes to an hour
it essentially shows there's no battery life left at all and that is not
accurate because again I went for over an hour with it showing me there was no
battery life left this translates to a problem in the field because if you
don't know where your batteries are at you're going to have the scope go dead
on you in an inopportune time and at the same time you don't want to be throwing
batteries out every 30 minutes when you still maybe have an hour left in them so
it's just that that gauge is not calibrated correctly I have a feeling
that the more you use it you're going to get an idea of where the battery life is
on your particular unit that is something that I hope I'm crossing my
fingers might be able to be fixed in the future the reason is and I didn't
mention this but because you can connect this scope to your phone or tablet you
have the ability through that app to do firmware updates as sightmark releases
them they can make improvements they can make changes they can fix problems and
I'm not saying this is something they're going to fix or they can but it's my
hope that in the future maybe that battery life indicator could be improved
and updated in one of those updates I'm crossing my fingers on that again those
are all minor but they are real issues that I found using it in the field and I
wanted you to know about them so closing thoughts
I love the RT I think it's the best photon yet
as it should be I am excited about it I mean they have done well on every one of
these models and this is just another improvement and I think it's going to be
extremely popular if you have any more questions about the Photon
feel free to you know leave your comments below send an email we'll put
the email address below you can you know call us we'll put the phone number there
we want to help you make the decision before you buy this scope or any other
night vision or thermal imaging customer service is what we do and helping
customers before they make the purchase is that's my goal that's why I shoot
these videos it's why I try to make myself available to talk to customers so
that you know we can just help you answer the questions before you spend
your hard-earned dollars and don't know exactly you know if you're purchasing
the right thing I want to help you make that decision one time and hopefully
make the right decision so again overall great scope sightmark as always best
customer service in the industry three year warranty on the image sensor
lifetime warranty on the hardware and workmanship we have very very very few
problems on these sightmark optics and so I would buy with confidence and know
that if you ever do have a problem that sightmark will take care of you there
are texans and they're great folks to deal with so if you ever have to call
them you call Mansfield Texas and you get to talk to a Texan and you may think
that's a positive or a negative but I think it's a positive they're good folks
up there so again anything you need night vision thermal imaging give us a
call check out our website we really would appreciate your business we'd love
to do business with you and we look forward to talking to you
soon please check us out on Instagram subscribe to the YouTube channel you can
also find us on Facebook thanks for taking the time to watch this video
you