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To give an idea of the size of these, this is a photo, including a SIG ‘Romeo and Juliet’ pair of red dot and magnifier, the Sightmark night vision Wraith ‘Max’, and (on the gun) the Wraith Thermal.
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As I understand it, the Wraith ‘Mini’ night vision is the same size approximately as the thermal, but doesn’t operate as well at low temperatures. I wasn’t particularly worried about size with the night vision, as I can’t really see using it other than at night when I wouldn’t be hiking or moving around all that much and probably would have it on a pistol cartridge levergun or 22 LR.
On the other hand, thermal is easily used in daylight as well, and that unit doesn’t appear to be bulky or awkward, even on the little 300 blackout SBR.
To me, night vision pretty much looks like you're viewing things in a black and white video. So a camouflaged deer is still as hard to see as it would be with regular vision and a bright flashlight at night. Things are going to be difficult to see if they are not moving, although animal eyes tend to shine. Think of the kind of image you get off of most trail cams. But you see things regardless of temperature, so you will see rocks and things as separate things even if they are the same temperature. You could walk around with night vision and not trip, but night vision does need an illuminator ('flashlight', if you will). You can also see a laser in the scope, so could use one for a sighting aid, OR perhaps more usefully, use a visible-laser rangefinder because you could put the dot on the animal and 'range' it then just shoot accordingly (provided your laser range finder is at least lined up well enough that you can see the dot in the scope's field of view). I think to shoot out past 100 yd with any precision I would need a brighter illuminator, so I'm not sure range/trajectory would be much to worry about other than perhaps using subsonic pistol cartridge ammo out of a lever gun or maybe using a 22 LR.
On the other hand, the thermal is going to show things by temperature so things that are the same temperature are not easily distinguished from one another, but things with a different temperature stand out like crazy. It is truly easy to spot a rabbit at 100 yards even if it's not moving, which would be impossible with night vision. The Wraith thermal has a bunch of different color modes, but to me the best are the ones with the darkest screen so white hot on black cold or light green hot on dark green cold is the easiest on the eyes.
I mentioned all this because when you look at the videos online, most of them really don't show things like you really see them because there is a lot of quality loss in the imaging when you transfer it. The videos that show really good images compared to others, are probably pretty truthful from what I have seen. That's because whoever shot them knew how to do lossless transfer. So I'm not going to try to post any pictures or video because I don't think they would do the scopes justice.
The 'Late Night Vision Show' was very informative, in particular.
In general if I could just have one (but I saved $20/week by always packing lunch and only one snack per week for a little over two years and got both), I'd get the Thermal. I mostly need to see living but not-necessarily-moving things, plus it's kind of cool to be able to look at our various farm buildings and figure out where we're losing most of the heat.
I thought about the AGM Rattler and it seems really good, but the Wraith seems as good, and maybe a bit more compact.
The 'clip-on' Rattler is more expensive (not sure why) than the scope version, but looked interesting. Might try my 'Juliet' magnifier just to see if it does anything useful added to the Wraith Thermal.
I think with the limited range of the night vision, at least the entry level kind I got, versus the super expensive stuff, it makes sense to put that on a pest elimination gun like a 22 LR or perhaps a pistol cartridge levergun. The thermal probably makes sense on a 223 or 300 Blackout or something like that. If you wanted/needed to you could sure SEE a hog or deer or coyote out to 800 yards with the Wraith Thermal, so if you could shoot a flat-trajectory cartridge and/or range accurately, there are lots of possibilities. However without being able to see your laser rangefinding dot in the scope I'm not sure how to 'range' an animal that far away, especially at night (
how would you know you aren't actually rangefinding some rock or tree 20 ft off to the side and much closer or farther...?)
It would be kind of nice to have the built-in rangefinder on a thermal like the AGM Varmint, but that starts adding dollars really fast. I did try a visible laser rangefinder with the thermal, but there just isn't enough heat on whatever the laser hits to show up at all at night.
By the way, BOTH the night vision and thermal Wraiths work perfectly fine in the daytime. Magnification is minimal, I think 2X or so, but the clarity and color during the daytime on both of them is really good.
Like with all digital scopes, sighting in is basically a matter of two shots.
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Although if you just get a little laser with the mount that goes around the barrel of your gun, usually using different plastic inserts to get the right diameter, you can pretty much sight in ANY gun with ANY sight or scope in two shots. You just get it on a good rest and put your iron sights or scope cross hairs on the bullseye and pull the trigger. Set the gun back in the rest with the sights again on the bullseye, then adjust the laser till it hits your bullet hole. Verify that you're gun didn't get moved and that the crosshairs or iron sights are still on the bullseye. If so, then all you have to do is now adjust your iron sights or crosshairs so that they are right on the laser dot. At this point you just sighted in your gun with two shots...
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