This is a shortish review and a few beginner thoughts on LPVOs. I recently got the VictOptics S6 1-6x24 LPVO - I thought it looked good but disliked the fact that it's closer to 1.25x than to 1x, so I decided to get a more expensive LPVO. The next LPVO I got was the Vector Optics Taurus 1-6x24. This is much flatter and better and truer 1x, but it somehow manages to feel worse than the S6.
After some playing around with those I got my head around the actual reason of being of LPVOs; LPVOs are a red-dot substitute which could in a pinch go to 4x or 6x. To serve as a good red-dot an LPVO must have a good eye box at 1x, and if possible to be true 1x and without fish-eye effects. This is where almost all LPVOs fail - the eye box at 1x is just a nomal scop-y eye box and not close to a red-dot feeling. The eye box depends on the exit pupil size and most LPVOs have an exit pupil of around 10mm at 1x. The only exception to this are the Vortex line of LPVOs which have an exit pupil of 24mm at 1x, according to the specs on some sites and some reviews. This is also the reason the cheap VictOptics S6 feels better to me than the Vector Optics Taurus - the S6 has an exit pupil of 16mm which is rare for LPVOs both budget and non-budget. The consequence of this number is that the S6 has a much bigger eye box at 1x compared to the Taurus.
After some playing around with those I got my head around the actual reason of being of LPVOs; LPVOs are a red-dot substitute which could in a pinch go to 4x or 6x. To serve as a good red-dot an LPVO must have a good eye box at 1x, and if possible to be true 1x and without fish-eye effects. This is where almost all LPVOs fail - the eye box at 1x is just a nomal scop-y eye box and not close to a red-dot feeling. The eye box depends on the exit pupil size and most LPVOs have an exit pupil of around 10mm at 1x. The only exception to this are the Vortex line of LPVOs which have an exit pupil of 24mm at 1x, according to the specs on some sites and some reviews. This is also the reason the cheap VictOptics S6 feels better to me than the Vector Optics Taurus - the S6 has an exit pupil of 16mm which is rare for LPVOs both budget and non-budget. The consequence of this number is that the S6 has a much bigger eye box at 1x compared to the Taurus.
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