I recently purchased an ATN Pro 4k night vision scope and while I was very pleased with all the bells and whistle, I couldn’t help but wonder how the Thor or other thermal devices stacked up against their night vision cousins. Has anyone here had experience with both and is the extra cost associated with thermal really worth it? Best brands and pros/cons with each?
Night bison or thermal?
- Thread starter djtl1218
- Start date
If go anything except ATN.....AGM,Pulsar,Sightmark,.... There are 5 year warranty s on Night vision now..3 years being the norm...
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@djtl1218 NV and thermal both have strengths and weaknesses.
NV
pluses- Cheaper. Easy to identify the target once spotted. Easy to see obstructions.
negatives- Harder to spot the target. Moving targets are more difficult to stay on and tend to pop in and out of view. Follow up shots on runners are very difficult/impossible.
thermal
pluses- target animals really stand out. Following critters before and after the shot is a snap.
negatives- high cost. Target id takes some time (primarily looking at movements and shape to id). Obstructions like small branches likely won't be seen.
On either you are looking at a 2 dimensional screen. Which makes range estimation and identifying animal size difficult.
ETA- I believe thermal is well worth the cost. I own and use both almost daily. I prefer to shoot with thermal but wouldn't give up my NV scopes. Thermal shines in detection.
NV
pluses- Cheaper. Easy to identify the target once spotted. Easy to see obstructions.
negatives- Harder to spot the target. Moving targets are more difficult to stay on and tend to pop in and out of view. Follow up shots on runners are very difficult/impossible.
thermal
pluses- target animals really stand out. Following critters before and after the shot is a snap.
negatives- high cost. Target id takes some time (primarily looking at movements and shape to id). Obstructions like small branches likely won't be seen.
On either you are looking at a 2 dimensional screen. Which makes range estimation and identifying animal size difficult.
ETA- I believe thermal is well worth the cost. I own and use both almost daily. I prefer to shoot with thermal but wouldn't give up my NV scopes. Thermal shines in detection.
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ATN and Bering Optics both have a lot of reported issues and at the same time a dedicated group of fanboys. If you get a good unit it'll likely be problem free. Kind of like buying a Union made auto...just hope it wasn't produced after lunch or on a Friday.
I came very close to buying ATN primarily due to their add on LRF with ballistic calculator. Right in that timeframe, I watched a really poor quality video on FB from one of their thermal units. It starred a close range airgunned coyote that was highly pixelated and audio that was significantly out of sync with the shot. I know that FB downgrades the video files when posting but the original poster stated the unit regularly produced out of sync audio. That was enough to spook me away from ATN. So no, I have no experience using ATN products.
I'm primarily running PARD(s) for NV and Pulsar(s) for thermal.
What is your intended target species and expected range?
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With my air gun around 50 yards and coyote. With my powder burner out to 400-500 and hogs and coyotes
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@djtl1218 Those are extremes that one scope will have a difficult time covering. Which 4k Pro did you get? Which illuminator are you using? Can you see a coyote well enough to shoot at 4-500 yards with your setup?
Honestly haven't pushed the NV past 250. However the thermals easily pick up coyotes much further than I can competently put lead on them.
Honestly haven't pushed the NV past 250. However the thermals easily pick up coyotes much further than I can competently put lead on them.
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Isn't the Arken just a low resolution (256 thermal) PARD with a trade name slapped on it? Who is making the Arken?
PARD already has the TD32 available on their website with a compact model (similar to the Arken} coming soon...likely around the time the Arken will be available.
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i have 2 pard clipons, an atn 384 thermal, and (2) 4k pros ... the pards will get the job done but are unintuitive to manipulate in the dark, still theyre good for the money .. the thor4 thermal works for airgun use but lacks detail and in the heat of 'battle' that can be somewhat disorienting .. the 4k pro nv is the way to go for 99% of pesting around my place, much prefer it over thermal but you have the extra logistical factor of keeping the torch running, batteries in top shape etc .. as far as atns having issues, sometimes they dont boot right, so reboot, once theyre booted stable ive never had an issue out of any of them ... booting problems is a holdup, but generally in night hunting you setup early so its not a problem to me .. if you need grab-and-go capabilty a pard clip-on boots stable every time in several seconds and can be set to boot into pre selected modes, as long as you have its operation down pat, its good 'grab and go' night setup ... the thermal is good for like penetrating into and beyond cover, so bunnys hiding in the grass, yeah, itl see em .. but the infrared generally give a much more detailed image
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First, people on this board talk about night vision with a broad brush lumping true light amplification NV with digital camera NV. True NV, atn sucks so bad it is not even funny, I have used second gen ancient military units that are orders of magnitude better than ATN's current crap. A lot of that is ATN's lenses suck balls. BTW, I own a 3rd gen ATN auto gated clip on, I couldn't resist as I bought it for 500 so even knowing how bad they are in general I bought it for short range in the woods(<50 yards, 3-4x optical scope behind it). It is a garbage copy of a pvs-22 and strains to kind of but not really accomplish that. Reliabilty of ATN true NV is also at the bottom of the heap. Run away.
ATN thermal, joke. There best 640 units fall way short of very old 320 mil units, way way way way ...a few thousand more way's...short. Reliabilty, in the garbage. Best bang for the buck is the chinese thermal company IRay, they hit above their price point. Reliability unknown. Thanks to friends with more money than sense, I have extensively used mjilitary thermals up to >100k in cost side by side with <10k commercial stuff of all sorts. Nothing is as good as a true mil thermal, although a couple of the 8-10k ones are getting closer. My one thermal is a trijicon commercial model around 7k+ these days, it falls painfully short of the mil units, sucks that I've looked side by side with mine and several mil units, lowered my opinion greatly of mine. If you ever have 20k to waste, buy a pixels on target Voodoo-M, 17 ounces of awesome thermal clip on, no problem seeing steel targets 1000 yards away with a 15x scope behind it, and hitting them. there are a couple you can get 7-8k less that are as good optically, but....another 1lb+ in weight. If I suddenly find myself with a huge chunk of money out of the blue, I will buy one.
I don't use digital nv and my only use of them probably totals less than 20 minutes in my life, no comment since I have no experience with it. Last time I looked at one was at least 5 years ago.
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For Me and me alone lol with budget in the equation I prefer a thermal spotter and night vision Scope and I will leave it at that haha . 
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I will add This and This alone hahaha The title misspelling was to much for my curiosity to resist hahaha.
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I believe Arken purchased the Zulus technology from Hittac, not Pard.
Im not sure about their new night vision/ thermal combo product.
Most users seem to agree, that the ARken Zulus is far superior to the Pard .
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Dana @ Mountain Sports Airguns did a video review (YouTube). Pretty impressive for the price. When they came out I expected to hear more buzz on the forum.
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Two different animals. I have a 4000 plus pulsar thermal monocular I use for spotting my target, then my 600.00 ATN night vision scope for identification and or shot. I have had my ATN night/ day scope for since 2012 with zero issues...except ATN no longer has firmware updates for my model, but it works great.If and when it fails I will get something else. I've had my ATN mounted on .30 06, .308, .223, .22 with zero issues as well as a LCS SK19. It currently sits on a .22 Ruger that has had to put a few trash pandas to sleep.
The pulsar thermal shines as far as spotting heat signatures, but at longer ranges, it hard to tell exactly what you are looking at. That's when I will put my ATN night/ day scope on it, to identify exactly what I'm looking at.
The thing I think some forget is, the pulsar thermal does exactly the same thing in daylight as well as complete darkness, and is great to use in daylight to spot what you can't see with the naked eye.My 2 cents...
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BOTH!
Soon, you will be able to have both night vision, and thermal, in the same, small, compact affordable unit!
At the touch of a button, you will be able to go from one to the other, or use picture in picture feature, and view both at the same time.
Its not yet available, but will be soon, from Arken.
Below is a brief video clip, showing the product:
Soon, you will be able to have both night vision, and thermal, in the same, small, compact affordable unit!
At the touch of a button, you will be able to go from one to the other, or use picture in picture feature, and view both at the same time.
Its not yet available, but will be soon, from Arken.
Below is a brief video clip, showing the product:
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