Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Elite 4200 vs. Monarch vs. Microdot

Well got a little comparitive scope testing done. 3 pm with light overcast skies were the conditions. Scopes were:
Bushnell Elite 4200 4-16x 50mm
Nikon Monarch 6.5-20x 44mm
Ultradot Microdot 4-12x 56mm

I used both a USAF 1951 chart and Snellen type eye chart.
Distance was 135 feet (45 yards). All testing done on 12x as all scopes could manage that. Two people beside myself also took part.

I have solid 20/20 near 20/15 vision in my best eye and am 45 years old with a bit of help needed for close up focusing. THe other two people in the test were in their mid 30's and 20's respectively with better eyesight than I. The snellen chart had letters sized for 15 ft., 13 ft., 10 ft., 8 ft., 6 ft., and a couple smaller that didn't enter into this.

So 135 ft. divided by 12x meant the view should have been equivalent to about 11 ft. for someone with 20/20 vision and near 8 ft. for someone with 20/15 vision like my two friends.

Well I could make out the 10 ft. size with the Nikon and Bushnell. Almost seeing the 8 ft one with the Microdot. My friends made out 8 ft. with the Nikon and Bushnell, and almost could make out the 6ft. with the Microdot though they missed enough an optomertrist wouldn't count it.

Using the USAF chart got pretty much the same results. The Microdot was one step better than the Nikon and Bushnell. Each step on that chart is about a 12% difference in resolution.

I did find the Microdot had this resolution in the center half of the view and softened just a bit (though still not bad) at the edges. The other two were pretty much the same to the edge.

In a less than scientific test of coatings, the Elite 4200 appeared to edge out the Nikon for best least reflective coatings. And the Microdot coatings came out last. In this test you look at your reflection from a couple feet away in both the objective and the eyepiece. In the microdot I could comb my hair, see my eyes. In the Nikon I could see my outline and some small amount of detail. Though not my eyes or lips at all. In the Elite 4200 I saw only an outline of my face with no surface detail.

So there you have it. A surprisingly good showing from the Microdot 4-12x56mm and an expected good result from the other two scopes. Showing near the maximum resolution possible for the magnification used.

BTW, a quick test of the Weaver R4 showed a near max resolution for a 4x.

Didn't have other scopes handy for comparison. But have done this before, and plenty of scopes won't show this much resolution. Getting near the theoretical resolution of your eye isn't typical in scopes.

Sources for charts used.

http://www.i-see.org/block_letter_eye_chart.pdf


Snellen chart handy for scope testing.

http://medfmt.8k.com/mf/USAF.pdf

High resolution image you can print for your own testing.

Could you run this test with a whole bunch of Leupolds and others and give us the results?

I have been wanting to, but weather and other things keep getting in the way. I have done similar in the past, with the same methodology other than I didn't have other people to confirm my results.

I don't currently have any Leupolds. I have done the test, and the Leupolds too will roughly equal the resolution of the human eye with 20/20 vision.

You can do the test yourself easily enough. Print out the eye chart. Test yourself with the chart 20 feet away. Let us just say you have 20/20 vision. Okay suppose you were using a 9x scope at 100 yards. Well 300ft divided by 9x should give you a view equivalent to 33 feet. So looking through the scope at the eye chart you should read maybe the 30 feet line of letters. If say you cannot read better than the 70 line on the test chart, then the scope has only 30ft divided by 70 ft. or 42% of the resolution your eye can use. Obviously you shouldn't be able to read any lines smaller than 30 ft.

The USAF chart is a bit more complicated though easy enough for side by side comparisons.

Things to look out for are using scopes at ranges the parallax is not set to use (50 yard test with fixed 100 yard parallax for instance.) In scope without AO this usually means 100 yards. If the scope has AO then doing the test as close as possible makes results more repeatable. But if you test at the wrong distance for the AO the scope isn't focused to the best possible result.

Another pitfall is testing in bright sun. At powers over 10x the sun heating the ground causes mirage or boil. The atmosphere is turbulent and you will see the test image seem to vary up and down in resolution. In such a case, you aren't testing the scope, but being confounded by turbulent air.

Best times are early morning, or late afternoon. Finding the shady side of a large hill lets you test in the shaded area while there is some useful sunlight just not hitting the ground of the test area. Other good times are lightly overcast days without the direct sun heating of the ground.

Would be nice if a number of people printed out the test chart and put up the results of such testing. I have done others scopes that have much less resolution. Also testing a given scope at various magnifications, some have lesser resolution at or near max power than at lesser power settings. Others keep good resolution at all powers. One strange Burris had max resolution at mid-power and something less at higher and lower powers.