Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Does today's gear with batteries and displays need special care in the winter?

I've had several hundred dollars worth of digital Starrett go black to my surprise. I don't cold soak my laptop.

It occurs to me that rangefinders (and handbearing compasses), shot timers, chronographs, laser bore sighters, Hawkeye borescopes, illuminated reticules, Crimson Trace sights and more have batteries and many have displays.

Beyond flashlights a nice borelight and the Starrett mics and calipers I haven't lost much yet.

Still I'd be in a real bind if everything I have with displays goes black. Any thoughts or experiences on cold soak or just overnight exposure or......

Cold effects all batteries to varying degrees, but the lithium batteries used in most firearm related devices are pretty stabile even at low temperatures. Usually, the specifications for most devices will show the operating range temperatures. If not, ask the manufacturer or importer.

My Leica LRF isn't accurate when it's cold, so I keep it in an interior coat pocket. A guy from elk camp with a bushnell says his works fine as long as the batteries don't freeze up.

Depends on the goop inside the LCD, no one good answer. With ordinary LCDs you're probably looking at an operating temp down to freezing and a storage temp to -10 C. Good ones are spec'd for operating and storage to -20 C and some with a heater to -40.

LED and LED lasers have no minimum storage temp (in a rational sense). For laser modules guaranteed minimum operating temps vary, commonly something like -10 C.

For batteries it depends on the chemistry but capacity takes a nose dive below freezing.