@Vegasshooter @voodoo_man
Since you guys have played with a variety of them .... A friend has a Bushnell, and I REALLY like the horseshoe reticle. Looked nice and bright and it seemed it would be a lot easier/faster to pick up when using at 1x than a small thin illuminated dot or illuminated crosshair during daytime / outside. Maybe its just that I've never spent time on a scope. Am I off with this line of thinking? What has been your experience on the different reticles with getting shots off at 1x? For me personally, I would be willing to sacrifice a little on the glass quality, that I would rarely be using, if I can get target acquisition with times closer to a standard red dot. Also, does anyone have an opinion on how tough the Bushnell scopes are compared to other brands? I am willing to sacrifice on the glass quality, but if it loses zero or has a turret damaged simply by getting knocked over, its worthless to me. I am looking for my first LPVO, so other than looking through a couple at vendor shows and using an instructor's EOTech Vudu for a couple class drills, I have no experience with them.
I had a Burris MTAC 1-4x when they first came out which had a horseshoe, "Ballistic AR" reticle.
I have a few issues with horseshoe reticles, first and foremost is the fact that the round "shoe" is the same color as the "dot." If they were different colors I may be able to work something out as I know which color I should be looking at to aim with. I had an issue with picking up the top of the horseshoe doing speed/stress related shooting, especially from a low/high ready position. This was instantly resolved with an optic which did not have a horseshoe reticle. I may just not have had enough time to train into it properly, but I do not want to devote valuable time training something which does not greatly affect my ability/performance.
I did not see anything positive to take from the horseshoe reticle and when switching to an optic with a red dot illuminated in black crosshairs it worked out much better for me, and more intuitively. You experience may vary, of course, and if the horseshoe works well for you without requiring you to do any serious training to use that reticle effectively, then go for it.
As for glass quality, I have owned $3500 USO's and $200 vortex LPVO's, I can tell the difference but that is because I know
exactly what I need to be looking for to tell the difference about. Will a $3500 USO work for you? Yeah probably. Will a $200 vortex probably do the same exact thing the USO
for you, yeah I imagine it would.
I would try to get out of a
paralysis by analysis type of situation and just buy one. If it ends up not working well for you after a good bit of use, take a hit, sell it, and buy a different one. We all go/went through this progression to figure out what we like and do not like, what we need and do not need.
Things your LPVO should absolutely have if it is going on a gun which may be used to shoot people - capped turrets and illumination of reticle/dot - if you want an optic for gaming, then it doesn't matter what it looks like or its qualities are, you aren't using it on people and PID is not something which needs to be considered in this case.
You should find what your particular requirements are, which for most are "true 1x" RDS-type setup for fast up close shooting and good magnification for distance PID, that's basically all of the LPVO's in the field right now, unless you want some kind of ballistic bullet drop reticle for some reason then you should find the one to match the ammo/barrel you are going to run. Make your choice, gain experience, sell as needed, rinse repeat.