This has been a good conversation, and I appreciate the discussion. My opinion is continuing to evolve as I continue to gain experience with LPVO's. Our department has recently finished a T&E of some LPVO's, but I have a personally owned Razor that I have been running for a couple of years now for patrol and SWAT. One of the most interesting things I have found with my own uses was that when I'm on the range I use 1 power all the time. On actual call outs I am very rarely on 1 power unless it's for an entry. We do the majority of our call outs in a rural setting, and often times in wooded areas. I find myself in the 1.5-3 magnification range all the time. That magnification really helps picking out threats that can be investigated further. For wooded movements, I'll run it on 1.5-2 all the time. If I become stationary then it really depends on the distance, but I will use more of the magnification.
In range uses I have really had a hard time with the reticles on these LPVO's. compared to, say an Eotech, with a 1 moa dot, the reticle on an LPVO really covers a lot more of the target. I had some hands on with the Steiner P4XI before, and thought that was the biggest annoyance about it for me, which led me to spring for the Razor. The Razor seemed to be pretty good in this regard, but I always wanted it a little better. If I was shooting a B8 at 100, say in one of Kyle Defoors drills, I could work around it by dialing up the magnification just a little bit to help refine my sight picture, but not too much, so I still have a more forgiving eye box.
I had one issue with my Razor, where the illumination just crapped out after a couple of months of use. Vortex did a good job of remedying it. I called them on a Monday, and I had it back by that same Thursday, good to go. I really appreciate that kind of service, but I was surprised I needed it on that expensive of an optic.
I've really come to llike the Razor, but in the T&E I was pretty confident that the Kahles would be a bit better. It was lighter, with a wider field of view, and the reticle seemed thinner to me. When I played around with it for a few months, I found that for my applications, it really didn't work that well. It was fantastic on 1 power, but I did not prefer the illumination on it when compared to the Razor. The Kahles had a lot of bleeding of the illumination into the rest of the reticle. It also did not seem to get as bright, and seemed like it didn't reflect the light back as well. If you moved your head around behind the glass, the intensity of the illumination would change a lot. The Razor seemed really consistent, and I liked the adjustments. I also just never fell in love with any of the Kahles reticles. We tried the G4B, SM1 and 3gr. In darkness you would lose the reticle almost completely, so you would have to rely on the illumination 100%. With the Razor, at least you had the reticle as a backup. Oh, and on that, the Kahles had an auto-shutoff feature after so many hours. I was nervous about those nighttime callouts, because if you lose your reticle and then your illumination shuts off on its own, you are in trouble.
Finally, what I found most troubling was that the more magnification you used, the less I liked it. There seemed to be something up with the parallax. It wasn't just one scope either, it was all 3 of them we tested. I really struggled to shoot groups with the Kahles even at 50 yards on 6 power, when I could grab the Razor, and drill the x in a B8 for 5 rounds. Our testing group ended up all concluding that the Kahles was much harder to shoot when using the magnification.
For my uses on callouts, using a little bit of magnification, it seemed that the Razor would be much better. I hadn't really considered first focal plane or 1-8's as I thought they were too expensive, and had too many other issues. We did get a Nightforce NX8 and ATACR 1-8 to test as well, and I just did not like the NX8. The glass was not nearly as good as the Kahles, Razor, or the ATACR. It had a narrow field of view, and the eye box was small. I also thought the illuminated part of the reticle was pretty thick. I used it to clear a structure and found it frustrating compared to my Razor.
The ATACR on the other hand was very nice. I thought that even though it had a smaller field of view, on 1 power, the reticle was so fine and small that it really seemed like you could actually see more around it. If i didn't read it on paper, or actually look for it, I wouldn't have known that the field of view was smaller. I found it very usable, and it also had a very flat image, with little distortion or fish eye. There was some of that with the Razor. As far as how much of the target the reticle covered, I actually preferred the 1st focal plane reticle on the ATACR to the 2nd focal plane scopes. It was so fine that it really made it easy to use, but the illumination was also great on the Nightforce. One other thing about the ATACR was that it had 2 night vision settings. I tried them with my PVS-14's and thought they worked good. That was not an option with the NX8, K16i, or the Razor. At least, not for any kind of refined sight picture.
Then I took Ridgeline Defenses Scoped carbine course and found out how difficult it was to do the things they had us doing with a Razor. I ran the first day with my Razor and ended up running the second day of the class with the ATACR 1-8. That thing blew my mind. I would highly recommend Ridgeline's class and seeing what they have to say about setting up and shooting a carbine.
After taking that class and reflecting on my own uses with an LPVO as a rural patrol cop and on SWAT, I have to say I am saving for an ATACR. I do think that 8 power on the top is better for use at distance, and definitely if you are doing any kind of rapid engagement technique like we were shown at Ridgeline to figure out in your scope if a target is beyond your point blank zero, having 30% more magnification and that much more reticle does help. It really helps to define where that max distance is (is that target 250 yards, or 400). It seems to me that the shortcomings of a good 1-8 LPVO can be overcome with training.
I also think that since on callouts, I'm always using some magnification, that an offset red dot is somewhere in my future. If I'm doing an entry, I can run my magnification on 1 power so I can have everything as I want, for transitioning shoulders, and just having a normal cheek weld and gun handling, but when I'm outside, and I want little magnification, I can use my scope, but if I need to transition suddenly, an offset red dot would be nice. It also would help with a gas mask and passive NOD's use. We do have lasers, so maybe it's a non-issue, but it's worth playing around with.
Moving forward I can't say that the Nightforce ATACR is perfect, or that it's the best, but it is where I'm moving to next from the Razor. I also think that if I did stay with a 1-6, I would definitely want something with a mils based reticle, like Vortex's VMR-2. I may even consider the Leupold Mark 6 1-6. I also have been using a 1.93" height mount on my Razor, and it works good, but I don't think I will stay with it in the future. When using a little magnification I think the head position is important enough to just stick with a standard height mount. Oh, and most of the shootings I've been involved in have been from an improvised position, so that whole building a good shooting position thing has proven to be important for me and having consistent head position is crucial.
I also think that I will be saving for a nice 14.5-16" upper with something like the Mark 5 3.6-18 or an ATACR 4-16 and an offset dot to keep in my pack or in my car. That would round out my carbine capabilities nicely. A 1-8 and offset dot for my patrol rifle, and the ability to drop more magnification and barrel length on for those surveillance missions, or with more standoff.