CO-Exprs
09-05-2011, 23:47
Meopta zd 1-4x Review
OK I finally got my pennies together and picked up the new Meopta ZD 1-4x from EuroOptic. They were great to work with, fast and professional. I won't tell you what I paid, but it was less than the price on the web site and they had units in stock. Give them a call. http://www.eurooptic.com/meopta-meostar-1-4x22-tactical-kdot.aspx
I am no expert in optics, I'm mediocre at long range rifle and only a fair 3gunner. If you are only interested in the opinion of an optics authority or world class competitor, then turn away now.
I've looked through lots of glass recently and after RM3G came to the conclusion that this is the very best 3G scope on the market for less than $1000. In fact, out of everything I've looked through, this is my second favorite scope on the market, period. Second only to the Z6i. I've been rockin a Trijicon TR24 for a few years and was getting pretty savy with that piece of glass, even without BDC, but this scope just made the TR24 obsolete.
Opening the box
No bells or whistles. A white carboard box, some very spartan instructions, a warrantee card and a lense cloth is all you get. No glitz or glitter. No brochure. No organ grinder. No dancing monkey. The scope did come with one new battery, a front flip up lense cover and a bikini style rear lense cover. The front lense cap was prefit and works well. The rear lense cover is worthless.
The Scope, external
The new model is compact and attractive. A nice deep black anodized and bead blasted surface finish looks good. There is a rear dioptor adjustment ring which has a wide range of adjustment and turns with a pleasing amount of tension. Likewise the magnification ring turns with just the right amount of tension and is smooth. I installed a 3Gun Stuff scope ring which fit perfectly. It's both light weight and attractively finished. Yes,the old Meopta scope ring fits the new model. http://www.3gunstuff.com/
The turrets are adaquate and par for a sub $1000 scope. The clicks are possitive and Meopta added raised, triangular finger pieces so they can be adjusted without tools. There is no rezeroing feature, nor is there a zero stop feature. They are only adaquate and nothing to write home about. I didn't bother testing the return to zero properties because these types of turrets are generally designed to be set and forgoten. I'm quite certain I will. The illumination knob is pretty much standard fare. An on/off style knob with increasing intensity and off between each setting.
http://i1112.photobucket.com/albums/k484/CO-Exprs/scope4.jpg
The Scope, glass
The glass is very good by any standard and excellent when compared to any other scope in this price range. Slightly sharper with better color saturation and light transmission than my TR24. I'd say it's about on par with US Optics in terms of lense quality and edge distortion. FOV is excellent and the occular ring is slim. The 1x is as close to true 1x as any of the other well made variable power scopes (with the exception of the SWFA 1-4x, which I found to have a terrible 1x). The usual diopter ring allows fine tuning to the operator and beyond about 10yds there is no paralax distortion at all. The glass in this scope will hold it's own against anything under $1500.
The Scope, reticle
The reticle is money. It's simple and easy to use, without being busy or crowded. The dot is 2 MOA at 4x. The chevrons are very well designed and I have found that a point is noticably more effective than a cross in precision shooting. Thus I really like the very fine chevrons over cross hairs in other scopes. I read where the chevrons are spaced for 300, 400, 500 at 2900fps. I ran the ballistics and found that from my 20" barrel and 3130fps match loads, the chevrons line up very effectively as 400, 500 and 610yds. This gives me a center dot at 230yds, which is a very easy range to work with in a 3gun rifle. I sat at the 425yrd range this morning at Pueblo and went back and forth on every steel and made short work of even the difficult targets. So the burning question every one always asks... is it day light bright? Yep. Daylight practical bright in the brightest sunlight and against light colored backgrounds. Here's the kicker. Even the very fine chevron lines are day light bright and there is no blossoming or halo effect around the reticle or reflected inside the tube. It's not as bright as an aimpoint or a Short dot, but its as bright as a Z6i. It's brighter than an SWFA SS 1-4x HD, US Optics SN4, Vortex PST, Burris XTR and Tac 30. The chevron lines are some thing like .25-.5 MOA and even they are brighter than any of the brightest portions of any of the etched glass competitors. This forces me to call bullshit on any scope manufacturer who claims to have the brightest reticle possible and yet is still not truly day light bright. I've got about 3 hours on the battery with no discernable reduction in intensity. I'll update when the battery starts to fade with an estimate of time. There will be those who prefer a FFP reticle or one with better ranging. Some will say they want windage markings. Some one will want the dot illuminated and the lines not. All personal preferences for which there are other options. I like this reticle, because it gives me exactly what I need and nothing extra. It's bright and fast for close stuff and very precise for the far stuff. Sorry for the poor reticle photo quality. Apparently photography is an aquired skill.
http://i1112.photobucket.com/albums/k484/CO-Exprs/reticle2.jpg
http://i1112.photobucket.com/albums/k484/CO-Exprs/Reticle1.jpg
http://i1112.photobucket.com/albums/k484/CO-Exprs/reticle3.jpg
The eye relief is slightly shorter than most scopes in this class. Where the back of my TR24 sat about .25" in front of the charging handle, the back of the ZD sits about .25" behind. The rear bell of the scope is not overly large and should work with low profile flip up sights. The eye box is very forgiving and about on par with my TR24 and many of the other favored scopes. The reticle is easy to find quickly when starting from present arms or low ready and there is some forgiveness from perfect cheek weld.
The ZD line of scopes was developed for military and police use. They were released two years ago in Europe, but only became available in the US about 6 weeks ago, due to overwhelming demand from NATO and various military orders. It's a solid design and it's predecessor had a long and distinquished run with 3gunners. Google to your hearts content and you will be please to find very little negative feedback regarding the older K-Dot. It comes with a Lifetime and owner transferrable warrantee from Meopta US.
There was some short term buzz about some defects amongst the initially released units. EuroOptics assured me that the suspect units identified by Meopta were shipped back. Euro is many shipments into replacements and that the problem is long behind them. So far mine looks to be working great.
http://i1112.photobucket.com/albums/k484/CO-Exprs/scope1.jpg
http://i1112.photobucket.com/albums/k484/CO-Exprs/scope2.jpg
http://i1112.photobucket.com/albums/k484/CO-Exprs/scope3.jpg
OK I finally got my pennies together and picked up the new Meopta ZD 1-4x from EuroOptic. They were great to work with, fast and professional. I won't tell you what I paid, but it was less than the price on the web site and they had units in stock. Give them a call. http://www.eurooptic.com/meopta-meostar-1-4x22-tactical-kdot.aspx
I am no expert in optics, I'm mediocre at long range rifle and only a fair 3gunner. If you are only interested in the opinion of an optics authority or world class competitor, then turn away now.
I've looked through lots of glass recently and after RM3G came to the conclusion that this is the very best 3G scope on the market for less than $1000. In fact, out of everything I've looked through, this is my second favorite scope on the market, period. Second only to the Z6i. I've been rockin a Trijicon TR24 for a few years and was getting pretty savy with that piece of glass, even without BDC, but this scope just made the TR24 obsolete.
Opening the box
No bells or whistles. A white carboard box, some very spartan instructions, a warrantee card and a lense cloth is all you get. No glitz or glitter. No brochure. No organ grinder. No dancing monkey. The scope did come with one new battery, a front flip up lense cover and a bikini style rear lense cover. The front lense cap was prefit and works well. The rear lense cover is worthless.
The Scope, external
The new model is compact and attractive. A nice deep black anodized and bead blasted surface finish looks good. There is a rear dioptor adjustment ring which has a wide range of adjustment and turns with a pleasing amount of tension. Likewise the magnification ring turns with just the right amount of tension and is smooth. I installed a 3Gun Stuff scope ring which fit perfectly. It's both light weight and attractively finished. Yes,the old Meopta scope ring fits the new model. http://www.3gunstuff.com/
The turrets are adaquate and par for a sub $1000 scope. The clicks are possitive and Meopta added raised, triangular finger pieces so they can be adjusted without tools. There is no rezeroing feature, nor is there a zero stop feature. They are only adaquate and nothing to write home about. I didn't bother testing the return to zero properties because these types of turrets are generally designed to be set and forgoten. I'm quite certain I will. The illumination knob is pretty much standard fare. An on/off style knob with increasing intensity and off between each setting.
http://i1112.photobucket.com/albums/k484/CO-Exprs/scope4.jpg
The Scope, glass
The glass is very good by any standard and excellent when compared to any other scope in this price range. Slightly sharper with better color saturation and light transmission than my TR24. I'd say it's about on par with US Optics in terms of lense quality and edge distortion. FOV is excellent and the occular ring is slim. The 1x is as close to true 1x as any of the other well made variable power scopes (with the exception of the SWFA 1-4x, which I found to have a terrible 1x). The usual diopter ring allows fine tuning to the operator and beyond about 10yds there is no paralax distortion at all. The glass in this scope will hold it's own against anything under $1500.
The Scope, reticle
The reticle is money. It's simple and easy to use, without being busy or crowded. The dot is 2 MOA at 4x. The chevrons are very well designed and I have found that a point is noticably more effective than a cross in precision shooting. Thus I really like the very fine chevrons over cross hairs in other scopes. I read where the chevrons are spaced for 300, 400, 500 at 2900fps. I ran the ballistics and found that from my 20" barrel and 3130fps match loads, the chevrons line up very effectively as 400, 500 and 610yds. This gives me a center dot at 230yds, which is a very easy range to work with in a 3gun rifle. I sat at the 425yrd range this morning at Pueblo and went back and forth on every steel and made short work of even the difficult targets. So the burning question every one always asks... is it day light bright? Yep. Daylight practical bright in the brightest sunlight and against light colored backgrounds. Here's the kicker. Even the very fine chevron lines are day light bright and there is no blossoming or halo effect around the reticle or reflected inside the tube. It's not as bright as an aimpoint or a Short dot, but its as bright as a Z6i. It's brighter than an SWFA SS 1-4x HD, US Optics SN4, Vortex PST, Burris XTR and Tac 30. The chevron lines are some thing like .25-.5 MOA and even they are brighter than any of the brightest portions of any of the etched glass competitors. This forces me to call bullshit on any scope manufacturer who claims to have the brightest reticle possible and yet is still not truly day light bright. I've got about 3 hours on the battery with no discernable reduction in intensity. I'll update when the battery starts to fade with an estimate of time. There will be those who prefer a FFP reticle or one with better ranging. Some will say they want windage markings. Some one will want the dot illuminated and the lines not. All personal preferences for which there are other options. I like this reticle, because it gives me exactly what I need and nothing extra. It's bright and fast for close stuff and very precise for the far stuff. Sorry for the poor reticle photo quality. Apparently photography is an aquired skill.
http://i1112.photobucket.com/albums/k484/CO-Exprs/reticle2.jpg
http://i1112.photobucket.com/albums/k484/CO-Exprs/Reticle1.jpg
http://i1112.photobucket.com/albums/k484/CO-Exprs/reticle3.jpg
The eye relief is slightly shorter than most scopes in this class. Where the back of my TR24 sat about .25" in front of the charging handle, the back of the ZD sits about .25" behind. The rear bell of the scope is not overly large and should work with low profile flip up sights. The eye box is very forgiving and about on par with my TR24 and many of the other favored scopes. The reticle is easy to find quickly when starting from present arms or low ready and there is some forgiveness from perfect cheek weld.
The ZD line of scopes was developed for military and police use. They were released two years ago in Europe, but only became available in the US about 6 weeks ago, due to overwhelming demand from NATO and various military orders. It's a solid design and it's predecessor had a long and distinquished run with 3gunners. Google to your hearts content and you will be please to find very little negative feedback regarding the older K-Dot. It comes with a Lifetime and owner transferrable warrantee from Meopta US.
There was some short term buzz about some defects amongst the initially released units. EuroOptics assured me that the suspect units identified by Meopta were shipped back. Euro is many shipments into replacements and that the problem is long behind them. So far mine looks to be working great.
http://i1112.photobucket.com/albums/k484/CO-Exprs/scope1.jpg
http://i1112.photobucket.com/albums/k484/CO-Exprs/scope2.jpg
http://i1112.photobucket.com/albums/k484/CO-Exprs/scope3.jpg