8 Rangefinders Tested Head-to-Head: Which was best for hunting and shooting?

and the grand total is six hundred and forty four dollars on rangefinders you guys better love this video because it's expensive okay so we have spent a lot of money on range finders and we have spent the week we have spent dozens and dozens and dozens of hours behind these things testing them we have an excel sheet I kind of breaking down price and all the different factors and everything we found so let's not bury the lead too much right like price is no object we have everything between $800 and about a hundred Bullard a year so yeah in terms of range finders which one would you take into the field this year like you own them which one yeah I own all these you know the one that just takes the cake for me is this one this is the loop hold our X 1600 I there's even more letters on here it's got the longest name of all of them but this is just all-around for all the things that we tested my favorite rangefinder and it's not the most expensive no I would agree yeah if I were to pick any that's the one I would take if I were just hunting and I never was just shooting I might have a little bit of a difference there's lots of different factors that we're gonna talk through but I agree that is my favorite if you are gonna buy I mean do us a solid and click the link in the description even if you aren't buying it today just click the link so that we can get our affiliate Commission for our hard work that we put into this thing but we want to just talk you through we want you to end up with a great rangefinder that isn't going to let you down in the field so we're gonna talk through several different buyers somebody who's super price conscious and you want a low price the hunter the long-range shooter etc and just talk about which one we would pick for you none of these companies pay us anything for their recommendation we bought them all with our own money just so we can give you an unbiased review exactly so let's start off with the price conscience I think that's an important one so there are three in this category that are at the very low end range yeah 200 and under that's the bushnell the pursuit that's yes summer suit XR 700 woo right and then the nikon prostaff 1000 so in this category if I had to pick it doesn't matter you know hunting shooting HEC golf I'm picking the Nikon Prostaff out of these yep so the pursuit is the cheapest but it's only about 20 bucks cheaper than the other two and this one is the absolute best one for absolutely nobody know like when even when we were at the sporting goods store right we're like we're gonna take that one and the guys like are you sure I don't recommend that one ever and we're like we want to test it we want to know because to be honest like we we took their recommendations to decide which ones to purchase there are there are more options believe it or not and we listened to their recommendations and a lot of those egg recommendations were based off of their experience with 2 or 3 range finders and customer feedback and a lot of it didn't reflect what we actually saw yeah or most people buy this one well that's because the company has good marketing or has a good warranty anyway so the first yeah just don't the battery door is awful it will last about 5 minutes before it breaks the the lighting quality is terrible the we had crazy wonky numbers that sometimes gave us yes generally accurate but we got some weird ones out of it and that was what that was the thing is like you could get a reading that would match the other ones but sometimes you would get a really bad reading before that oh yeah the bushnell actually had some similar issues where like x range it actually did it easy to find at 50 60 yards 20 yards it was off buyer and I mean we're talking huge so something's 20 yards away it says it's 29 whereas all the other ones are saying 20 I mean you got just weird ones where all of them were within like a quarter of a yard and this one's off by like nine ten and four yeah there are some weird stuff and for the same price of the bushnell the Nikon Prostaff 1000 it's the same price and this one just didn't have any those weird issues yeah you just don't it's just so unremarkable it just does its thing so it's always max readings on the night yeah okay so on the nikon prostaff the longest reading we're able to get in just good lighting conditions that was some good cloud cover we got it to measure up to eight hundred seventy five yards and all of these measured as low as about eight to ten yards so on the low end it's about you today is all of these four bowhunting no problem absolutely but yeah 875 in dim lighting so late in the day six hundred and forty was the max you're able to get out of this so if you're just going hunting you're not shooting more than six or seven hundred yards this is probably going to be high and I guess an important thing that I wondered about was you're not losing any accuracy like when you compared this to the more expensive ones I mean we're talking about like one two yards often even at four hundred yards so if we want something cheap that is going to do the job and you're not shooting more than whatever six hundred yards it's a solid choice its build quality is plastic and I'm markable but uh you're gonna do fine with that thing absolutely but if your price conscious but want to take it a step up there are some kind of mid-range okay so here we've got the Nikon Monarch mm and the sig let me make sure I get this right the sig sauer kilo 1000 B DX okay so many numbers I know many these two are kind of man we debated we on which was our variation they're just the Nikon is waterproof yes that's huge for hunting and I will mention only two of these are waterproof this and the vortex yeah that's more expensive so waterproof really nice it feels tough that thing isn't gonna I feel like I can scratch and beat that thing up for a while and this thing I told Jim I feel more like this is a nice car if I get a little scratch on I'm gonna be kind of bummed you know it's just got that that you know fine plastic kind of anyway it doesn't feel like I can put a whole lot of beating on this thing yeah but but both gave good numbers yep the one thing I will say about the Nikon is it's a little pokey you gotta kind of check I didn't get a reading check again again again and it will get there but sometimes I felt like it took two or three stabs before I got a number back and it seemed to take the longest out of a lot of these especially the higher end ones it took the longest to get a reading even you had to hold you know we had to wait longer and so if you're shooting long range you kind of shaky you know it's it's a little bit tougher to do but that said it the range on this thing outperformed the cig by about five hundred yards that's significant restocking what are they actually yeah so the actual numbers on this thing the sig the longest reading we were able to get under those good lighting conditions was eleven hundred yards and in dim lighting one thousand twenty-five yards so you're looking at that thousand eleven hundred yards pretty consistently whether it's a soft surface or a hard surface on the monarch we were able to get in the the good lighting conditions fifteen seventy one thousand five hundred seventy yards and in dim why even better you were able to get 1621 yards that's really good it's really good so if you're shooting long range you want to carry this thing out into the field hunting you're that guy that just likes to take the long shot you want to shoot on up to a mile long with this thing you're gonna be able to arrange it really well it's just gonna be a little bit pokey little bit finicky to deal with other thing we noticed about the Nikon is the glass isn't very forgiving if you're just off a little bit you see these black things everywhere that none of the others showed yeah they're much more it was a little bit in the cheap points if you get off access get a little bit hazy but this one it's like a really dark haze its distracted you gotta be right dead center and it's not horrible I I think I may be talking this one down more than it deserves that's a really good rangefinder yeah and honestly if my budget is whatever $250 D I don't know man that is it would I would have a hard time deciding driving these two I guess no I don't even know but they're like I don't know how I okay so there you have it you have all the details you can decide do I care about you know as a thousand yards long enough a little bit annoying on the audio quality and pokey or very fast not quite as far not wet or waterproof okay yeah but there you have it so if your price sensitive those are gonna be your options of those you know there's a few that we clearly knock off the list but what we went to medical school no these aren't your bets so these are both under 350 oh yeah exactly which i think is gonna be a very common budget for a lot of serious hunters in church absolutely this one the vortex Ranger is super popular right this is the Ranger 1800 people are talking about this one all the time and so and at the sporting goods store they're like this is what everybody's buying this is what you want and when we were looking at these I anticipated the vortex kick but it's a love vortex cool brand yes use vortex scopes build quality is awesome rugged build quality and these guys vortex with all their optics has a lifetime fully transferable warranty if you buy one of these things even if you buy it new and it stops working other unless you lose it or it's stolen you just send it to them and they'll give you a new one it's awesome and so that you can't really trade that very well this is again the only other one that we mentioned is actually waterproof socket on the bottom also the only one here that had a tripod socket I I when I first saw that I thought why doesn't everybody have that and then I thought when would I really because it was pretty easy to hold you know add over a thousand yards it's shaky but so rest your elbow in the lean against you'll be fine ranging anything to 2,000 yards yeah absolutely okay so we expected that this was just gonna be top notch and it was good very good it's solid but I was disappointing okay so these two side by side the loop hold was actually able to range quite a bit farther in fact this again what they'll often tell you is that the number on here this is 1800 it's so it's meant to be on the range up to 1,800 yards on a reflective surface and so on a non reflective surface you use take that number and cut it in half and that's about what we saw with this one 950 yards was the best reading we were able to get and on like sagebrush on a soft surface we were only able to get about 800 yards and in low-light 649 yards was the best reading you got the loopholes a little disappointing yeah see if I'm hunting that's fine it's enough but if you ever want to do any long-range shooting kind of thing you know we want to try that thousand dollar Gong there's over a thousand dollar thousand yard boom you're out of luck yeah now with the loop hold again our X 1600 ITB RW that's the full name right there with this one we're able to get a reading on a hard surface and or on a soft surface out to 1570 yards also a mile yeah you're adding 600 yards on to the range of this one so if you're doing any sort of long-range shooting anything beyond that six seven eight hundred yard shot I'm probably going with something that's gonna be a little bit a little bit more reliable at that distance and even if you aren't gonna use that it was just fast you just refer click click and it tracks tracks tracks and gives you your number the vortex was pokey I had to try several times on things I was a little disappointed yep so I mean there's one more that we haven't talked about here but if we're talking like best-in-class everything all these factors weighed in that's why this is the one I'm taking into the field we own them all this is the one that I'm carrying with yes but we did say we did promise we talked about what's the best one for hunting yeah and that's where this is this gets to be a little bit of a question because it's waterproof and has a great warranty and I'm not insane I'm not shooting a thousand yards of an elk so this will get me my distance so I don't know for hunting you could make a strong case for this for the vortex I love to build quality and everything but again it is a little pokey which yeah this is in a way I kind of like the belt clip - I mean that is it's just some neat just some neat things about it the more things you can have on your belt the more you I think so you gotta compensate well and I'd rather have it firm on my belt than have it like looped on or have it dangling from my neck most of the time that's just how I feel about it although it might just be in my back okay although I I would pick the loopholes yeah just for overall versatility of what we would want yeah oh well here's the other thing okay no I'm not gonna shoot over a thousand yards but when you have the vortex and you see that elk at 1500 yards and you want to know how much closer do I need to get no we can't do it you're out of luck it won't do it with this like yeah I'm not shooting it at 1,500 yards but it's nice to know how far away that thing is as you're planning your stock and that's a good point great point okay and this is no doctor but for Hospital owners okay so we said we would also talk about long-range shooting what's the best one and that's where this one comes into play so this is the sig 2400 bdx yes and it's expensive it's $800 however as these are $350 so it is double the price plus a bit it's really nice there are some good things about it in terms of just max distance we were able to get it out to 2,000 120 yards yeah not a hard surface whoa yeah over a mile and it was a little pokey at that distance but not even that much yeah I mean it's all arranged it so very very solid in terms of distance interestingly add a little bit shallower of a distance you know around the thousand-yard mark if I'm just comparing these two I probably got more consistent quick readings from the loopholed than the sig yeah but there's no question if you're talking about just long distance you probably want the sig 2,400 but it's not even like a huge jump ahead I mean the loop hold is close and it's less than half the price and I think that's the important point here is if you if you just need to be able to arrange something out at 2,000 yards it's the only one on the table that's gonna do that but for practical use for most shooters the loop hold is going to be more than so if a couple other things for why like I'm not taking this thing into the field just look at that plastic well yeah I mean the the hard plastic I don't love that it's gonna get all scratched okay you know dollar rangefinder that was the [ __ ] it should be gold but look at that size I mean if I level these off on the top it's substantially larger mm-hmm it's just something bigger I have to carry on it's not even really heavier it's just bigger and that matters to me when I when I'm in the field that 350 one feels more premium than $800 one and when it came to like features we expected that an $800 rangefinder was gonna have some sort of like really cleanser with your features no no there wasn't anything that made this one special other than the fact that it can range up to a farther distance yeah so let's talk about that I thought a lot of the range vendors would include some more stuff you know ballistics and stuff for your bullet and stuff and some of them did it the loopholed you can put in some ballistics and stuff but generally their friend in your distance yeah and you know the other thing that you are really gonna want it to be able to do is to compensate for an angle right and they'll do that so that's not something that I I I didn't see any features and we really poured through them that I would say pick this one because it has this cool hmm no which one does to the distance for yeah exactly the the Sig the magnification on this things 7x that is nice I these are all six you know most of these are six there's a couple that are in the that are five overall other than that there wasn't a whole lot more to it there were a couple where we just didn't love like the battery door which one was it that felt like was it the Ranger it felt like no it was I was the sake it was the same thing 1,400 that it just felt like you were across the right house she's hard to align it the Reds I just didn't love that the other stuff I would consider to be pretty minor so I think that's the lay of the land with range finders again this is what I'm taken into the field both of us I think picked this one for just general shooting hunting you know some long-range shooting up to a mile almost that's kind of what I would pick so check it out in the in the comments section if you would click the affiliate link even if you're not necessarily buying this instant I'd help us out and thanks for checking out her channel backfire we're putting a lot of work and time into it so give us a subscribe if you don't mind

Channel: Backfire

Views: 225,802

Rating: 4.8908806 out of 5

Keywords: rangefinder, laser rangefinder, vortex ranger 1800, leupold rangefinder, bushnell, sig sauer, sig sauer kilo, nikon monarch

Id: VSabGFtXAvw

Length: 18min 4sec (1084 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 07 2019