I’ve been lucky enough to spend some time with one of Vortex’s newest products, a rail-mounted laser rangefinder called the Impact 4000.
BLUF: it brings fantastic functionality to a much wider group of shooters with an accessible price and a somewhat hefty silhouette that’s packed with useful features.
Read MoreI posted this brief overview over on the Primary & Secondary fb page, but figured it'd be good to share here as well -
I’ve had the Oveready aftermarket Triple Surefire Scout head since last summer and finally got around to taking a few comparison photos. It’s marketed as 3500 lumens and goes for just under $300 (currently out of stock). It’s almost identical in weight and size to the stock heads, and has a clean black finish without any extra logos beyond the heat warning.
I’ve found the beam to be extremely wide, offering a solid, even flood that’s perfect inside structures. This is not like a 1000 lumen spotlight with a super hot focused spot for tagging things a long ways out - it’s like turning the lights on when inside. The diffuse nature of the beam means it’s similar to a much lower-power light at distance but extremely impressive up close. I’ve seen no concerns with shadows around objects or being thrown by other jewelry hanging off the front of a rifle.
You’ll see it compared below to another Scout head (the KM2, which offers 150 lumens visible and 120 mW of IR), and the X300 Ultra-A (500 lumens) using identical manual camera settings. The differences in hot spot diameters is immediately visible, and you can start to see the extra splash bouncing around the room from the light brown blinds.
The Oveready head also has fully customizable features, so you can reprogram it to perform different based on number of activations. This reprograming occurs using Oveready’s online app, where you make selections for brightness levels, strobe patterns, etc, and then create a programing video clip. They have you click your way into program mode on the flashlight, then hold it up to your computer monitor, where it “sees” the programing video and saves it to its internal memory. I thought they were crazy at first, but it definitely works - I have this one set up to be full-blast for the first 3 quick activations, followed by a 20% level on the 4th click in case I just wanted a task light. It allows you to set your secondary mode behind a number of quick taps to make sure you don’t accidentally engage it.
It uses a pair of IMR 16340 cell batteries to keep up with the power demands, which is rechargeable and puts out a peak 4.2 volts in the same body as a CR123. When operating at full brightness (30 watts, 3500 lumens), they advertise 9 minutes of straight run time. If you left it on that long I’m sure you’d need to be careful of the heat that’s being put out. If you run at around 1/3 power or 1300 lumens, they say it’ll last 24 minutes on a full charge. Here’s the manufacturer’s page on the head.
Posted this over at Primary & Secondary -
Related to my previous post with the comped G17 under NVGs, I figured I'd test for myself how much the compensator was affecting my recoil with a G19 and G17. The Texas Black Rifle Co Micro Comp lends itself to being able to easily go on and off at will, so we shot some slow-mo of each setup to compare where the muzzle was going while firing at maximum speed.
These were just 10-rd mags shot at the beginning of a casual range trip, not a serious shakedown after rehearsing a bunch and burning it down at lightning speed - I'm not that fast and don't have monster grip strength or anything.
