Video Transcript
If you are looking for a cost effective LPVO that has a very good form factor, the Nightforce NX8 is probably the optic for you. So before we get into all of the descriptions and everything about this optic, let's go ahead and dive into the box and see what comes in. So diving right into the box, we got a lot of foam just to help protect the optic itself. We're going to have, obviously, the 1-8 LPVO optic. And what we're also going to get is a lot of different little things in the box. And they all are all very important. So first and foremost, you're going to have this little spuds thing here. And this is going to be a lens cleaner for your optic. This is really convenient because you can actually hook this to different pieces of equipment, whether it's your belt, whether it's your key chain.
You can get creative with it. But I really like this guy because it's nice and small. And it's able to, again, attach to something so that if I actually need to wipe my optic off, I can get to this pretty easily. So I like to actually attach this to my speed belt right in the front. And the nice thing about it is the cloth itself stays protected in this little pouch here. So if it is in the front of my belt and I'm laying in the prone or something like that, the cloth stays nice and clean. So that's pretty cool that this guy comes with this. You're also going to get this envelope here that says, "Do not discard." I've seen these envelopes come in various different colors. And in this envelope, you're going to have your extended throw lever for your optic, which we're going to attach here in a little bit. So we're going to set that off to the side. You're also going to have your Nightforce tool.
This tool is going to be very important for you when it comes down to floating your turrets, getting the optics zeroed and things like that. So this is not a one-time use tool. This is actually a well-made tool. So make sure you hang on to this because you're going to need it pretty often. Up next, we have the owner's manual. So this is going to be the owner's manual for the entire NX8 line. So just a quick note on the NX8 line itself. So the NX8 line has various different optics in it. As you guys know, we sell the 2.5-20 as well. From the NX8 line, you have the 1-8 and a couple other options.
But the big thing about this optic line particularly is that it has an 8x erector ratio. So every optic in this line is going to have an 8x magnification range. So in the case of this guy, 1-8, 2.5-20. So 2.5x8 is 20, etc, etc. Now, one cool thing to note about this optic line is that Nightforce claims that their best technology is within this line. And that is because of how small these optics are and the amount of magnification adjustment ranges there are between all of the optics. So just something to note about the NX8 line as we go on. So owner's manual kind of goes over all of the features of the optic and can probably answer any of the questions that you may have that I'm not able to answer in this video.
Additionally, you're going to have a swag sticker pack. So if you're into stickers and a patch, make sure you check out this little guy. You're going to have some cool goodies in there. And that is it that comes in the box. As we get into the optic itself. So on the optic out of the box, you're going to have a pair of lens covers. These are not my favorite lens cover option out there. But it is nice that Nightforce comes with them. So if you compare this guy to the ATACR line, the ATACR line comes with some Tenebræx lens covers. The NX8 line, at least the 1-8, does not come with those Tenebræx covers. But at least the optic comes with them. So if you want to use them, you can. But these things are just kind of annoying because when you open it, it kind of just flops around. So I just recommend taking these off, getting some better ones.
Now on the top of the elevation turret, you're going to notice a sticker from Nightforce with some initials on it. Now one thing that the NX8 line has in commonality with the ATACR line is that every one of these optics is QC'd. It is checked over by one of their optic specialists. And they only have 17 of these people that are actually doing this. So the fact that this optic line, although cheaper than the ATACR line, is getting this level of quality control, quality care, all of those things is pretty cool. So one of the most attractive features about the NX8 1-8 in particular is the price point. So if you guys notice the price of this optic comparatively to other optics on the market, it's very, very good, especially when you get the Nightforce name behind it, you get that sticker from Nightforce, and you also get just the Nightforce quality in all of those things.
The cool thing about this optic in particular is the form factor of it. So this optic is very, very small, and it's very lightweight. So this is right around 17oz without your lens covers, without a mount, and all that sort of thing. And the optic is extremely short. So if you're looking to get an optic that has a lot of horsepower when it comes down to magnification, good glass quality, and that sort of thing, like I said in the beginning of the videos, we kind of open this. This optic is hard to beat, especially for the price.
Let's go over a couple of the features with this optic real quick. It is kind of common for first focal plane optics, like this one right here, to not have the best brightness settings on it. So as in when I dial the optic down to 1x, I turn on the illumination of the reticle. It's not bright, not all that bright during the day. However, the NX8 line is an exception to that. So this is one of the brightest, if not the brightest, first focal plane optic on the market.
It is, when you have this on 10x, and you're looking at it, especially inside, it's like burn your retina out bright. This is very comparable to an Aimpoint T2, maybe one setting dimmer than a max brightness EOTech or a max brightness Aimpoint red dot. But all I have to say is that the 1x on this is extremely bright--or sorry, the illumination on this optic is extremely bright. Now, the illumination on it only illuminates the center of the reticle, which is awesome. So when I have it on 1x, the entire reticle is not being illuminated.
It's just basically that center ring that's going on in the reticle. Now, talking about the reticle on this guy, it comes with the FCDMX, which is the new reticle from Nightforce that is featured in the 1-8 ATACR that everyone has come to love. It is a tremendous mill-based reticle. It's probably my favorite reticle on the market, especially when it comes down to lower magnification optics. So the fact that the NX8 line has adopted this is pretty awesome.
Some of you guys might be aware of a bad reputation that the NX8 1-8 has when it comes down to a couple of different things. So first and foremost, the eye box has been known to be a little bit tight on this guy. And also, the illumination of the reticle wasn't all that bright. Now, like I already talked about, the illumination is extremely bright. So that issue has been addressed. And just like the ATACR line, specifically the 1-8 ATACR line, these optics got an inline update basically when the reticles got updated to the FC DMX reticle. And a lot of things improved with this optic. So I actually owned two of these NX8's, older ones, quite a while ago. And I was not all that pleased with them, just basically due to the eye box. And I didn't really care about the illumination, but mainly just the eye box and the field of view.
Now, with these newer ones that we got-- so we got a new one in the test just to see if things did get better. Because I was reading online that there's been some improvements made. Nightforce said that some improvements were made. And this optic has been improved dramatically. So this is actually becoming my favorite LPVO, just due to the form factor, due to the size, and the fact that that tight eye box, the field of view's basically the same. You can't really do much to improve the field of view when you keep the tube and everything the same. But the eye box seemingly being improved and the illumination of the reticle being daylight bright makes this optic awesome. So what I want to talk about is just a couple of setup options real quick before we get into floating the turrets and things like that. So just to try and paint the picture of the form factor of this optic, I have it set up on a 7 and 1x3 in our 300 blackout.
I actually think LPVO's in 300 blackout make a lot of sense. But we can talk about that later. So as you can see, nice and small compact optic. It fits this rifle pretty well. And if we want to compare it to the Nightforce ATACR 1-8, you can see that it is significantly, significantly smaller. So when it comes down to the form factor, one thing to consider is the eye relief of these optics. So this optic has a similar eye relief, compared to most LPVO's out there. But with the optic being so small, you have a lot more room to play on the upper receiver. So with the 1-8 ATACR, for example, because of how long the eye relief is, you basically, on majority of LPVO mounts, you have to mount the optic all the way forward and have it push forward all the way on the upper receiver. In the case of this gun, I have it mounted basically in the middle of this reptile amount. And it's actually still too far forward. So I can still bring this optic back quite a bit. So I think that's a good thing. Just gives you a little bit more flexibility with where you can mount this optic on your upper receiver. You have a little bit more flexibility with adjusting your length of pull, your grip angle, all of those things. Comparatively to the ATACR 1-8, you basically can only mount it at one spot and you have to have your stock extended pretty long just to have the good eye relief. But with this guy, it's, like I said, just a little bit more flexible.
Before we get into the how-to behind this optic, we're gonna talk first about just attaching your extended throw lever. So on your magnification adjustment ring, which is extremely smooth, extremely easy, I can do this with my pinky and my thumb without a throw lever, extended throw lever, which is quite nice, you're going to have two little set screws that are in place. One is black and one is tan. If you have a black optic, they're both gonna be black. But one has writing on it and one does not. So what you wanna do, if you're going to attach your extended throw lever, is remove the one with the writing on it. And to remove this guy, you're just gonna unscrew it using the larger hex key from your Nightforce tool. This is gonna unscrew nice and easy.
And obviously you don't wanna lose any components to an expensive optic like this, but I will probably say with some certainty, if you do attach this, you're probably never gonna use that again. So if you do lose it, not the end of the world. And there's nothing in here that's exposed. If you do lose it, and for some reason, you wanna stop using this. But you can just put that back in the box, obviously. Now for the extended throw lever, you're just gonna thread it on finger tight, and then you can take the same Nightforce tool, the same bit, and just give it like an eighth of a turn just to make sure it's snug. If you start hearing aluminum crunching, you're probably over torquing it. And there you have it. You have a extended throw lever that makes the adjustment of the magnification even easier.
Next thing we're gonna talk about is adjusting the diopter to your eye. So what I like to equate this to is tuning the optic for your eyeball. So what that means is everyone that looks through your optic is gonna be a little bit different. So if you have really good eyesight like I do, you actually probably don't have to adjust this all that much. And when you do adjust it, you're probably not gonna notice much of a benefit. But if you don't have the best eyesight, adjusting this can dramatically improve your experience with this optic. So what you're gonna do is you're just going to grab the rear of the optic and this ring right here that's in between the magnification ring and the end of the optic. And you're just gonna rotate these in two different directions to loosen it up. And once you loosen it up, you're gonna notice that this guy starts to spin.
And the way you're gonna set this is you can do it a number of different ways. So what I like to do is I actually like to go outside, go out to the range or something and look at something that's about 50 yards away, something that has a little bit of detail to it. So whether it's a piece of paper with a letter on it or just a USPSA target, just something that has some distinct features that as I adjust this, I can start to see it gets clearer or more blurry. And what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna set the scope up on a rifle or whatever, or you can do it handheld and just adjust this until that target at 50 yards is as clear as possible. And now what I'm gonna do from there is I'm going to take it and look at something that's very plain, like a wall. I can do this at 10 yards, 25 yards, doesn't matter. And I'm going to make sure that the reticle is still very crisp. I'm gonna do that on 8x magnification. So doing it at 50 yards, looking at the target, I'm gonna do my 1x and then I'm going to zoom all the way in, looking at the reticle, adjust it even further, looking at something like this table or a very plain wall, like I said, and make any fine-tuned adjustments to make sure the reticle stays perfectly sharp and crisp to my eyeball as well.
Now, like I said, I have really good eyesight, so I actually don't have to adjust these all that much. So if you don't have the best eyesight, you may have to adjust this quite a bit. Now, once you get this part of the optic adjusted, so what you can do is you're just gonna loosen this ring all the way up, turn this guy to where you want it, and once you're done, you're just going to tighten this ring back down, give it a good hand snug crank there, and you'll be good to go. Once I got it set, once I got this ring tightened back down, one thing that you can do is you can set a little paint pin mark there just to have a visual indicator if this thing gets bumped and your adjustment setting has been moved, now you know, I will say that your zero can be thrown off to your eye if this is messed up, so that's why it's important to know if this guy has been adjusted without your knowing.
So moving on to the elevation and windage turrets, they are capped obviously, so we like to have our elevation and windage shirts capped on our LPVOs because generally, generally, these are used on standard carbines and we're doing other things with our guns like basically having them slung, we're moving around and things like that, so we don't want these turrets to get bumped by accident and thrown off our zero. So generally, like I said, with these type of optics, we like to have these guys covered just to protect from those bumps and accidental manipulations to our turrets basically. So these guys are .2 MRAT adjustments, so not the finest adjustment out there, so the ATACR line, the 1-8, does have .1 MRAT adjustments, and that is just specifically because this is not a precision, intended to be a precision optic. It does have the same reticle as the ATACR 1-8. It has the capability of being that role, but just something to note is that it's .2 MRAT, not .1 MRAT, which is still a very fine adjustment. But when you're going to zero this guy, it's extremely simple.
You're just going to zero your gun like you normally would by just adjusting your turrets up and down, left and right, however you need to, and once you got your turrets where you want them and you need to zero them, so what that means is, let's just say, when I zeroed my optic, I had to go up 1.1 mils, I had to go right 2.1 mils. Now I want to float my turrets, what that means is I'm going to want to reset my turrets to zero and keep the optic basically where it's at. So this is where this Nightforce tool's going to come handy again. You're going to notice on both of the turrets, there's going to be a set screw on the side of it, and there's only one screw.
Now to get these turrets floated, it's pretty simple, you're going to take your Nightforce tool and you're going to use the larger hex key and we're going to loosen the set screw. You really only need to go about two full turns, maybe three, and as I loosen this, I want to keep my thumb on top of the turret, applying pressure to the turret so I accidentally don't, so I don't accidentally rotate the turret while it's still engaged and therefore it's not on zero anymore. And then once it's loosened up, all you got to do is turn it, you're going to notice that the clicks are no longer there, this guy just kind of freely spins.
And then once I get it back to zero, so as in the zero is back to zero, then I'm going to place my thumb back down on the turret, make sure I have positive tension on it and I'm going to tighten it back up and just give it right to the point where you meet resistance and give it just a hair more and you'll be good to go. And then from here, just make sure you can rotate and still get those clicks and then just go back to zero and you're good to go. And you do the same thing with your elevation turret.
Now if you're looking at Nightforce LPVOs and you're trying to decide between this one or the ATACR 1-8 and you're wondering why is there such a significant price increase from this guy to the ATACR 1-8 especially when this guy is lighter and smaller, has the same reticle, the illumination is just as bright. Why is the 1-8 ATACR so much more expensive?
To be more specific, the durability and the field of view of the ATACR 1-8 is going to be much better compared to the video list. I think you're going to be able to notice a clear distinction between the two optics. But when it comes down to the light transmission, yes, the ATACR 1-8 is gonna be better. But I don't think you're going to notice under most lighting conditions comparatively between the two optics. But just to note, that is the reason why the price difference is so much different between these two optics.
So deciding if this optic is the right choice for you, I think it's gonna come down to what exactly you're trying to do with the optic. Obviously, for some specific examples, I think if you're building a general purpose rifle, that 14.5 or something like that, and you want to keep the gun as light as possible, going to this optic over something like the Nightforce ATACR 1-8, you're going to notice a significant difference in the felt weight. So if your primary purpose is to try and keep your gun as light, as maneuverable as possible, this optic is probably right for you. Or if you're trying to do something like this 300 blackout here, which is super rad, and you just, again, wanna have a smaller package all around, the NX8 is probably for you.
So that about does it. We went through everything in the box, couple of the how-to's behind the optic, key features of it. If you guys have any further questions about this optic, about should you buy it for your specific build, does it fit your budget, basically any questions at all regarding this optic or basically anything in life in general, go ahead and choose an email at [email protected].