9 months later ...

[DL126]

In December of last year, I made a deposit on one of these scopes.
Sightmark Wraith 4K

I had given the vendor an incorrect phone number, so I had no idea they had tried to contact me. (Guess they never considered email)
I discovered Tuesday that the scopes had finally come in 4 months ago and I got the order completed.

I should have it Friday and maybe get to play with it over the weekend.
I'll probably put it on a 22LR simply because it's cheaper to shoot.
Kind of excited about it.
Hopefully it'll be better than the ATN 4K I tried a while back. (Returned that POS)

 

[DL126]

I've now gotten a little bit of time behind this unit.

Things of note in no particular order:

1.  The image quality is good but no better than the ATN 4K I tried last year. The difference is that the Wraith doesn't suffer from continuous software lockups and screen blackouts like the ATN did.
2. The included light works well out to 175 yards but target definition drops off past 125 +/-. PID might be tough when you get out to 200. Yet to be tried.
3.  The mount for the included light is adjustable. it can be "aimed" and locked down to your liking.
4.  There are 2 buttons and one dial. The dial also functions as a button. All can be located/used w/o actually looking at the scope. (Advantageous for night usage) 1 button is power, the other is camera activation. Most everything is done with the dial/button on top.
5.  The menu navigation is simple and uncluttered. 
6.  Day mode is full color. It works well but make no mistake, it isn't like looking thru a glass scope. And it isn't the same picture quality as what's on your HD TV. 
7. One shot zero uses the same method as the Pulsar thermal units I've used. This particular function wigged out on me twice during zeroing. But it straightened itself out and came around fine. As far as it being "one shot", I guess that depends on how fine you wanna zero it, or how good you are as a shooter. It took me more than one shot.
8. There are reticle options with stadia lines that I "assume" are MOA. But I can't see the damn things well enough to use them. KY windage got it done @ 100-175 yards in the dark on steel targets.
9. Pics/video works well as far as I've tested so far, but I've not spent much time with that. High quality video playback on the scope itself is quite slow to process. I thought it was locked up a time or two, then it'd start playing the video. It has automatic video recording that gets activated by recoil. A 22LR will not activate it. The unit does not come with a Micro SD card. User supplied.
10. I don't know yet if the screen is gonna go dark enough for my liking at night. I've only had it out one time after dark. There are separate menu adjustments for Brightness/Contrast that I'll have to play with more.
11. The objective lens focus is kinda "touchy". Meaning that if you focus it at 25 yards and then move to a 100 yard target, you'll have a blurry picture until you refocus. The focus ring is handy to get to and easy to turn. But if you needed to do it quickly for follow up shots .... well .... we'll see. I'm sure there's more for me to learn.

Yesterday, I took a walk thru the woods with it.
Seems like the FOV might be a bit small also.
More time needed ...

[DL126]

Corn finally out surrounding me and last night I carried the scope out for some longer range viewing.
Still using the included stock light.

I could see deer out to around 200-250 yards.
I knew they were deer simply because I'm familiar with the area and deer patterns.
There was no PID at that yardage.
A dog could have easily been a coyote or vice versa.

Where I was standing, there is 400+ yards open in front of me, and 175 yards of field behind me.
However, there is a thin line of trees separating the two fields.
That line of trees was 10 yards away.
When I'd turn to look at the 175 on the rear, IR light bouncing back off of that line of trees would blind me.
No way to see past them with the scope. (Not the case with thermal)
There are 3 levels of intensity on the stock light.
Going down to the lowest level did not help with the bounce back IR at that close distance.
And it didn't make a lot of difference at the longer ranges.
What it did do was sharpen up the image in the 100-150 yard range.

[DL126]

Last update ....

Replaced factory light with this kit.
Also moved it from rail on scope to rail under hand guard out front.
Made a lot of difference in range/PID ability.
Maybe the nicest benefit is the "dialable" light intensity.
You aren't locked into preset levels.
This is a benefit in short range situations as well as longer ranges.
Easy to get to, and easy to adjust with one finger.

I was disappointed at first.
But after fiddling with it for a while, I discovered that the Contrast setting of the scope has a large and direct impact on effectiveness of lighting. More so than I would have thought.

Good upgrade.

ETA:
Concerning the scope itself ...
It'll go up to 8x magnification, but anything above 4x results in so much image degradation that it's almost unusable. Even in day mode it's pretty bad.

In closing ....
As I've said before on this forum, I don't hunt at night.
My firearm acquisitions topped out a while back, and now my "hobby" is optics.
I enjoy using/trying different things.
It's a learning process.
And one can never learn to much. 

Edited October 14, 2021 by DL126

[bobsguns]

On 10/14/2021 at 8:56 AM, DL126 said:

ETA:
Concerning the scope itself ...
It'll go up to 8x magnification, but anything above 4x results in so much image degradation that it's almost unusable. Even in day mode it's pretty bad.

For me, that alone would make it not worth the purchase. Why have a 8X scope if it won't work on that setting?

[DL126]

13 hours ago, bobsguns said:

For me, that alone would make it not worth the purchase. Why have a 8X scope if it won't work on that setting?

Given the uses and/or yardages that you'd most likely shoot after dark, I would think it's unlikely anything above 4x would be needed anyway.
I don't have the needed experience with shooting after dark to speak with authority on the subject.

As for daytime usage ...
It does work at higher magnification levels.
How effective it is would depend a lot on what your target is I suppose.
If you were shooting one of those big black targets with a large orange dot, you'd probably be fine at higher mag levels.
I had it on a 22LR so I never tried longer range shooting with it. I only viewed longer range objects.
After a 15 yard encounter with a fleeing squirrel, trying to find and adjust the focus ring while following the little bastard thru the scope, I removed the Wraith and reinstalled a glass optic.
The Wraith is simply the wrong tool for that job in my scenario.

YMMV

Image degradation while magnifying is simply the nature of the beast with digital stuff.
Thermal included.
In my experience, how much you spend for the device is directly related to how bad it is.

[bobsguns]

12 hours ago, DL126 said:

In my experience, how much you spend for the device is directly related to how bad it is.

True for everything from cars to clothes to women..........................