Good morning everyone, hope you’re all having a wonderful day today. Today we’re gonna be talking about the Vortex 6x ‘micro’ magnifier.
Full disclosure on the Vortex Micro 6x is that we have no relationship with Vortex for this review. I have reviewed a lot of Vortex’s products in the past and I tend to like most of them quite a bit, however, we have no affiliation with them for the review. We paid full price for this optic at OpticsPlanet, actually I believe it was 375$, which is kind of pushing it in terms of price for an overseas manufactured magnifier, but we will get into its performance.
So, getting into the specifics on the magnifier itself, this is, of course, a 6x, flip to side, magnifier for your red dots or certain 1x prisms, though I would imagine it would be very finicky with most prism optics.
In terms of size and weight this is about 4.5 inches long, it has a 28 millimeter objective window, which is actually quite good. It does have multiple mount height options, so it comes in standard with a 1435, which is an absolute co-witness, and then it has 0.2-inch riser, which is currently installed to give it a lower third co-witness, which should in theory co-witness with most of your red dots or at least get very close. It should be noted that I tried this with a lot of different red dots and we’ll get into the varying levels of performance.
As you just noticed, it does come with standard, with a QD lever mount, the same that is on their Vortex 3x micro magnifier, and it works quite well.
On top of that, the mount design is somewhat standard two-bolt mount design, so it is compatible with certain aftermarket magnifiers, the Eotech magnifiers, the Unity Fast’s, I believe as well, though, again, I have not tried those personally, but, again, that is just what I’ve heard that they are compatible to certain aftermarket mounts if you do want to swap them out.
Talking about the mount first, the mount is actually quite good, it has a very positive lock and unlock when it is in the off position, It is very tight, has almost no wobble whatsoever and when you lock it down much the same has almost no movement at all. It’s very positive, has a good amount of force, however, it’s still easy enough to get on and off quickly so that you’re not having to fumble and fight with it when you want to get it in a different position.
Something that is not currently attached is they also have a super tall riser, a 193 riser, so if you did want to use it with something aftermarket, like this is an SKD tactical riser on the SIG Romeo 7 that does push it up to a 193, so if you do want to use it just out of the box with some super tall optics, you can definitely do that, which, again, I like, especially for the money, it is nice for it to be compatible with a lot aftermarket optics just right out of the box.
In terms of material and construction this is what I presume to be 6061 or some other similar choice. I couldn’t really figure out exactly what material was on the website, so, again, usually, if it’s a higher quality 7075, usually that is something that they will put in their marketing of front and center that it’s made out of some sort of, you know, above top-tier quality material than just your standard 6061, which is, again, what I assume that this is.
In terms of controls we do, of course, have capped windage and elevation. That is not to zero the red dot, that is to center the reticle from whatever red dot that you’re using within the optic window, so that it’s not like pushed all the way to the left, right, up or down.
Because this is a 6x magnification optic, generally speaking, this can be a little bit more finicky with certain like, if you have just a weird height red dot, it could be a little bit more difficult to get that perfectly centered within the window because this is, again, it’s gonna be a lot tighter field of view than a 3x magnifier or even a 4x magnifier would be.
Speaking about field of view, though, on the 6x magnifier, it’s actually quite good, coming in at 19.1 feet, which is around I believe 4.5 degrees or so, but that is actually going to be compatible with some very nice LPVO’s top end at 6x, so what that means personally is that, even though it’s 6x, it’s not particularly tight, for instance, it’s comparable to a 3x magnifier, I believe this one here has 38.6 or something like that field of view at 3x, so the 19.1 is, again, very comparable at 6x.
Overall, while the field of view is tighter by virtue of it having higher zoom level, overall the field of view itself is still quite good in relation to its magnification. So, the field of view is pretty decent, but now we need to go ahead and talk about the eye relief and the glass quality.
Eye relief is quoted at 2.5 inches, which is a little bit less generous than they could be. It is not a super bad eye relief, you can actually get a pretty decent sight picture throughout a couple inch range forward and back, and the eye box, while it is tight-ish I would say, for a 6x magnifier it is going to be a very comparable to nice LPVO’s, nice one 1-6 LPVO’s in terms of its eye relief and eye box at 6x, so you’re not really sacrificing all that much.
This is what they consider to be a micro magnifier and it’s not really all that micro, as you can probably tell, for instance it is about double the size of the 3x micro, even though it’s not double the weight, it’s only about 3.5 ounces heavier because the body itself is a little bit chunky, it’s a little bit more slim-lined if you will, and it is going to be actually a fairly similar size to the Holosun HM 3x magnifier.
For the magnification of 6x it’s definitely not the biggest magnifier out there, though, again, it’s not really what I would consider to be a slim one and it comes in at just under 11 ounces. Now, that’s not particularly bad, but when we combined that with a really nice red dot, like the SIG Romeo 8T, we get a total weight of like 24.5 ounces, which is going to be comparable to a lot of 1-6 LPVO’s with mounts.
No deals found for this data entry. Try other filters.
You can always get a lighter red dot. I’ve used this with the ACSS MD25 or the Primary Arms MD25 with their ACSS reticle because with the 6x magnifier I think you really do wanna have some sort of BDC reticle, so I’ve used it with that, I’ve used it with the SIG Romeo 6H, which is discontinued but it has a very similar reticle to the 8T I should say.
Overall, you can get a lighter overall package and still get all the use out of the 6x magnification that the magnifier provides, but it is still going to be a heavier package than a regular red dot and a 3x magnifier.
A couple things that we definitely need to talk about on the micro 6 is going to be one, it’s glass quality and how well it plays with red dots at 6x magnification.
When we talk about just the glass quality of the Vortex 6x by itself, it is, again, what I would consider to be, pretty good. It’s going to be comparable to most other 6x optics made with overseas Chinese glass. It’s definitely not anything exceptional, but it’s not what I would consider bad either. It’s bright enough, it’s crisp enough, and when you put it behind an optic with good glass, like the 8T, the picture actually looks quite decent.
However, when you put it behind other red dots that do not have the same level of glass quality, let’s say, or they have a more aggressive blue or green tint, that 6x magnification makes that problem six times worse.
Really what you’re gonna do with this optics is, while the optical quality of the 6x is decent and definitely fine, if you compound already kind of decent glass with bad glass in front of it, you’re not gonna have that much fun, so depending on what optic you’re using, a lower end optic like the SIG Romeo 7 where it does have a little bit more tint to it or certain Holosun optics where they have a lot a very aggressive blue notch filter, you might have a really bad time.
What I would then recommend with the 6x is to put a really good optic in front of that. When we do that, though, that leads to price and, of course, size and weight because, of course, we could also use other really nice optics, unfortunately my Eotech 558 is in Eotech for repairs currently because I did break the front glass on that optic, but other high-end optics like the Vortex UH1, the SIG Romeo 8T, combined with the cost of the 6x, you’re looking at nearly a thousand dollars of glass on top of your gun and the size and weight on your LPVO, and you could get some really, really good LPVO’s for around a thousand dollars.
What you don’t get with an LPVO is the ability to just flip it down to a perfect 1x with great night vision capabilities and, of course, you can always just take off the magnifier if you don’t want to with the QD lever, so there are still reasons to have a red dot gun with as much magnification as possible, but there are gonna be some downsides, especially when we start to consider that the glass quality combination of the magnifier and red dot, the size and weight and, of course, the price because all that stuff starts to add up pretty darn quick.
Another downside of running 6x magnification behind a red dot is not a lot of red dots look good under 6x magnification, some red dots don’t look good under 3x magnification let alone 6.Now, you can fine tune the diopter to make the reticle as crisp as possible, but it’s still not gonna look all that good, even a very expensive reticle like we get in the SIG Romeo 8T that has, you know, your ballistic drop holds of 5, 9 and 15 MOA, you can make it as crisp as you can, and it definitely looks the best out of any other red dot, standard emitter red dot that I’ve used, but I was very selective with my words the SIG Romeo 8T looks the best, but that does not mean that it necessarily looks all that great.
When using a very high quality optic like the Romeo 8T and the 6x magnifier, you can definitely get good enough performance out of it. The red dots definitely don’t look very crisp, very sharp.
We were, again, able to take this combo here, plus the ACSS MD25, both of them out to 500 yards without much issue whatsoever, because we have very nice BDC holds in both of the optics and, again, lining up shots at four or 500 yards with 6x top-end magnification really isn’t that hard, again, we’re just kind of fighting with the reticle little bit and we’re fighting with the downgraded glass quality versus LPVO because an LPVO will definitely look a lot better on 6x versus this in just about any red dot on the market.
We’ll try a couple more at 4 and then we’ll go to 5!
There it is, there it is!
Nice, I’m actually very happy with out of the 12.5 custom SIG Romeo 8T obviously excellent, and then Vortex 6x micro does ok.
I have been fairly harsh on the Vortex micro 6x, but I do think I have been fair in my criticism so far. There are some genuine advantages to running a 6x magnifier versus a 3x magnifier, so, again, at those extended distances, even though the reticles are not quite as crisp as you would like them to be, most of the time it’s gonna depend on your eyes and your playing around with the diopter as well, you still do get much more positive identification, you can spot your misses much easier, which is something that I was able to very quickly correct whereas with a 3x magnifier at say four to 500 yards, to shooting 55 grain 556, it is much, much harder to spot your misses.
With 6x magnifier, it’s one much easier to spot where you hit on the target in general, but also where your shots miss, should you miss a shot. While there are notable and objective detriments to running a 6x magnifier behind basically any red dot on the market, there are also notable and objective improvements and increases in performance in certain scenarios.
You just have to ask yourself a question do those positive attributes and increases in performance and, again, I would say probably beyond 300 yards and between three and 600 yards, you’re gonna get a lot, not necessarily a lot, but you’re gonna get some sort of increased performance, increased identification, increased visual awareness, if you will, on those targets at those extended ranges, but, again, you have to ask yourself is that a role or is that an area that you need improvement in versus a standard red dot and a 3x or a 4x magnifier.
It’s really gonna come down to how you’re running the gun, in what circumstances you want it to do a little bit better in because, again, another downside of a 6x magnifier is it kind of almost loses performance inside of 100 yards because sometimes at 100 yards, depending on the target size and if there’s stuff in between you and the target and you wanna make sure you are as precise as possible, you do still wanna have a magnifier, but with a 6x magnifier, with a decent field of view, and it does have a decent field of view, but it still can be almost a little bit too much magnification inside those closer ranges where you might want 3x, but 6x might be a little bit overkill.
There are gonna be a lot of cons, but a few of pros as well, and so this will make sense for certain people in certain applications, especially depending on what red dot they want to use it with.
If I had to recommend a specific optic for this 6x magnifier, it’s probably gonna be a very expensive, very nice optic, while there are other optics that are cheaper, that have decent BDC’s, like the PA MD25. The glass quality is a little bit lacking compared to something like the SIG Romeo 8T, which has good glass quality plus a great reticle as well. You also have things like the Vortex AMG UH1, which has good glass quality, but it doesn’t necessarily have a reticle that lends itself to taking extended range of shots because basically you just have to use Kentucky windage at say four, five and 600 yards.
Probably the best optic for this magnifier would be the Eotech, really any Eotech that has two-dot reticle because with that two-dot reticle at least have reference points for say four or 500 yards shooting, and you have basically the best glass quality on the planet, which isn’t going to be holding the 6x magnifier because, again, anytime you put bad glass in front of a magnifier all you’re doing is magnifying that bad glass, so you probably want the best glass you can in front so you can get as much performance out of the 6x magnifier as possible.
Personally, for the size, weight and money that they’re charging for the Vortex 6x, there are certain applications where it makes sense, but overall, I would say that it’ probably going to be a very, very niche optic and a niche application.
Some people might just think they need 6x magnification for everything, even out to two or 300 yards, you probably don’t and you would probably be better off and you wallet would definitely be better off going with something like the Vortex 3x micro for most of the time because, again, in about 90, 95% of scenarios, you’re gonna get a similar or even an increased level of performance because you glass doesn’t look as bad, your reticle is more crisp, and you’re still be able to get enough magnification, enough identification on targets.
This is going to be a very niche optic. That does not mean that it’s a bad optic that just means that it has downsides that in a lot of circumstances might outweight the positives. It’s definitely not a bad optic by any means, the construction is good, the glass quality is decent, the field of view is good. It’s just kind of held back by its design and market segment.
6x magnifiers are kind of hard to justify in a lot of segments in general. The Vortex micro 6x magnifier is a good 6x magnifier, but it’s hard to put it into a role that really helps it excel, especially when you compare to other cheaper, more effective, lighter, smaller options on the market.
