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The Best Midrange LPVO - Primary Arms Nova 1-6 (SLX Gen 4 ACSS NOVA)
Updated
13 months ago
Good morning, everyone, this is John with gun.deals, and today we're going to be taking a look at the highly anticipated Primary Arms Gen 4 SLX 1-6 with their Nova reticle.
Full disclosure on the Primary Arms SLX 1-6 Nova that we have here is this was sent out to us by Primary Arms, I got this sample before they have been released, I believe they're on pre-order right now, I've had it for some time and I've been doing a lot of testing on it, and also just using it quite a bit because it's quite a bit of fun.
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Getting into specifics on the SLX Nova that we have here from Primary Arms, this is part of their Silver line, they also have the GLX and PLX, which are Gold and Platinum. SLX is not the cheapest line they have because they have the Classic series below that, but SLX is definitely their highest value products ranging from anywhere from 250 to 400 dollars, depending on what specific product it is, so definitely in that budget category, but not super cheap like some other products out there, and they're not sacrificing too many features either.
Getting into specifics on this optic, you have a LPVO that is a 30 millimeter main tube, 24 millimeter objective lens, all good there, one piece body, it is 10.4 inches long, and 17.9 ounces without the scope covers that it does come with. Those usually break whenever I'm using them, and I do drop all my optics so they usually fall off or I end up just not using them at some point.
In terms of size and weight compared to other LPVOs, 17.9 ounces is definitely on the lower end of the spectrum in terms of weight, 10 and a half inches is pretty standard, it's not quite a compact LPVO, but fairly standard. Sub 18 ounces is a very good, that means, even with a slightly heavier mount like this Warne 193, you're looking at a total package of like 22-23 ounces, which is lighter than some basic other LPVOs out there.
Getting into some of the features that you get with the SLX, this is a mill optics, so this is in mill increments, I believe the windage and elevation are in 0.1 mil increments, fairly decent as well, nothing too special, this is definitely more of a set and forget style of optic as you really don't want to be messing with the turrets all that much. On the left hand side of the optic we have our illumination dial, which does control perhaps the best illumination on an LPVO on the market currently, that's basically the main selling point of the optic, though there are also some very good features that we're about to get in as well. All the new SLX lines also come with a removable throw lever that has two screws holding it in place, and so they're also compatible with other throw levers. Primary Arms is coming out with a bunch of different designs, taller ones, shorter ones, so on and so forth, so you can get one, if you don't like the one that it comes with, you can get one that fits your needs or you don't have to have it on there at all because it is removable.
Moving back from there, the last thing on the optic body is going to be the rear diopter for adjusting the reticle to your eyes, everybody's eyes are a little bit different, so you want to make sure that that reticle is sharp and clear to you. You don't really want to be using it to adjust the way the image looks because it's meant to focus the reticle to your eyes, not necessarily adjust the way the image looks.
Getting into some of the usability aspects, that's going to be your eye relief, your eye box, and your field of view. Eye relief on the scope is rated at four inches at 1X, and you do get a very, very forgiving eye relief at 1X as well as a pretty forgiving eye box as well, so you can definitely use it in less conventional positions, around cover, on top of cars, in cars, so on and so forth, it is definitely very usable at 1X in terms of its eye relief and eye box. Whenever you go up to 6X the eye relief and eye box does tighten up quite a bit, it's still very usable, but if you're at 6X you're probably beyond two, 300 yards, hopefully in a fairly stable position, but just note that it does tighten up quite a bit, it's still forgiving for 6X magnification, but it is going to be quite a bit tighter than that what you're getting at 1X.
The field of view on the optic is another Stellar performance aspect, you have a field of view of 1x, at 1X of 120 feet, which, if you know, my rating anything above 100 is good, anything above 110 is very good, and anything above 120 is top tier phenomenal. This does have a field of view at 1X at 100 yards of 120 feet, which is top tier phenomenal. There's only a handful of products on the market that are going to have a better field of view than this optic, 120 feet is excellent, and now while that is nice to have at 1X because it gives you almost like a wide screen look, you can just see a ton through the optic. Where that really is going to start to pay off is at all the other magnification ranges where you can see more of that magnified image, 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, 6x, so on and so forth. In terms of actually using the optic it is a very easy optic to use, at 1X you have a very forgiving field of view, very forgiving eye box, eye relief that does tighten up a little bit as you increase the magnification, but it is still definitely what I would consider to be usable, paired with a phenomenal field of view.
Getting into the glass quality itself, this is a Chinesium optic, so you're going to be getting glass quality on par with most other budget Chinesium scopes, which is actually pretty good. This is going to be nothing special, it's definitely going to be bright enough, crisp enough. I did not notice any terrible chromatic aberration or just being really dim, it's bright enough, it's crisp enough, it's nothing to write home about, it's certainly nothing special, but it is going to be just fine, especially when you're considering a price point I believe of about 340 dollars, it's going to be right in there with any other scope in this price category.
The most important part of this scope is going to be the reticle, for most people, myself included. Anytime you're buying an optic you're basically trying to marry that feature set, magnification range, so on and so forth, with that reticle, those are going to be the two most important aspects of the scope, and then everything else is just icing on top. The main selling point of the Nova reticle is going to be that they have kind of copy and pasted what other optics manufacturers have done with certain LPVOs, and that is the fact that they are using a fiber optic wire illumination system, that is a very long thin wire that sits in the middle of the glass, and they hit that with a LED emitter, and it shows up incredibly brightly. So, what you get on 11 magnification is something that is much brighter than some red dots even, and it is certainly more bright than you will ever need, not kind of daylight bright, not close enough truly daylight bright and something that, sometimes I'm all the way down on like setting seven like it would be with a red dot.
It's better at than a red dot is because it is a very fine fiber optic illumination, not an LED emitted onto a pane of glass, it is also much, much finer than like a 2 MOA red dot, and so if you turn down the brightness you can get it very, very nice and crisp, super refined, super precise, versus a 2 MOA dot that might look a little oblong or bloom out or if you have an astigmatism might look really terrible. This optic, even though it gets as bright as a red dot, is always going to be more crisp, more clear, more refined, if that makes sense.
For me, why that is so important on an LPVO or really anything that you want to shoot quickly with is the fact that that provides your brain immediate contrast, and you know exactly where that reticle is at all times, for instance, if you have another reticle, let's say one of their horseshoe reticles, and the illumination isn't quite as good, you point out at a target that's a little dark or it's just very bright outside, and you may not know exactly where that reticle is in relation to your target without really focusing on it. With this true red dot bright illumination that is still very refined and very precise, you know exactly where that reticle is, perfectly at all times.
In some ways it is better than a red dot in terms of the crispness and clarity of the dot itself, or in this case the fiber optic illumination, and it's going to be much faster, no delay whatsoever and understanding where that reticle is in relation to your target because you have such a bright, perfect contrast in any situation, fire hot red dot to put on your target as quick as you can.
For me, when it comes to trying to shoot quickly, trying to transition from target to target, I notice a market Improvement using this LPVO versus basically any other LPVO on the market, except for like the Vortex Viper PST Gen 2, which I've owned a couple of them, have a very similar feature set, but when we compare them we're going to see that this actually has some pretty big advantages over that scope.
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The rest of the reticle, because it is an ACSS reticle, does have some other features built in, you have moving target leads, you also have a very simple BDC down below, depending on if you're using 5.56 or 308 I believe, and then you also have like some auto ranging features, your basic ACSS stuff, though I will say that this reticle is quite a bit simpler than most other ACSS reticles, which is going to be good for its intended use case, which is going to be that for me this optic is going to be the best 0-400 yard optic on the market. Beyond 400 yards certain other features and other LPVOs are going to start to help you out, wind holds, Parallax on two to ten, so on and so forth, and then inside of 100 yards or 50 yards red dots are still going to be kings in terms of being fast and being very easy to use, but for a general purpose optic or something that is going to absolutely destroy inside of that 0-400 yard range this is probably going to be the best optic out there.
One thing to note about the 1X performance is that while the 1X in this optic is good, with a very good field of view, it is still not like a red dot you are looking through quite a few different panes of curved glass, you're not actually seeing a true 1X image, it does look very good, there's very little jarring going on, there is some warping, a very minor fisheye effect going on, so the 1X performance is not perfect, though if you practice or train with it at all you're going to be very, very fast with it. In terms of like true performance maybe it's a couple percentage points slower than like a red dot, in terms of like speed of picking it up, so on and so forth, so the 1X performance is going to be very good when compared to other LPVOs that combined with the fire dot, the fire hot, very, very precise illumination that you get out of the Nova reticle, means that this is going to be one of the better, if not the best, LPVOs for kind of a mostly close range application that can also flex out to three, 400 yards and beyond, if you really wanted to, though the reticle is a little simple for some five, six, seven hundred yards and some other LPVOs out there will do a better job at those extended distances.
I do want to be very clear that this is not going to replace red dots, red dots are still going to be in a lot of cases smaller, lighter, cheaper, more durable, better 1X performance, so in terms of close range red dots are still always going to be king, but this LPVO gives you a very, very nice mix of performance while still allowing you to make extended shots if you so desire or if that's something that you need for your specific application.
Another area where red dots are usually going to do a much better job than LPVOs, especially budget LPVOs, is they’re usually going to be a lot more durable and they're usually going to have a better zero retention capabilities. Unfortunately, with Nova we did do a shoulder height drop just onto dirt and rocks, so we start out, we do a five round control group at 50 yards, I think I was just using some really cheap ZSR m193, not particularly accurate ammunition, we do a shoulder height drop on top of the optic and then do another five round group. It was done in this Warne 193 with the two crossbow torque down to 65-inch pounds and then 25-inch pounds on the eight screws on the rings and, unfortunately, after the shoulder high drop you got a shift in zero of about four inches up and to the left just a little bit, which translates to about 8 MOA.
The optic is fine, it was able to be re-zeroed and didn't have any issues, the turrets themselves did not move because I did check them and they were all just fine, so there was some sort of internal shift that allowed it to not maintain zero after a very sharp impact, and that is going to be very common with a lot of budget LPVOs or just budget scopes in general, even some very high-end scopes will still have a noticeable shift in zero. That is definitely a noticeable shift in zero, that will start to make a difference really anything beyond 50 yards, sometimes maybe, if it's a very small at 50 yards you might miss it because that's four inches at 50 yards, at 100 to 300 yards you are definitely going to be off target.
So, even if that is par for the course or most scopes it is still somewhat disappointing to see, maybe if you had a better scope, though I do think that the Warne 193 mounts or the other Warne mounts that I have are very good in terms of their durability and strength. It is still disappointing to see and definitely something that you should keep in mind, and when we compare it to my previous favorite LPVO The Vortex Viper PST Gen 2 1-6, which has the exact same fiber optic illumination system as this one does, the vortex Viper PST Gen 2 is made in the Philippines, has slightly higher glass quality and has a slightly better 1X performance, it has a little bit more flat, a little bit truer of an image than this does, but that optic is also 150 to 200 dollars more expensive, it's also six ounces heavier and that optic also had shift in zero when given a shoulder high drop, just like this did. This is going to again give you 99% of the same performance, if not a little bit more in terms of field of view, eye box, eye relief, it's also going to be six ounces lighter and in some cases nearly two hundred dollars cheaper which is going to be a huge selling point for a lot of people.
So, if you're going to pick up this or the vortex Viper, I would say at this point, now that this optic exists, there is almost no reason to pick up the vortex Viper PST Gen 2 1-6 because this optic does basically all of those things for make way less money and way less weight as well, so this is a definitely, for most people this is the optic that I would recommend, and the Vortex Viper is just an old optic that probably needs a refresh.
Personally, I think Primary Arms should basically discontinue all of the chevron and horseshoe based reticles, they should all just switch over to the Nova style of Illumination, it would be really cool to see them bring out some more variations of that reticle like with a griffin mill below it, and all of your auto ranging features, but instead of the chevron and horseshoe just go with the Nova fire Illumination in the center and that would be awesome.
At the end of the day, I think that the Primary Arms SLX Nova is going to be probably the best LPVO currently, especially when you consider price to performance in the 0-400 yard use case application, it's going to be certainly one of the best up close, very good 1X performance, perfect illumination, very, very good eye box, eye relief, field of view is phenomenal as well, a very usable optic with perfect elimination, going to be absolutely amazing at 0-400 yards, depending on your use case. Some people, if they're looking at only a close range use case a red dot or a red dot plus magnifier, can make sense, though I really hate using magnifiers, and for more extended range shooting you have other LPVOs and other scopes that are going to perform a little bit better.
For most people though, this might be the best scope currently on the market, if you're in the market for an LPVO.
