Primary Arms GLX 2x Prism - I Get Why People Like It
Updated
21 months ago
Good morning, everyone, this is John with gun.deals, and today we’re gonna be taking a look at the Primary Arms GLX 2x prism.
Full disclosure on this prism is that I do have a relationship with Primary Arms, I am both, a dealer for them and they tend to send me products to review for free. This product I did not pay for, however, it was not sent out to me by Primary Arms, I actually had a kind subscriber of mine, Kevin send this out to me to play around with and do basically whatever the heck I wanted with it, so while I am affiliated with Primary Arms, this optic did not come from them, I didn’t pay for the optic, it’s not mine, so just keep that in mind going forward.
Getting into specifics on the GLX 2x prism, if you don’t know, Primary Arms has their SLX, which is silver, GLX gold, PLX platinum, and in general you have ascending characteristics, materials, glass quality, features, so on and so forth as you go up their line. Unfortunately, with the GLX prism, this is actually an SLX optic, it is made in China, it does not have enhanced glass, and it has not additional features over their other micro style prisms. It is definitely a step up versus their older 3x and 5x prisms, but when we compare it to their new 3x and 1x micro prisms it has basically no additional features and really isn’t deserving of the GLX name, but though they do, again, charge more for it.
But, before we get into that let’s at least go over what is the GLX 2x prism, so as you can see the body is about 5.5 inches long, which isn’t necessarily a micro prism, though it is fairly trim as well, coming in at 11 ounces.
As you see here I have an extra riser installed, it does come with three different risers for low mount and then absolute and then lower one-third, I have Daisy, chained two of the mounts together to give me about a 2-inch height, which is very comfortable for quick shooting up close, which is kind of where this optic shines. As you see it’s probably like 11.5 or 12 ounces or so, which isn’t necessarily in heavy optic, it is going to be lighter than a lot of other prisms on the optic, though, again, there are smaller and lighter optics from Primary Arms in their micro prism.
Getting into materials and construction, as far as I can tell the body is made out of 6061 t6 aluminum, which is basically industry standard at this point for just about every optic on the market. We, of course, have capped windage and elevation, they are in quarter MOA increments, which more than precise enough for most people. On the left side of the optic body we, of course, have our illumination dial, which is a rotary dial, which I know a lot of people like to see. You have two night vision settings and then nine daylight settings, and on this optic the reticle most certainly gets daylight bright, not necessarily red dot, fire hotbright, but definitely daylight visible in all conditions, direct sunlight, it is very bright, and it is also paired with their auto-life technology. Auto-life means that it turns off after a certain amount of time, and then when you touch it, it senses motion, it will automatically turn back on.
The theoretical battery life on a single 2032 is about 20 000 hours, though that’s at a medium setting, you will definitely be towards the top end of their setting, so in theory you’re probably getting somewhere between five and 10 000 hours on maximum, maybe a little bit less than that, but when you combine it with the auto-life technology you’re getting five to 10 000 hours of use out of it, not just, you know, time sitting on the optic, so it will automatically shut off and save your battery as well as automatically turn back on when you need it, which is, again, a very nice feature.
I’ve already mentioned that it does come with several different mounting height options, so if you wanted this on a low mount or mounting it on like an AK or a super tall mount like I have it here, you can do all of those things right out of the box. These are compatible with the mini ACOG mounts, which means that if there’s a specific mount out there that you like more than the Primary Arms mounts, you can go ahead and swap those out. The base mount is very good, the way it attaches to your upper receiver. You have dual crossbolts as well as dual locking lugs, you can easily get 45, 50-inch pounds on the crossbolts, meaning that you get a very secure lock-up to your upper receiver.
Last thing to mention on the optic itself is that we do have a rear diopter for focusing the reticle to your eyes, everybody’s eyes are a little bit different, you’re gonna look through this and have a little bit different experience than I will. On most of my stuff I leave it all in, but, again, that’s gonna vary person to person.
Getting into the eye relief, field of view, eye box, all that sort of fun stuff, this is where the optic really shines in a couple of those categories and then it’s terrible in another one. The eye box and the eye relief on the GLX 2x prism is very good, they have, I believe, a 14mm or 12 mm exit pupil, which is exceedingly forgiving, so they quote the eye relief at 3 inches or 3.5 inches, but you do, of course, get much more than that, and on top of just eye relief itself the eye box is very good, you get almost a full inch in every direction when you’re in the optimum distance behind the optic, of course, that means that basically you can get your eyeballs somewhere behind the optic, you’re gonna get a sight picture through it, meaning that it is very usable in unconventional shooting positions, a little bit easier to running a gun on the move, so on and so forth.
What is not good on the GLX 2x prism is the field of view. Now, Primary Arms quotes it at ‘wide 42 feet’, however, 42 feet on a 2x prism or really any 2x optic out there is what I would consider to be somewhere between bad and very bad. For instance, here again we have the SLX 3x prism with a 3x magnification, this has a field of view of 38 feet, so very similar, but 50% more magnification meaning that this and the GLX 2x prism you see almost the exact the same amount at 100 yards, but, of course, you get much more usable magnification out of the SLX 3x micro prism.
That is gonna be one of the downsides for me personally. It is a 2x prism, it’s not quite as good as the 1x prism in terms of just leaving both of your eyes open and not having any sort of disparity between your left eye and what you right eye is seeing, so it is still usable, but it’s still not quite as usable as 1x optic.
I believe the 1x prism only has a field of view of 76 feet or something like that, though that is, of course, 1x optic and it’s a little bit easier for your eyes to kind of match 1x to 1x versus 1x on your left eye and then 2x magnified image in your right eye, so it’s not really what I would consider to be jarring, it is definitely still usable, however, once you get outside of like 25 to 60 yards, somewhere in there, the field of view is really bad on the optic and so there is a sweet spot for this optic, I know why a lot of people like it, for that inside of 100 somewhere between 25 and 75 yards it really does shine where it gives you a little bit of magnification that you need and want without being too much where it’s jarring to use up close. However, it’s not as forgiving as the 1x optic up close and it’s nowhere near as good as the 3x optic, once you get beyond about maybe 50, 60 yards, in every scenario beyond there I would rather just have the 3x optic.
Another slight downside of the ‘GLX’ 2x prism is that it’s made in China and the glass quality is exemplary of that, it is perfectly fine, it is even what I would consider to be good, most prism optics made in China have fairly decent glass quality, however, with most other GLX optics in Primary Arms optics lines they’re usually made in the Philippines, which in general will give you a slightly higher level of glass quality, clarity, light transmission, all that sort of stuff, like in their GLX 2.5-10 mad in the Philippines has a noticeable step up in terms of clarity, contrast, light transmission, all that sort of stuff, over their SLX lineup.
The GLX 2x prism is really a GLX in name only, for instance, it says it shares basically the exact same feature set as the SLX micro prisms, both the 1x and the 3x auto On, auto OFF on the reticles, very similar reticles, we will get into this one, and they’re all manufactured overseas, so I’m not sure where the extra money is coming in on the GLX 2x prism, and I’m not sure why they call it a GLX at all. So, the glass quality on the GLX 2x prism is good, and I really don’t have any complaints about it whatsoever, it’s just not quite as good as I was expecting from, again, a GLX optic.
The optical quality is slightly better than, again, the SLX lineup of prisms, but these are they’re micro prisms and they’re trying to cram as much in as small and light of a package as possible, and when you have a little bit bigger optic, a little bit better light transmission you can get a little bit better optical quality out of it.
The last thing that we need to talk about on the 2x prism before we get into performance and value considerations, which you guys probably already know how that’s going to go, is going to be the reticle. Now, the reticle on here is the Primary Arms/ACSS CQB M5 reticle. The reticle is going to be very similar to other Primary Arms/ACSS reticles in terms of its features, so if you, of course, have your center chevron, which works as a bit of a BDC with 5.56, it’s supposed to be 5200 for the tip, 300 for the bottom of the chevron, and then you have two dots for 4 and 500 yards. Currently this is on a 10.5-inch 7.62x39, so it’s not quite gonna line up perfectly there, but you also have different holds for the different ammunition choices, barrel lengths, so on and so forth, and you can always true it out to whatever load that you’re using.
On top of that, you have your two-thirds horseshoe, which helps you to bracket targets that also has auto-ranging for moving targets, I believe 8.6 miles per hour at 100 yards, so if you bracket them on the left side, again, with 5.56 you should hit them by aiming at the edge of the horseshoe, and then you also have auto-ranging in the bottom for, I believe 3, 4 and 500 yards for both, height and width.
In terms of feature sets on the reticles, the ACSS reticles are always feature packed, they work very well. I think that it also works very well for this style of optic, which is leaning towards close range work for me personally, again, this has a very punishing sweet spot of about 25 to 60 yards, maybe 20 to 75 for some people, and then outside of those distances I would rather be using almost any other optic on the market for, again, that has maybe a little bit more versatile, little smaller, lighter weight, so on and so forth.
I do think and I do know why people really like this optic, it is very forgiving in terms of its eye box and eye relief, it’s not too terribly expensive, coming in under 400 bucks, I believe they’re about 370$. It’s not terribly heavy at about 11 ounces, and , again, it provides you with some magnification, which means that it’s still usable up close, again, anything under 20 yards, it’s still definitely usable, though not quite as jarring as like a 3, 4, 5x prism, and then it gives you good magnification at say 20 to 75, it gives you a little bit more detail, a little bit more positive identification, and so in that sort of very punishingly small sweet spot it is one of the better optics on the market.
Personally, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense for me when we talk about it from a value perspective, again, I know, I keep bringing it up, but the Primary Arms SLX 3x prism is a smaller, lighter, has a very similar field of view with more magnification and a better reticle, and if I didn’t mention it’s cheaper as well and, again, outside of that sweet spot of this optic, say beyond 50 yards, I would rather have the 3x prism anyways, and it’s 95% as good closer than that, so for me personally it’s just a more versatile optic with nearly an identical feature set, they both have auto-life, they both have very bright illumination, so they’re very usable if you like it for that fast acquisition style shooting.
Again, for me personally, I’m not sold on this optic as a GLX optic in general, it really has basically all the same features as their SLX micros. I believe it came out first and so maybe at that time it was more of a GLX because it was a step up above their other optics, but for me personally, in 2022, unless you’re looking for that specific 25 to 75-yard basically zone where this is one of the best optics on the market, then I would stick with something that’s cheaper and a little bit more versatile.
It sounds like I’m being really harsh on the optic, but when it comes to performance it performed very well, it is a very easy optic to use, I just don’t know why I would select it over basically any other optic on the market, again, unless I was just nailed down into that 25 to 75-yard envelope for basically everything.
Kind of a mixed bag for me and that does not mean that it’s a bad optic by any choice or if you have it you should get rid of it, if you have it, you like it, you love it, it works for you, that’s awesome. Personally, I think if you’re in the market for a new optic then Primary Arms newer SLX micro prisms eclipse it in just about every way, this does have slightly better optical quality and that’s really about it.
