Vortex Micro 3x Magnifier Review - A Great Budget Magnifier
Updated
26 months ago
Good morning everyone, this is John with Gun.deals and today we’re gonna be talking about the newish Vortex Micro 3X Magnifier.
Full disclosure we did pay full price for this optic, we have no affiliation with Vortex and this video whatsoever. I believe we picked this up from Bowtech for 199 on sale, which is a very good deal for a magnifier of this quality, so we have no affiliation with Vortex whatsoever, but before we go any further we should probably talk about some boring specification on the Vortex Micro 3X Magnifier.
Very important on these micro style magnifiers is we have an eye relief of a claimed 2.64 inches, though it feels a little bit more generous than that, the field of view is 38.2 feet because they get very specific on their details which is a good thing and now 38 feet of field of view is good, it’s definitely slightly above average for the 3X magnifier market and so it is something I like to see. Overall, we’re looking at the package that is just under 3 inches long which is a very small package but it still gets it done. Now, the weight is also very small, at 9.5 ounces with the mount so overall this is a fairly small, fairly small package. The material choice is, of course, 60-61 aluminum in a very nice black anodization and it does, of course, come with this very nice flip to side mount. The first thing that people always ask me about specific magnifiers or they comment them down below is, hey, is it reversible, yes, this uses a standard pattern, there really is no standard magnifier pattern, but this does use more standard two-bolt pattern on the magnifier to the mount itself and so to flip it you would simply undo the two bottom bolts on the two-bolt design and you would just turn the magnifier around and then flip the mount to the other side to get it to flip to the left or to the right depending on what you wanted to do.
The Mount
Getting into the mount itself, the mount itself is very good, they did a good job designing it. It does however have one little flaw with it which we’ll talk about on this short 85 AR pistol. So, the mount itself is, of course, fairly small, it’s very compact they did a very good job with it, has their standard kind of how they have it on their new AMG Huey as well. Their locking tabs so you actually have to push down this locking tab before the QD lever will release and allow you to take it off of your upper receiver. It has a singular cross bolt which is just fine and the nice thing about this cross bolt is that it is squared off basically makes it act like a recoil lug on a magnifier not that big of a deal because, of course, this is not affecting the zero on your red dot or at least a very minuscule amount so it’s not important or it’s not necessary but it is still a nice feature to see. It uses a good amount of force and it really locks really snaps into position so I think that the mount itself it doesn’t use quite as much force as the Primary Arms 3X Magnifier, It uses a little bit less force but when it locks into position it is very, very definitive about locking into that position. The design on the mount is very nice, it’s very aesthetically pleasing. To tighten it down or to loosen it because rails can have a tiny bit of difference between them depending on coatings and all that sort of fun stuff. You can use a flat-head screwdriver or some other small device to turn this locking nut on the other side and that will adjust how far it closes when you close the QD lever.
When we get into the bottom of the mount it does, of course, use a semi-standard two-bolt mounting design so I believe this is compatible with the Primary Arms mounts with the EOTECH mounts and I’m sure a few other mounts on the market as well probably the fast mounts… So I believe this is compatible with most other magnifier mounts on the market, though your mileage will vary. As I have it set up right now, I have the singular riser plate installed so it actually comes standard out of the box at a 141 which is your absolute co-witness and then it comes with an optional riser plate of a 1.63. Now, 1.63 you can use on a 141 and vice versa or a 153. Most of the time when I have a magnifier I usually try and bump it up a little bit taller and that’s going to fluctuate for different optics. Most of the optics that I’m running are lower one-third anyways, so it works out quite well, though if you are running an absolute you can absolutely take that spacer and run it at the lower height though generally speaking I like to run it a little bit taller. Because this is the shorter optic body, even though it does have a nicer eye relief or a decent eye relief of two and three quarter inches you still need to have it fairly far back on your rail even on say braced pistol and what that means is your QD lever is very, very close to your charging handle so if you’re running a mil-spec charging handle especially with the gloves on and you really need to get this to like mortar a gun or something if you have a catastrophic malfunction. It’s a little bit more difficult with this very, very long QD lever.
The long QD lever is nice, of course, because you get a lot of force on it, you get a lot of leverage, but sticks out about three quarters of an inch past the optic mount itself. It can kind of get in the way of accessing your charging handle. It’s more of a quirk and a minor downside I wouldn’t say it’s a deal breaker because, of course, on a good AR-15 you’re really not using the charging handle all that much but in case of emergency it’s gonna be a little bit harder. Now, this can also be solved by having an extended charging handle, an ambidextrous charging handle, that will alleviate this issue as well, but it is something to note that the rear end of the QD lever is only about a half inch or so away from the beginning of your mil-spec charging handle. So, you can, of course, simply push this forward, but then you have to crane your head a little bit more forward and depending on your body type maybe that’s a little bit easier for me personally because it’s the combination of the short optic body and shorter eye relief that you generally get in these micro or really any prism style magnifier so this is the perfect eye relief so, of course, if I have it farther forward then I have to go forward even more and crane my head into a more uncomfortable position. So, I like to have it as far back as I can to allow my head to as natural as possible, which causes it to slightly interfere with the rear charging handle. Not a big deal and again depending on where you’re putting it on, not n issue at all if it’s not a rear charging AR-15 again just something to mention.
Optic Body
When we get into the optic body itself everything is done very nicely, the machining on it looks very good, the coating is very, very nice, it’s a very deep black coating which looks very good. You do, of course, have a rear diopter that is very smooth, very quick so that will adjust it to make it look as natural, you know, depending on your red dot and your eyes magnifier, all that sort of fun stuff distance between them, you just wanna make sure that that looks as good and as natural as possible and sometimes your reticle might look a little bit fuzzy so you need to, you know, adjust the diopter again to your eyes to make sure that whatever it is that you’re looking through there looks as good as it can. Not everything is gonna line up perfectly so you do have windage and elevation, they are capped and protected by raised and aluminum ridges which is very nice so in case of accidental or in my case on purpose drops it’s not going to damage those whatsoever. Now, as far as zeroing them goes, you’re not really zeroing the red dot you zero the red dot and you zero the magnifier to the red dot if that make sense, so basically you zero the red dot, in this case Sig Romeo 7S the Optics Planet modification which is an excellent optic especially for the money and a very nice color that I really like which is the OPMOD version and, of course, then you would center that reticle within the magnifier. Now, I used this magnifier as you’ve probably seen if you watched a lot of the gun.deals videos, I used it with the Holosun aims, I’ve used it with the EOTECH 558, I’ve used it with the Vortex AMG Huey. All of those it looks very, very good on, I don’t have any problems with it whatsoever.
The glass quality of the optics mount itself, sorry, of the optic itself looks very good, it’s very natural very crisp the colors are good, there’s not a lot of chromatic aberration edge to edge distortions or I should say edge distortion so the edge to edge clarity is very good. You know, it does have a little bit short of an eye relief, but that’s just kind of standard for these small prism style optics while this is technically a micro 3X prism. You’ll probably notice that the body itself is kind of chunky, but it’s definitely a little bit chunkier than some of the other 3X magnifiers on the market and with the mount it still only weights about 10 ounces. Now, depending on your red dot that means you’re going to be somewhere in the neighborhood or 15 ounces for your total package which is getting close to what lightweight LPVO’s weight. For me, LPVO and a red dot magnifier are very different in terms of their use case. With a red dot, of course, you have a perfect 1X a bright fire hot dot that’s going to be very, very, very fast up close probably the fastest thing up close and then the magnifier allows you to positively identify targets or just stretch it out a little bit further and be a little bit more accurate whereas the LPVO is designed to excel at a wide variety of distances, you know, all the way up to five, six, seven, eight hundred yards depending on the LPVO.
Vortex Micro 3x Magnifier Price
When we talk about the price to performance again currently, I believe, the MSRP is like 440 which is like really high that’s very high MSRP but, street price on Vortex optics are often as low as 50% of MSRO and in this case less than 50% of MSRP. When these originally came to market they were somewhere between 250 and 300 dollars and again at the time I purchased this about a month ago now I was able to pick it up for 199. Now, 199 is close, but not quite the bottom end in terms of budget magnifiers and this doesn’t perform like some really cheap magnifier. It feels very good, the mount itself uses an appropriate amount of force and really positively locks in place, there is absolutely no wobble like no wobble in the mount whatsoever. The glass itself is crisp it’s clear it looks very nice, it does have a slight quirk with the very large QD lever and your mil-spec charging handle, that’s not gonna be a problem for everyone and again it’s just a minor issue at worst, just something worth mentioning.
The other thing about it is because it doesn’t have like a three and a half inch eye relief usually you’re gonna be putting it towards the end of your gun. For me, the advantage of having a full-size magnifier where that magnifier is say an inch, inch or so longer that means that you can actually not put it all the way at the back of your gun, you can push it forward a little bit because, of course, even if this and a full-size magnifier has the same eye relief, the eye relief doesn’t start until that pane of glass right so if you have a three-inch eye relief of an optic that’s an inch longer, it has effective eye relief of four inches, right, so this very, very short optic with a standard eye relief is actually a little bit shorter than a full-size magnifier with the same eye relief if that makes sense, and that’s something to take into account when you’re thinking about what you’re gonna put this optic on because, of course, maybe if you’re running a full-size gun where you’re not limited on rail space, where you’re not concerned about an extra inch and an extra couple ounces then maybe a full-size magnifier would legitimately serve you better.
In this application this is an eight and a half inch 556 pistol. This is very short, this has exactly zero extra room on its rail so I have, of course, a stream-light HLX up front with its tail switch and then I have a this is one of the new GroveTec angled four grips which works really well. I got a red dot and a magnifier and I’m pretty much capped out in terms of rail space so for this sort of gun for this kind of micro style PDW in 556, I might not want a full-size magnifier because I’m already kind of crammed for space if you will. On a different longer gun where space isn’t an issue, sure, go ahead and get a full-size magnifier and maybe that will save you by having a little bit longer mechanical eye relief than this micro would and it means that you don’t have to crane your head quite as far forward, again totally personal preference thing and just something to take into account when you’re looking at buying a magnifier and whatever you’re going to be throwing it on. The benefit of buying the Vortex Micro 3X is that, of course, with that nice, very nice QD leverage, just a little long, but a very nice QD lever, you can throw it behind literally everything.
So, overall, I think Vortex brought a very good product to market. I think it’s priced extremely well, especially given a competition and I think its performance and features are very, very good. There are some downsides that are kind of inherent with all micro magnifiers or just magnifiers in general, but if you want a magnifier for your specific build and you’re looking for something on a smaller side the Vortex Micro 3X is a very good option especially if you can find it for 199 dollars because that is an absolute steal.
