Night Vision Add On Devices

Night vision add-on devices are becoming increasingly popular as the price decreases and the performance increases, they have reached a point where night vision is now the go to option over lamping. Over the years the image quality of digital add-on devices has increased massively as the resolution and quality of images obtained through digital cameras have increased and the quality of compact screens to display the image to the shooter have increased in resolution. A few add-on devices have the option of an in-built Laser Range Finder (LRF) enabling distance to target to be accurately determined allowing the shooter to better determine the holdover required as distance can be much harder to judge at night especially when on land you are not overly familiar with.

Pard are the market leading manufacturer when it comes to add-on night vision devices with their 007 range of units. The Pard 007V is the best selling entry level add-on device, the Pard 007S model available both with and without an in-built laser range finder are often referred to as best in class but come in at nearly twice the price of the entry level unit, they do however give better image quality and are easier to use in the field especially in time sensitive situations. For rear-mounted add-ons to work well they have to be used with a scope with relatively low base levels of magnification that have a large field of view such as 3x or 4x base magnification, the scope should also have side parallax adjustment allowing the parallax setting on the scope to be adjusted easily without having to dismount the rifle as parallax is critical to image quality when using an add-on device. We would suggest the Hawke Vantage 30 4-16x50 rifle scope as a basic scope to use a Pard device on as it ticks all the boxes and even the eye piece on the scope is the correct size for the 45mm Pard adaptor included in the box. Other size adaptors are available if required to fit your scope but are at an additional cost.

The advantage of an add-on night vision device over a dedicated night vision scope is that it is not limiting the performance of the rifle in daylight, dedicated night vision scopes will never be able to shoot groups as tight as a day scope as they are limited by the resolution of the screen and camera meaning they can only be used at relatively low magnification levels, at 16x or 24x magnification, which is common on normal days scopes, the image is very pixellated and of poor quality. Being rear mounted rear-mounted add-on devices also use the analogue magnification of the scope so can be used to shoot at higher magnification levels than dedicated night vision units which magnify digitally, reducing the image quality significantly.

Digital night vision add-on devices can be used on air rifles, rimfire rifles and even lower recoiling centerfire rifles however we would not recommend using them on rifles above .22 centerfire.

If you have questions or would like any advice on picking the right night vision add-on for you please call us and we can go through the advantages and disadvantages of the models you are interested in and find the right one for you.