GearExpert

And the Winner of our Dream Hunt For Two Is…

Nov 15 • News • 3480

Well, it’s both a happy and sad day here at GearExpert. Happy because I can announce the WINNER of our “Win a Dream Hunt For Two” Sweepstakes, and sad because I wasn’t eligible to win. Kenneth from Pennsylvannia is a big winner, and he gets to take home a Weaver Gear Package with a TON of awesome gear. From binoculars and rangefinders to range bags and awesome targets, there’s a lot of really cool gear in this package, and altogether it’s worth over $1500, but that’s not even the coolest part of the prize. Kenneth also gets to go on a 3 day/2 night hunting trip at the Record Buck Ranch in Utopia, Texas, where’ll they enjoy some great hunting on beautiful hunting grounds!

Weaver Prize Package with Tons of Great Hunting Gear!

I’m super excited for Kenneth, and more than a bit jealous. The Record Buck Ranch looks absolutely stunning, and this really sounds like the trip of a lifetime. We’re all really happy to be able to give away prizes as cool as this one for our “Win a Dream Hunt for Two” sweepstakes. Stay tuned for more in the future!

OpticsPlanet • 4 Comments on And the Winner of our Dream Hunt For Two Is…
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Brilliance Award-Winning Nikon Monarch 3 Binoculars with INSTANT Savings!

Nov 14 • News • 9079

I recently wrote about Nikon’s Monarch Madness sale, which gives you instant savings on some of their most popular binoculars: the Monarch 3s and Monarch 5s! This deal is still going on, but not for much longer, so make sure you get your new Nikon Binoculars by November 20 to enjoy $50 off!

But there’s an exciting new side to these binos, as the Nikon Monarch 3 8×42 Hunting Binoculars were just recently awarded a Brilliance Award for Best All-Around Binoculars! We knew these were going to be some of the world’s best binoculars about a year ago when they were first released, so we made the video at the top of the page to let you know the features and capabilities you can expect. They’ve more than lived up to expectations.

Monarch 3 Binoculars from SHOT Show

The amount of time Nikon put in designing these binoculars is apparent right away. The prisms are really outstanding, with silver alloy phase correction to minimize image degradation due to different phases of light passing through the prisms. Of course, an extra amount of light passes through the prism due to the fully multi-coated lenses, so you get a very bright image that’s sharp and clear. You also get the tough waterproof quality you’d expect from Nikon Binoculars, so it’s good to know these will stand up to a fair bit of abuse and rough conditions as you hunt, bird or partake in some nature observation.

Nikon made sure these binoculars are versatile for many users, so the eye relief is very generous and will be plenty for most eyeglass-wearers. The 8×42 power makes them perfect for a ton of different activities, as they’re lightweight yet powerful. I really like to use these binos with the Nikon Prostaff Harness, which you can get with the Monarch 3 8×42s for only a few more dollars. This harness makes it easier and more comfortable to carry the binoculars (they’re quite comfortable with the included strap, but this makes it even better) and it helps you hold the binoculars steady for a clear view.

Monarch 3 and 5 at SHOT Show

It’s not really surprising that these Monarch 3 Binoculars won this year’s Brilliance Award for Best All Around Binoculars. They’re perfect for so many different applications and have unreal quality. With the Monarch Madness Instant Savings of $50, I can’t imagine anyone who’s looking for great new binoculars passing up this chance! Get your’s today!

OpticsPlanet • 4 Comments on Brilliance Award-Winning Nikon Monarch 3 Binoculars with INSTANT Savings!
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Want to Learn More about the 2012 Brilliance Awards?

Nov 8 • News • 6588

There are a lot of great things about November. Football games on the weekends, Thanksgiving, Black Friday (I need a new TV!!!), the beautiful leaves falling and the chill that hasn’t turned to cold just yet. It’s a great time. It’s a time for hunters to get up early and enjoy the crisp air.

Those are all awesome things, but one of the coolest things about November is the Brilliance Awards. I spend the whole year taking a look at some of the coolest gear we sell at OpticsPlanet. GearExpert started shortly before SHOT Show, and that convention was really the first big thing I got to cover here. Since then I’ve seen many of the new products first hand, and I’ve done my best to give you all the details so you can get excited about them. In a way, the Brilliance Awards are a way for you to return the favor! The awards are broken into two parts: the first is the “Customer’s Choice” Awards, and those are determined entirely by your votes. The second part are determined by our very own experts. These guys know their stuff and help me out all the time. They also help you out, as they’re here to answer any questions when you need a rifle scope or binocular for an upcoming hunting trip.

The Customer Choice Awards are my favorite part though. We asked you to vote on the best brands for various categories. Let’s take a closer look at the brands you picked.

First up, we have the Best Night Vision Brand of 2012. There were a few strong contenders here, but you picked ATN. Not a bad choice. I wrote about ATN a few times this year. In September I gave you 5 Ways ATN Night Vision Helps You. Before that I wrote about their co-witness night vision devices. I liked those quite a bit. They’re great for those times when you already have your regular scope sighted in and don’t want to have to re-sight in for a night time mission. We also got to see some of ATN’s awesome Thermal Imagers at SHOT Show, and they were definitely a hit amongst everyone who got to see them. It’s no wonder ATN was picked as the Best Night Vision Brand this year.

For Holster Brand of the Year you picked BLACKHAWK! Another smart choice. I wrote about BLACKHAWK! Rebates, my experience with a BLACKHAWK! Sling Backpack on a Camping Trip, BLACKHAWK! Women’s Clothes and, best of all, BLACKHAWK! SERPA Holsters at SHOT Show! BLACKHAWK! is well known for their SERPA holsters, which have state of the art retention and unbelievable durability. Our product specialists like them so much they picked the BlackHawk CQC Carbon Fiber SERPA Holster as the Best Concealed Holster this year!

Next, the top Red Dot Sight Brand is EOTech. This one is no surprise, as EOTech has long been one of our top brands, and the quality of their holographic weapon sights can not be disputed. Our specialists also named their EXPS3 Red Dot Sight the top Tactical Red Dot this year! I wrote about EOTech a few times this year also, and while I loved seeing the Zombie Stopper at SHOT Show, I think Kate’s Hog Hunt with EOTech was the best post on this top red dot sight brand this year.

Rifle Scopes Do Mean Happiness

Probably the biggest winner this year was Leupold, who was picked for not one category, not two categories but THREE different categories! Rifle Scopes Brand of the Year. That one is certainly well-deserved. It’s no coincidence that when I made the rifle scope picture above I used a photo I took of the Leupold Gold Ring Scopes. But Leupold also won for Rangefinder Brand of the Year. They won this award last year as well, so their quality is as much about lasting performance as it’s about cutting edge technology. Finally, Leupold won this year’s Spotting Scope Brand of the Year Award. They showed a new Gold Ring Spotting Scope at SHOT Show that has proven quite popular. Three Customer’s Choice awards in a single year!

Meade took home this year’s award for Telescopes Brand of the Year. I don’t write a ton about telescopes here on GearExpert, but I love to see a fantastic telescope for a bit of astronomical viewing. Meade brings the stars a bit closer with their award winning telescopes!

Oakley doesn’t really need any introduction. They’re one of the most famous sunglasses brands in the world, and you selected them as the Sunglasses Brand of the Year. Their sunglasses are not only some of the best looking in the world, but they’re also designed to be super high performing. Oakley shades are used by athletes all over the world. It’s not really surprising they proved so popular for this year’s Brilliance Awards.

SOG Knives are great for fighting zombies!

SOG gets a lot of attention around the GearExpert and OpticsPlanet offices. I see these knives featured on Dvor all the time, and I’m always getting to take a look at them. SOG puts a lot of thought into their knife options, and the variety of features you can choose from really makes these knives fantastic for many different activities. They’re especially good for hunting zombies.

No doubt the Steiner Predator Xtremes contributed to their Brilliance Awards win!

Steiner won this year’s Binoculars Brand of the Year Award, and I think that has to do with their incredible durability. I got to take a look at a number of different Steiner Binoculars this year, though I’d say the Predator Xtremes were my favorite. We saw them at SHOT Show, but then I got to go hands on a while later, and they’re quite impressive. Bright, clear glass and tough construction. I loved them, and it appears you all did as well!

SureFire AZ2 on Mt. Rainier

Last but not least, the Flashlight Brand of the Year Award went to SureFire. We saw a TON of cool flashlights by SureFire at SHOT Show, and we took a closer look this summer at a few of their tactical flashlights. Our video producer Devin actually took a SureFire AZ2 on a camping trip to Mt. Rainier in Washington, and it helped him check out some maps and find his way on the trails!

From my experience, it looks like you guys made some great choices for Brands of the Year for the Brilliance Awards, but I haven’t mentioned the most important Customer’s Choice Award yet: The Product of the Year. This is the big one, and we couldn’t be happier to report that you chose our own OPMOD PVS-14 Night Vision Scope was chosen this year! This is a Gen 3 Night Vision device that comes with a head mount and can be used for a ton of different purposes. We are really honored to know that so many of you think highly of our night vision device.

There are many more 2012 Brilliance Awards winners that were picked by our Product Specialists, so be sure to check them all out to see the very best of the best!

OpticsPlanet • 4 Comments on Want to Learn More about the 2012 Brilliance Awards?
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Crimson Trace Green Lasers Are More Visible but Just as Reliable as Red Lasers!

Nov 2 • News • 7147

We’ve had a lot of zombie stuff going on at OpticsPlanet this week, and it’s a lot of fun to mess around with this stuff around Halloween, and many of these products share a green color palate. For whatever reason, green has come to be associated with zombies. Because of this, I worry some people will think green lasers are only for hunting zombies, and this is not the case. Crimson Trace has shown this. You should check out their new green laser sights.

Green lasers have real world tactical advantages over red lasers. Green shows up a lot better to your eye in broad daylight than red. Dependent on the laser, a red dot might not be visible past 20 or 30 yards, and that’s if you’re lucky. In the same conditions a green laser can be visible at 100 yards! The trade off has been that green lasers tend to be larger and not as tough as their red counterparts, and they often eat up batteries a lot quicker. Crimson Trace has been working on this and some of their latest green lasers are virtually identical in terms of size and durability to the same laser in red.

Check out the Crimson Trace Rail Master. That’s the red version, but there’s now a Green Rail Master! The green version may be a bit more expensive, but the battery life is fantastic, and it’s very nearly the same size and weight as the red version. That’s huge! I just got to take a look at the Rail Master, and it’s one of my favorite laser sights. Of course, one of the main selling points is that it’s a universal laser sight, so it’ll fit a ton of different handguns. It mounts really easily, and while I didn’t sight it in (I was in the office, so no real guns during this test) it seems like it’d be a breeze.

Turning on the Crimson Trace Rail Master Green Laser is super simple!

The one thing I really liked about the Rail Master is the activation. The button was right where my finger naturally rests, and it was no problem turning it on and off. I practiced my draw with a laser activation, and it was second nature in no time. That’s definitely a big plus when trying out a new laser. And there are buttons on both sides, so it’s ambidextrous. Good news for southpaws!

Activation was the big change between the Rail Master and the other Crimson Trace Green Laser I got to try out: the Green LaserGuard. That laser features Instinctive Activation, which places the button right beneath the trigger guard so that when you grip the pistol as usual it’ll turn on. I wasn’t a big fan at first, but after a few minutes it felt a bit more natural. I think I have a tendency to not hold our blue guns the same way I hold a real firearm, so I wasn’t gripping quite tightly enough at first. It soon felt better, but I still prefer the Rail Master’s activation button. The Laserguard does have a master on/off switch, so if you prefer it off when taking some shots at the range it’s a simple quick button press and you don’t have to worry about accidental activation.

The Crimson Trace Green LaserGuard Impresses!

That said, I was impressed by the LaserGuard. The construction was sturdy, and the button was easy to feel when you draw without being intrusive. It looks pretty cool (as you can tell from the photo) and the green laser was super easy to see.

Crimson Trace impressed a lot of people at SHOT Show when they first introduced the Rail Master, so for them to be able to introduce a green variation within the year is pretty darn cool. I was very excited to get my hands on the Crimson Trace Green Rail Master and Green Laserguard. If you want to see these awesome laser sights in action, check out the video at the top of the page!

OpticsPlanet • 4 Comments on Crimson Trace Green Lasers Are More Visible but Just as Reliable as Red Lasers!
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Have some Spooky Halloween Fun with Exclusive OpticsPlanet Zombie Targets!

Nov 1 • News, Videos • 5168

Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year. It’s spooky fun with lots of horror film marathons, trick-or-treaters and, of course, plenty of candy for me! But this is GearExpert, and you guys know I love zombies. I don’t just like them. I love them. I love them so much I recently gave in to temptation and allowed a festering, decaying, decrepit zombie to take a nibble on my forearm. It was a horrifying experience, but also a wonderful one. I got to experience life on the other side. I felt the hunger for brains. My motor skills diminished and all I wanted was to feed.

I ate the camera shortly after this photo was taken.

Obviously, as I’m writing this now, I was brought back from my undead status. I could explain how this was achieved, but it’s all quite technical. I will say it wouldn’t have been possible without the incredibly equipment found in our Laboratory Store.

You can see a short portion of my time as an undead ghoul in the video at the top of the page. That blow from the Mag Instruments Maglite was not a killing blow, but rather the zombie version of a tranquilizer. Zombies don’t respond to tranquilizer darts, but a good knock over the head can slow them down enough to tie them up and cure them.

Fortunately for everyone at OpticsPlanet, my transition from handsome young man to fiendish walking dead monster was controlled and expected, so we were fully prepared. I was allowed a bit of mobility to study my movements, and we tested a number of different optics, such as the ThOR 320 Thermal Imager, to see if they would be effective during a zombie outbreak. The ThOR proved zombies lose almost all their body heat within 3 hours of turning, but it is the most effective tool at determining if someone is a zombie or simply an injured, limping human.

The ATN ThOR Thermal Imager is a great way to see if your loved ones have turned into undead monsters!

Of course, the best kit for dealing with me in my undead form was the Z.E.R.O. Kit. It was actually the laboratory equipment in that kit that helped cure me of the disease. It’s unfortunate that the zombie plague evolves so quickly, as a single cure will only work on a small handful of zombies before the rampant disease resists the cure. It’s a good idea to have the scientific equipment on hand at all times to make sure you can bring your loved ones back from the land of the living dead.

The OpticsPlanet ZERO Zombie Kit is the best way to gear up for the zombie apocalypse!

But you have to keep yourself safe too. And all the equipment in the world won’t help you if you’re not well-trained. Since we don’t all have zombies wandering around to practice our aim, the next best bet would be a zombie target. This Halloween we decided to give you a leg up before the zombie apocalypse comes for FREE! That’s right, we’re not charging you for these sweet zombie targets, and they’re exclusive to us!

Take a look at the three undead targets below. You can get full size version (and they’re nice and big!) on our Zombie Invasion page, but from the pic below you can see what options we have. Having been a zombie, I can give you a bit deeper understanding of the mindsets of the three zombies below. The one on the left was a football player before being bitten, and he still goes for the quarterback, so if there’s a clear leader in your group, make sure to take down this zombie first to keep your group functioning properly.

I am actually the model for the middle zombie. It’s important you watch out for this sort of ghoul. I’m more of an unassuming zombie than a lethal predator. But I lull you into a false sense of security. I make you think you can ignore me. Then you’re bitten.

Fun fact: this is also my method of wooing the ladies. Sixty percent of the time it works every time.

The final zombie is actually the most dangerous. From her still stylish hair to the sway in her hips, you know this lady-zombie could ate men alive when she was still alive, so her new hunger only makes her that much more effective at working her way past men’s defenses. Show no mercy with her. Remember that if you truly care about her you’ll give her undead soul peace.

We had a bunch of fun making these new zombie targets, and we hope you have a lot of fun (serious fun though, cause zombies are serious business) printing them out and taking them to the range for some target practice. Make sure to check out our Zombie Invasion page so you can get these zombie targets!

Enjoy this Halloween, and enjoy what time we have right now to prepare for the coming undead takeover. I’m lucky, as a survivor of the zombie virus I’m now immune and no longer tasty to zombies. I’ll still be training hard though, cause I want to help you survive. The least you could do is give your fellow man the same courtesy. Good luck.

OpticsPlanet • 4 Comments on Have some Spooky Halloween Fun with Exclusive OpticsPlanet Zombie Targets!
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