Athlon OpticsCronus, Spotting Scope, 12-36 x 50 ED

Well made. Apochromatic lens provides real color rendering and full brightness. But sharpness wasn’t as good as I was expecting for the money. I end up with Kowa 501

It's a beautiful little pocket-size spotting scope delivering excellent color accuracy, clarity and low-light brightness for its size. Its zoom eyepiece moves quietly without any gritty feel at all and with a nice light drag that's just right for zooming without losing your target in the FOV, but the movement isn't quite fluid. Initiating and slowing the rotation of the eyepiece to a specific calibration mark will be a bit jerky , but not enough to throw your target out of the FOV. Its body has a fixed mount, but I thought that its small size might permit scoping from a vehicle with a window mount, but no, it doesn't work except for lofty targets in a narrow horizon, which proved to me that window mounts work only with straight scopes or those with rotatable mounts no matter how small. However, at lower magnifications, it worked nicely in hand while resting both hand and scope on the car door's fully open window (glass pane all the way down). It worked so well this way due to its handy size that I think its designers planned it that way. if you can bench rest this scope at the range at 12-20 magnification, you won't need to bother with a tripod, however at higher magnification the eye relief starts to diminish uncomfortably even with a tripod, which is to be expected to a large degree and therefore tolerable for short periods of time. The stay-on case is missing a pair of snaps or Velcro holds to keep the eyepiece open and free of interference from the open zipper portion of the case. If you're willing to tailor or toss the stay-on case, you'll be happy. I returned this scope and bought the Opticron MM4 Travelscope (50mm) with the SDL zoom eyepiece to free myself of the shortcomings of this 50mm Athlon Cronus, but I paid a lot more.

First of all you will be hard pressed to get this clarity for the money. its very compact so if you are a hunter itll work great. compared to the old model razor the cronus outshines it in most aspects. compared to the leupold gold ring the clarity is very similar. the edge id give the leupold is eye relief and brightness. however the leupold is quite a bit larger. the reason its not for me is ive been using straight eye pieces for so long i cant get used to the angled.

Very clear image. Pretty much totally free of chromatic aberration. I personally felt the eye relief was a little sensitive, but it wasn't so bad as to really be an issue. Also very solidly built.