The Best Magnification Range - 3-18x50 Riton 3 Primal

Good morning, everyone, this is John with gun.deals, today we're going to be taking a look at the Riton 3 Primal 3-18x50. While this does have an MSRP of about $650, street price is much closer to around 400 to 450 bucks, and a little bit underneath that on sale, meaning that for a 3-18x50 first vocal plane optic this is in that budget but still capable of long range shooting spectrum.

Getting into the basics of the Riton 3 Primal 3-18x50fFirst focal plane optic, this is built off of a 30mm main tube, which is fine for the genre, it's not necessarily the best in terms of overall light collection or light transmission, but it's going to work well for this price category.

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Getting into size and weight, it's about 30 ounces in terms of overall weight, which is in the middle of the pack for a 3-8, it's certainly not a lightweight scope, though there are heavier options on the market. In terms of the size it's almost 14 inches long, so it's a little big and it's a little heavy.

Getting into controls on the 3-18x50, the turrets are very nicely oversized, exposed, tactical turrets, they do have zero reset as well as zero stop, both of which are features you're going to want when it comes to exposed turrets. In terms of the adjust adjustments on the windage and elevation they are in .1 mil increments, which is perfectly fine, that's what I'm used to working in, and they are 5 mils per rotation because they are a little bit thinner turrets than what you'll find on some of the bigger fatter ones that are 10 mils per rotation. In terms of the clicks themselves there is a little bit of wobble in the turrets, they're not super tight like on some more expensive models, however, the clicks are extremely tactile and extremely audible and subjectively they feel and sound very high quality, and if it wasn't for the little bit of wobble in the turrets themselves it would be nearly perfect.

On the left-hand side of the body we have our illumination and our Parallax setting. Our Parallax setting goes all the way down to 10 yards, which is fantastic, and goes all the way out to Infinity. When it comes to illumination on the reticle it does illuminate the entire reticle, which is nice, we have six different settings with an OFF setting in between, which is a nice feature to have.

Moving back to the magnification ring we have a 180° throw between 3 and 18 as well, as a couple different locations to put our included throw lever. The throw lever themselves are also modular, so they have taller versions, they have shorter versions, and you can remove them if you don't want to use them at all. I have the taller version in kind of the standard mounting position where it is 3 to 9 o’clock throw, and the throw itself is smooth enough with a good bit of resistance, and if you're not using the throw lever, the magnification ring does have some good machining cuts into it to give you grip, but I'm using the included throw lever, which makes it quite easy.

Last thing on the scope itself is going to be the diopter for adjusting the reticle to your eyes, which is very important, everybody's eyes are a little bit different, and you want to make sure that that reticle looks as clean to you as it can.

Getting into the usability aspects of the scope starting out with the eye relief and eye box, in terms of eye relief on 3X on the low end you have a very forgiving eye relief, anywhere from about 3 to 6 inches is going to get you a very usable sight picture, and when you dial all the way up to about 18 it settles in right about 3.5 inches and fairly tight in terms of forward and back. In terms of the eye box itself you do have a good amount of up, down, left, and right on the low end, but as you dial up to 18 it's going to get considerably tighter and you need to be directly behind the optic to get the appropriate sight picture. In terms of field of view this is rated at 35 feet at 100 yards at 3x, which is roughly comparable to about 105 feet an LPVO at 1X at 100 yards, so it's in the decent category, it's nothing fantastic, though it's also not bad.

Moving up to the glass quality, this is an area where it does fine for the genre, but it is a Chinese scope, Chinese glass, Chinese body, and it's going to perform very similarly to other scopes in this price category. That's not to say it's bad, it's fine, and they have their very nice coatings or their low light additions that are supposed to make it look a little bit better, however, at the end of the day it just looks fine. It's certainly fine, it's not bad by any means, this optic has been taken out to over 1,000 yards on I believe a 65 Grendel build, and it works just fine, the clarity is fine, the edge to edge looks okay, there's a little bit of chromatic aberration if you're looking at something extremely bright. The glass quality looks fine, it's just nothing special, but keep in mind it is going to compete with just about everything in this price category.

Getting into the reticle itself, this is what they call their LRH, which I believe stands for Long Range Hunting, and it is a very interesting mil grid style reticle with a 2X2 mil grid, it is very loose with a lot of open space, which some people might like. However, I am much more used to a 1X1 mil grid, which obviously gives you a lot more information with a lot less dead space.

The reticle does work, and I've taken it out to over a 1,000 yards usually dialing, though I've used it in both dialing and holdovers within the reticle itself. I'm not a huge fan of the 2x2 mil grid as I would just like a little bit more information in there, especially at longer range that 2x2 mil grid leaves a huge amount of open space where, if you're trying to use the reticle quickly for holdovers, you're not going to have enough information to make a very precise shot at distances, or at a shorter distance at a smaller target you get the idea. The reticle does work, however, the turrets are so nice that I usually just use the turrets themselves, and use the center aiming point within the reticle itself.

When it comes to value, the 3 Primal is in an interesting spot, I really like the magnification range, I think 3-18 is fantastically usable for just about anything, inside of 100 yards all the way out to 1,000 yards 3-18x 50 works well. The reticle is decent enough, it is usable, though I would like it to be a little bit more precise. In terms of the feature set you have very good exposed turrets, good illumination, the Parallax is very nice, throw lever included, size and weight is definitely on the heavier side. In terms of its usability the glass quality is okay, the field view is okay, but the eye box and eye relief are quite good, so it is a usable scope.

As far as price goes, MSRP is about 650 bucks, which is very high, however, the street price is much closer to $400 to $450, which means that it's going to compete with things like the Primary Arms SLX line, your lower-end Vortex line, Bushnell line, so on and so forth, and when you compare it to other scopes in the price category it holds up pretty well, depending on what you're looking for. If you're going to compare it to the Primary Arms SLX line I think the biggest difference between those two is that the Primary Arm SLX line is going to have far better reticles and far more variety in their reticles as well, so even if you get similar features throughout the rest of it, the reticles are just going to be better on something like the Primary Arms line. If you're trying to compare this to like the Vortex Diamondback, that I reviewed not too long ago, I think this easily beats out the Vortex Diamondback, even if it's about $50 more expensive.

It's certainly not a bad scope, it's certainly usable, and it's cheap enough that you can take it out to 1,000 yards or longer if you really want to, the turrets are nice, the reticle is okay, and some of the other features on the scope are decent enough, magnification range is fantastic. So, if you're looking for something a little bit different or you find it on a killer deal then it might be something to look up.

In terms of deals right now this is on at OpticsPlanet for $415, not including a $75 mail and rebate so that brings it down to the low $300 range, and for that money I think it competes pretty well. If it's about $500 or more then it's probably not worth it and you can probably look at some other options on the market.