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Northtac Ronin P-12 - Budget Shake Awake Red Dot
Updated
46 months ago
Good morning, everyone, this is John with gun.deals, and today we’re gonna be taking a look at the Northtac Ronin P12.
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Personally, my favorite is still SIG Romeo 5, as it is an excellent, very high value optic, but I am sure there will be some divisive opinions down there.
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Full disclosure on the Northtac P12, Northtac did send out a full suite of their optics to test, so we will have videos on all of them shortly and you possibly have seen some of them already.
The P series of Northtac optics, they have the P10, P11 and the P12. They’re all very similar in terms of feature sets, performance. The main difference is going to be in the mounting systems, so the P10 has a dedicated low mount, so an integrated low mount, the P11 has an integrated high mound, and then the P12, which we have here, is kind of your standard T1, T2 clone, if you will, so it takes any sort of additional mounts that you want to throw in there, it has an included absolute riser, but, again, you can swap out that mount for whatever your heart desires.
For me, personally, the P12 makes the most sense as it is the most modular, and most versatile in terms of you can throw on whatever mount you want, however, if you’re looking for like a dedicated low mount, the P10 is currently on the Kalashnikov KR9 behind me, and for that, with a very low comb height makes sense because you don’t really need a riser.
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Product
Price
Store
MPN
UPC
KALASHNIKOV USA KR-9 USED GUNS
$1,999.99
Guns.com Used Guns
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811777020654
KALASHNIKOV USA KR-103 USED GUNS
$2,999.99
Guns.com Used Guns
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811777020876
Kalashnikov KR-103 762X39 Side Folding Stock Red Wood KR-103SFSRW
$1,349.00
Gunprime
KR-103SFSRW
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Getting into specifics on the P12, this is, again, a micro red dot 20 millimeter red tube, very similar to a lot of other red dots on the market, and, of course, importantly, uses T1, T2 style mounts, so you could swap it off if you needed to.
Getting into the optic body and construction, I believe it is all standard 6061 T6 aluminum, which is as far as material goes, is basically the gold standard in the industry. The whole strength on these micro style red dots is almost never the issue, these bodies are incredibly tough, incredibly durable, I have done terrible things to many of these style optics, including this optic, which we’ll get into a little bit later on.
In terms of the body itself, you have very nicely protected windage and elevation knobs, your only two controls are going to be PLUS and MINUS buttons on top that are rubberized, they’re very tactile, they’re very clicky, they make nice audible sounds, so in terms of that they’re quite nice and, of course, they do PLUS and MINUS things to your illumination settings.
On the side here we have a 2032 battery tray, again, very standard, it’s not the slimmest red dot on the market, I know some people really like the Holosuns with the side loading battery tray, so it doesn’t really take much in your personal vision, but, again, this is not the worst, not the smallest on the market either.
In terms of the battery life itself, it does have all of the features you could want there, so it does come with a claimed rated 50 000-hour battery life, which is, again, fairly standard for most micro red dots. Fortunately, it is also combined with auto-ON/auto-OFF technology, which up to this point worked flawlessly on all of their optics that I’ve tested.
The auto-ON/auto-OFF is very similar, I believe it’s programmable so you can change the amount of time before it shuts off, basically after like two to ten minutes it automatically shuts off, and then if it senses motion it automatically turns back on. Since I’ve had it, I have not touched really the illumination at all, I basically set it for a daylight setting and then forget about it, every time I picked it up it’s been ready to go.
50 000 hours of battery life is approximately five years, however, that’s probably at like a middle or a low setting, so at a higher setting, like setting 10, 11 or 12, so on and so forth, you’re gonna be getting more like five to fifteen thousand hours of battery life, but that combined with the auto-ON/auto-OFF means that that battery is going to last basically as long as it can hold a charge unless you’re, this is something that you have on a gun that you’re using literally every day for long periods of time.
Battery life, features in that sort of regard, excellent, the reticle itself is just 2MOA dot, which is, again, for the price point, which is sub 100 dollars, that’s exactly what you could ask for, the dot itself is personally just fine, it’s not necessarily the crispest, tightest dot on the market, but it is, again, for the money, just fine and certainly not starbursty or bad like other dots have been.
In terms of the brightness settings, I believe you have 12 brightness settings, 10 daylight, 2 night vision settings, if I’m remembering properly. It definitely gets more than daylight bright if you max out the brightness settings, you get a dot that is fire bright and when I’m outside, shooting this in direct sunlight, I usually even have it on max or one or two steps below max, again, depending on the exact conditions of that day.
It gets more than bright enough, unfortunately, it does still have the same issue that I had on the M10 in terms of its refresh rate. On the top, three brightness settings, it’s very good and you really won’t notice a refresh rate issue, which is the dot, you can kind of see it turning on and off due to the refresh rate. On lower brightness settings that’s where it becomes noticeable, and you will get a very pronounced flickering effect, so if you’re in sort of a low light scenario, when you’re transitioning from target to target, you will definitely get a bit of a broken pattern as you’re transitioning. Not necessarily the biggest issue, and if you’re shooting in full daylight all the time, you’ll really never notice it, again, it is something worth noting that the emitter on this very budget red dot is probably just a little bit sub-optimal. The dot itself looks good, but it does have a bit of a refresh rate issue, again, when you’re at the lower brightness setting.
In terms of the glass quality, notch filter, distortion, all that sort of stuff, it’s actually quite good, again, on par with just about every other budget red dot on the market. It does have a noticeable blue notch filter, not as bad as some other optics on the market, but it is definitely a noticeable blue notch filter. The glass itself looks just fine, fortunately, on this optic there is very little distortion, there’s zero to very, very minor magnification, so it is a very good, very nearly perfect image.
When it comes to overall light transmission, while it is perfectly usable in white light or, of course, full daylight scenarios or mixed lighting conditions, if you will, for night vision shooting or basically no light scenarios, I don’t believe that the glass quality, the light transmission on this would be optimal for that sort of thing, though, again, depending on your circumstances, you might be able to make it work.
One area where the P12 actually has a leg up and an advantage over other budget red dots, like SIG Romeo 5, Holosuns and Vortex, their budget red dots, is that the included mount is actually quite a bit better in terms of its design, the included mount on most of your SIG Romeo 5s and Holosuns is kind of that very thin, pathetic mount almost, it has no integrated recoil lug and a very tiny crossbolt. On the P12 you have a much larger crossbolt, it is, unfortunately, a flat-head, which I’m not the biggest fan of it, I can definitely make it work, but, again, I would prefer a hex-head or something similar to that.
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It does, however, have an integrated recoil lug, which is quite nice, as well as the mount is much more substantial in terms of the material there, so it does have, again, you can get a lot of torque on this crossbolt, I think when I was doing the drop test on it to 50-inch pounds on there, but, again, the mount that’s included here is much better than what you’ll find on a budget Holosun, budget SIG, budget Vortex red dot, which is, again, for the money that they’re charging for these nice, if you’re not looking to upgrade the mount later on.
All the testing that I’ve done on the P12 has been on this 10.5-inch 7.62x39 upper receiver, we got it zeroed, put a couple hundred rounds through it and then did some drop testing. Now, the drop testing that I did on here was mostly just to test the durability of the optic itself, if it encountered a couple harsh impacts, is it going to shift off target at a certain distance, is it going to just straight up die, is the glass going to shatter out, that sort of thing.
As I mentioned earlier, these bodies intend to be incredibly durable, even though they’re just 6061 aluminum, how small and compact they are makes them very tough just by design and just by their nature, for instance, this SIG Romeo 5, which, again, I’ve done terrible things of this, if you watch the video on the mounts that I did quite some time ago, I think I ended up dropping this red dot like 30 times, not to mention its own personal drop test that I did quite some time on it, so that one there. The bodies are not really the issue usually, if something’s gonna die on one of these is going to be the electronic, something just isn’t quite connected properly and so when it encounters a harsh impact it dies.
Fortunately, in combination of the body and the upgraded mount, after several drops, I was just doing shooting at a steel target at about 80 yards, it’s 11.5 by 18 steel target at 80 yards. I did three shots just as a control group, just to verify that I was on target, at least at that distance, shoulder height drop onto the optic, three more rounds, optic hadn’t shifted, nothing died, nothing, no issues there.
Another drop test from, again, shoulder height, three more rounds, again, no issues, the point of impact, shift,while there might have been some, was certainly not major, not enough to throw me off at, again, 80 yards on reduced-sized target. If I had to guess, I would say there probably is going to be some point of impact, shift, again, depending on the gun itself, the torque on the mount and the optic body itself, however, this test in general was just a little bit simpler, just something to see if the optic could actually take a couple sharp impacts without dying and without shifting off target at a certain distance.
So, at the end of the day, I think that these retail for about 90 bucks, which is one of the cheapest red dots on the market, just underneath in terms of price of the SIG Romeo 5 and cheap Holosuns, Vortexes as well, and in terms of performance it slots kind of right underneath it, so at a dollar-to-dollar level , personally, it’s on par with other budget red dots like, again, the SIG Romeo 5, Holosuns, Vortexes, so on and so forth, and, again, it performs at its price, at or slightly above its price, so I do consider it to be a very high value option, and if you want a one-and-done solution, you don’t want to swap mounts like I recommend on, again, those other cheap red dots, this does come with a fairly decent mount.
The main downside of this is it’s not gonna have the same track record as those other red dots do, it’s gonna be a little bit cheaper, the performance is gonna be a little bit lower, especially when we’re talking about the dot clarity and the refresh rate, which, again, are gonna be a little bit sub-optimal. Other than that, though, this is a very high value optic that, again, if you’re on a super tight budget and don’t wanna spend the extra 20 to 30 dollars in some cases on those other red dots, it can make sense.
Is it perfect?
No, but for the money it leaves very little to complain about, so with all of that out of the way, guys, let me know what you guys think of the Northtac Ronin P12, and if there’s any other sort of budget red dots that I should be comparing it against.
