JSR 3-9x40 Rubber coated Mil Dot

[essexjohn]

Having recently bought one of these on the 'At that price it's worth a try' principle, I thought I'd try my hand at a review.

Packaging.
Nice sturdy well made outer box. Plenty of bubble wrap inside. Certainly mine survived the Royal Mail unscathed.

Contents.
Scope (with fitted pop up lens covers), mounts, 2x batteries, 3 allen keys, cleaning cloth, mounting instructions, scope operating instructions and a comprehensive Mil Dot range estimation/instruction card. In short, everything you need to use this scope!

First impressions.
B****y h**l, that's better than I was expecting!

Mounting.
Totally straight forward. If you've never mounted a scope before the supplied instructions take you through it in easy steps. I did it my way instead and the end result was the same.

Optics.
This is a difficult one for me, as my eyesight is not brilliant, and I always shoot without glasses. This means that the adjustable ocular is screwed all the way out so I can get a clear picture of the cross hairs. Because of this my idea of good clear optics might not match other peoples! All I can say is that, with the preset parralax of 35 yards (and the scope at 9x), I was happy with the clarity of view from 20 - 45 yards. Edge sharpness appears good. Below 20 yards focus was understandably not wonderful, though still clear enough for me to see the black centres of my target cards well enough to shoot them, right down to 8 yards. In this respect no different from any other scope I've owned. Turning the magnification down to 6x or 7x quickly made the close range targets clearer.

Zeroing.
Was very lucky last weekend in having a Sunday morning with virtually no wind or rain, so took it down to the local club. Within 25 shots I was happy with my 25 yard zero, and then 'walked' the zero round the target. 15 clicks left, 15 down, 15 right and 15 up. Zero returned to where it started.

Aimpoints.
After zeroing I set about establishing my aimpoints for other ranges (still using 9x), starting at 8 yards out to 45 yards. This is the first time I've ever used a non parralax adjustable scope in low mounts, and was pleasantly surprised by the trajectory on my .22 Phoenix. Everything from 10 - 30 yards was covered in one mil dot spacing, with 30 yards being 1/2 a dot below the cross hairs and 15 yards being 1/2 a dot above, so all my hunting ranges are easy to remember. 35 to 45 yards were spaced between the first and second dot.

Illuminated reticule.
Choice of 2 colours, red or green. Variable intensity, though frankly I can't imagine anyone using more than the minimum brightness. I found the red overpowered me at any intensity. though the green was quite acceptable at lowest setting.

Overall.
I'm hugely impressed with this scope. I think it looks good on a hunting rifle, it's fairly light weight, should handle the bumps a scrapes of the hunting field pretty well and it's certainly capable of guiding pellets where they are meant to go. This is easily as good as other scopes I've had costing a good bit more.

Price.
Saving the best for last, the price of this scope is ridiculous. £39.99 (+p&p). If this scope is representative of the JSR range I'll certainly be checking out some of their other offerings.

[rabbitstew]

great rite up i must say 5*****

[tootchwood]

Good write up. I had one (px adj type) and it was used on various air rifles and a .22 rimfire. It was considerably better than more expensive Hawke scopes I have used. The only problem I encountered was that the lens caps are easily lost due to poor quality wire used to attach them, and the IR could not be dimmed enough for lamping. It was replaced by a bushnell legend and compares favourably considering the price difference between the two scopes.