Hawke Compact LRF 400 Rangefinder

[J00SPD29]

Not done a review before so I hope it’s ok and someone finds it of use, here goes:

Firstly, what’s in the box? Along with the rangefinder there is a useful protective carry case that can be attached to a belt if required, a wrist strap, lens cleaning cloth, instruction leaflet and last but not least a battery which makes a refreshing change as a lot of gizmo’s these days don’t come supplied with batteries! The battery is a ‘CR2’, when you need a replacement don’t just pick one up from the first shop you go into i.e. your local supermarket or Halfords for example as you can pay around £5 for them, just type ‘CR2 battery’ into evil bay and you will find them for a couple of quid with free delivery!

First impressions were good, it looks the business and is nicely finished, it fits comfortably in the hand and has a nice rubberized finish that should help reduce the risk of it slipping out of wet hands. First job was to pop the battery into place by unscrewing the slotted screw on the right hand side, care needs to be taken not to butcher these slotted screws as they can damage easily if you use poor fitting coins or screwdrivers. As they are not excessively tight I use the end of a wooden clothes peg, this way you will be sure not to butcher up the screw head of your new toy.

Press the power on button then press it again and hold it down for a few seconds and there’s your range, simple. The only other button is the ‘Mode’ button which is used to cycle through the available modes as follows, ‘RAIN’ – eliminates rain interference, ‘REFL’ - for use in foggy conditions and ‘>I50’ - eliminates interfering objects such as branches and power lines within 150 metres (this mode is of no use for us air gunners as it only works where the subject you are ranging is further away than 150 metres). As I’ve only had it a few days I’ve not yet had chance to see how effective the rain and fog modes work in practice.
Unlike some rangefinders that only measure in metres the Hawke LFR 400 can measure in both metres or yards which is a good thing seeing as many of us still prefer good old imperial measures such as yards instead of metres, gallons instead of litres, inches instead of cm’s and so on. Holding down the mode button for a few second’s switches the measuring unit between metres and yards. Another useful touch is that the little Hawke can measure down to 5 metres whereas many other rangefinders can only measure down to a minimum of 10 metres. Maximum range is 400 metres which is far more than we need for air gunning so why pay more for ones that can measure further!
It has a fixed mag of x6 which is just nice and gives a decent depth of field, at the rear there is an adjustable eye piece to help bring things into focus. Optically it’s lovely and clear, in fact it’s amazingly good for the price. When looking through the viewfinder a series of flashing arrows can be seen running from left to right, these indicate the quality of the distance measurement, the more arrows the more accurate the reading, as always with rangefinders accuracy can sometimes be affected by the type of subject being measured. I found that more or less everything I aimed it at gave a good quality reading, it really wasn’t at all fussy.
The question everyone wants answering is ‘how accurate is it’? Well I put it to the test at several different ranges (all accurately measured before hand with a tape) and several different objects such as buildings, trees and fence posts etc, here are the results:

Brick wall: Actual distance = 30 yards, distance according to the Hawke LFR 400 = 30 yards.
Tree trunk: Actual distance = 50 yards, distance according to the Hawke LFR 400 = 49 yards*.
Fence post: Actual distance = 8 yards, distance according to the Hawke LFR 400 = 8 yards.
Shipping container: Actual distance = 80 yards, distance according to the Hawke LFR 400 = 80 yards.
Garage door: Actual distance = 28 yards, distance according to the Hawke LFR 400 = 28 yards.

*NB: The Tree trunk was large and round so the one yard discrepancy was almost certainly due to my aim of the laser beam and it not hitting the exact centre of the trunk, a few inches either way can make a difference if the measurement is fractionally under or over the complete yard as the units of measurement can only be displayed in full yards so in reality it was almost certainly bang on!

I think that the results speak for themselves, what a great little gadget.

The RRP is £114.95 but I got mine from Uttings who are currently doing them for £94.99 + postage which ends up a saving of approx £15 off the RRP.