Here's a video.
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My mistake on the 1000. Jeff says "can see bullet holes without full magnification at 500yds" so, NOT 1,000yds mea culpa. He also says "amazing clarity at over 1 mile".
On my Cronus BTR thread, posted today, I did mention that I was at our local air field. It's a full length runway, but I was testing some moderate priced Japanese made 60mm spotting scopes. The Cronus BTR at 29x delivered great clarity, able to render the 2' tall and approx 6-8" diameter runway lights at about 1000yds with snap and vividness. With the right color bacground and lighting conditions, and a .338 or .50cal bullet hole, I would be able to see bullet holes. Doesn't mean that I could differentiate the exact strike position of a .2 moa group from 1000 but I have 15/20 vision.
I don't even have 34mm rings yet to mount this scope. Holding it with one hand on a Velbon medium capacity tripod did give some stability. The Athlon was very close to the performance of a Fujinon Super 60 spotter which was excellent up to 50x on the 20-60x zoom eyepiece. I also have Fujinon 7x50 m22 binoculars which are every bit as good as Zeiss, except Japanes optics will have more neutral color balance than Euro optics.
The real rendering tests wil begin when rings arrive and I can mark exact yardage and post up some test media to evaluate crisp detail and fine parallax focus.
One thing I did notice was that March prices their high magnification scopes cheaper than their 3-24x or 5-40x. This leads me to conclude that the lower magnification scopes are the better product. Typically the high magnification optic is way long and has little eye relief versatitlity. Aside from the 72mm Hensoldt which is a $12,000 scope there are no (eta: high magnification) scopes able to deliver full-magnification without some , if not lots of chromatic aberration and image darkening.
The Cronus BTR has a very long eye relief window at both magnification extremes.
The real point here is that the better clarity may deliver more than the higher magnification. If sold on March optics, great. The 5-40x might really do more than a variable with 60x or 80x top end. The Cronus BTR is a very impressive instrument, all Made In Japan. While the S&B 5-45x is a $6000 scope, you don't have to spend that kind of money to find excellence.
