Jim, many optical units have been tested against a "military" radar standard. Sometimes the results are published, the vast majority are not. The book by Bryan Litz had some side-by-side tests and many of us have posted about these things years past. The link above was hardly the fist look at the subject.
This is true, their Bluetooth connection is easy to break, but then you just have to disarm the radar and reconnect. Running the LR with a Bluetooth tablet while seated in position or while in the sling, still beats reaching over and hitting the arm button on the unit and the iPad screen is easy to place where it is more convenient.
I have several optical chronos including the Oehler , and the Magnetospeed at home, and at work I did electro-optics, radar, and fire control systems for a living. I have tracked things you can't imagine with budgets that were obscene, but that was nation state sized budgets and here we are talking about individual folks. I would still tell beginners to go with the LabRadar in a heartbeat. Once I had my hands on the LabRadar, the other units have never gone to the range. I even take the LR to the indoor pistol range and have never done that with an optical because it isn't allowed.
I'm never going to say that folks who like their current version should change, just that the best advice to give folks starting out is to skip the budget steps and go to the best standard rather than step through the progression.
All chronos have pros and cons, but this trade study is lopsided in favor of the LR with the only exception being the price for folks on a budget. (A different debate would be to ask, how will someone that cannot afford a LR be able to participate in a sport like F-Class? Is the difference between the LR and the CED or Prochrono going to be measurable after one or two seasons where a club match is 60 shots for record?)
That said, I certainly understand that younger folks might need to save up or want to start out with something cheaper. If that gets them into the game then it is better than staying home. If however, they attend some club matches and observe the Master and HighMaster class at work, work meaning practice or load development, they can come to their own conclusions in short order. This forum is great, but getting to a club with a regular schedule for their game of interest will get the to their goals much faster with less waste.
It will potentially be an un-popular thing to say here, but competitive shooting for accuracy score is far from a minimum wage sport.
When young folks in the club ask about jumping into midrange, long range, PRS, or high performance games, and the discussion turns to tools like LabRadar or ShotMarker or the A&DFx120i etc., they will get a better start with a good mentor and a budget that has those things built in, than one where they bump around with inferior budget equipment only to end up with what is known to work for the vast majority of participants.
These sports are not about the money you can spend, you still cannot buy your way in to High Master. You have work to do if you expect to climb the ranks or show up on podiums. But, getting good advice sometimes includes not buying the less expensive tools and in the longer run they will spend less to get to their goals. YMMV
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