Labradar vs Optical Chronos: Real World Experiences?

[Ledd Slinger]

You have some crap luck there Ledd. I am on my 2/nd ProChrono, the first died after many a trip on the dirt road in the back of a Jeep Wrangler. Actually it still worked but something inside was rattling and at 100 bucks it was not a hard decision just to replace. I have put easily 10K shots across them with no bullet damage. A $25 universal laser boresight makes setup a piece of cake. It has recorded everything from .22's to .338 Lapua and even tested it with a Daisy Red Ryder in my back yard when I bought my first one. The bluetooth connection works on my Samsung Tablet, my Motorola phone as well as my wife's Apple XS max every time without fail

Todays test confirmed for me that it's accuracy is just as good if not better than a Labradar and costs 129.99 vs 559.00 , midway USA prices as of this posting. I can see no good reason to go out and drop almost 600 dollars on a Labradar but that is just me.

Oh by the way the rifle I was testing cost less than 1K including optics to put together and later on I did a initial powder test using IMR 4166 and 80 gn Bergers, I had several 100 yard groups (best was in the threes) less than .5 MOA on a barrel that has 3K plus rounds down it. Not bad for a action that cost me less than $100 and a rifle that I put together in my shop

Well a beat up Ford Pinto will still drive you down the road if that’s what you prefer. A laser bore sighter doesn’t speed up anything on an optical chrono setup. You’re fooling yourself if you think it does.

I haven’t shot at 100 yards since I can’t even remember when. Doesn’t tell anything for how a rifle really performs. Can’t remember having a custom built rifle that wouldn’t shoot well under 1/2 MOA consistently either so not sure what the big fuss is about. My earlier comment was a joke but I guess you missed it. I have a hunting rifle that prints groups in the 2 inch range at 870 yards. But who cares... That has nothing to do with the chronograph topic.

 

[JimSC]

well I was wanting to do four things this morning

1. compare chronos to see if one or the other really was more accurate. I think the Magnetospeed gets my vote on that since it measures at the muzzle
2. do a initial load test with IMR 4166 with 80 gn Bergers in my .223. It's a bit slow but it groups.
3. see if I could still get sub .5 groups or if I needed to order a new barrel. I don't
4. have a good time, and shoot the breeze with some good people. Accomplished that one in spades, had a great time, we have some great people at my home range.. To me that is the most important part. After all at the end of the day this is just a hobby, something that everyone needs to remember

 

[PatMiles]

well I was wanting to do four things this morning

1. compare chronos to see if one or the other really was more accurate. I think the Magnetospeed gets my vote on that since it measures at the muzzle
2. do a initial load test with IMR 4166 with 80 gn Bergers in my .223. It's a bit slow but it groups.
3. see if I could still get sub .5 groups or if I needed to order a new barrel. I don't
4. have a good time, and shoot the breeze with some good people. Accomplished that one in spades, had a great time, we have some great people at my home range.. To me that is the most important part. After all at the end of the day this is just a hobby, something that everyone needs to remember

Sounds like a good time was had by all.

 

[JimSC]

Sounds like a good time was had by all.

best days of the week for me are the days when I get to the range

 

[Fuj]

best days of the week for me are the days when I get to the range

Same here, but lately it's been a pain in the ass, and thanks to
the Lab Radar. I have a couple of match's coming up and testing
new loads for them due to the primer and powder shortage.
What's going on with the Lab is the gawkers that come over to
my bench and do the ooh's and ahh's. Now I can shoot the breeze,
with the best of em', but I like my solitude between 8 and 9 am
when there is 0 wind. Never happened when the Ohler was set up.

Alright.....Yinz know of Caldwell, the Harbor freight of the shooting
industry,; Well I have not done any research on the product but, they
are supposed to have a "Velocity Radar" for about half the price
of a Lab.

 

[jelenko]

Out of curiosity, I did a search for Caldwell Velociradar.

The first posts I found were in early 2020. At the time, people were commenting on it but there wasn't any available; there was no mention of it on Caldwell's site.

Today, there still isn't any mention on Caldwell's site and the few vendors that have a listing for it are either OOS or 'Product Discontinued'.

It looks like Caldwell had a dream, then woke up.

 

[Fuj]

I'm just wondering if it was an April fool's joke.

 

[PatMiles]

I'm just wondering if it was an April fool's joke.

I'd guess that Caldwell was testing the waters with a new product announcement and discovered that most folks don't think too much of their toys.

 

[RegionRat]

I’m not at all surprised it hasn’t materialized.

Many types of consumer electronic products can be cheaply copied because their “building blocks” are commoditized.

Cheap circuit boards are one thing, but RF Doppler radar devices are another.

The LabRadar came from an outfit that has steadily designed and delivered laboratory equipment prior to designing and delivering the LabRadar.

https://www.infinition.com/en/

It is one thing to already have the RF engineering perfected on unlimited designs, and then cut it down to a simple version for consumers. They already know how to source the circuit boards so they had the hard part figured out before they went down the path.

The “me too” crowds would have to try to counterfeit the LR if they didn’t already have the RF designers and processors background. When you open up the LR and try to “copy” it, you find out it isn’t as simple as all that. At the cost of the LR, compared to what you are getting, there isn’t much margin left if you were to try and come at it from the bottom up without the design background and RF engineers don’t work for free.

 

[INTJ]

You have some crap luck there Ledd. I am on my 2/nd ProChrono, the first died after many a trip on the dirt road in the back of a Jeep Wrangler. Actually it still worked but something inside was rattling and at 100 bucks it was not a hard decision just to replace. I have put easily 10K shots across them with no bullet damage. A $25 universal laser boresight makes setup a piece of cake. It has recorded everything from .22's to .338 Lapua and even tested it with a Daisy Red Ryder in my back yard when I bought my first one. The bluetooth connection works on my Samsung Tablet, my Motorola phone as well as my wife's Apple XS max every time without fail

Todays test confirmed for me that it's accuracy is just as good if not better than a Labradar and costs 129.99 vs 559.00 , midway USA prices as of this posting. I can see no good reason to go out and drop almost 600 dollars on a Labradar but that is just me.

Oh by the way the rifle I was testing cost less than 1K including optics to put together and later on I did a initial powder test using IMR 4166 and 80 gn Bergers, I had several 100 yard groups (best was in the threes) less than .5 MOA on a barrel that has 3K plus rounds down it. Not bad for a action that cost me less than $100 and a rifle that I put together in my shop

Like I mentioned earlier, all chronos are accurate enough when they read a shot. It's not difficult to build accurate timers. The defining features on a chronograph are ease of use, reliability, set up time, ability to use at the range, etc.

If I rank all the chronos I have had in terms of all the above, the list is:

1. Lab Radar
2. Oehler 35P
3. ProChrono
4. CED Millenium II
5. Beta Chrony

 

[INTJ]

The following post is a bit off topic, but I hope to illustrate a principle that is applicable to this thread.

It seems to me that an underlying subtext here is the dichotomy between buying at the bottom end vs buying at the top end. The extremes are those who buy at the bottom attaching moral superiority to their choice and those buying at the top condescendingly dismissing bottom end items.

Either extreme is complete nonsense.

To successfully compete, we need adequate equipment and adequate skills. What is "adequate" varies dramatically with the shooting discipline and level at which one wishes to compete. The most successful shooters know where they need to spend time and money.

For example, a top tier long range benchrest gun from a top builder is going to cost around $5-6k nowadays. (That doesn't include the scope.) I built one for half of that that shoots as well as any other LR BR rifle.

Is mine as nice as the top tier guns? Absolutely not. Mine looks like a cobbled together POS. The wooden stock has angle aluminum screwed to the fore end and a rudder shoddily installed in the butt stock. The cartridge is marked on the barrel with a felt-tipped pen. The wood isn't even sealed. Yet I won three of my four heavy gun relays at the IBS 1000 yd Nationals with it and even managed to shoot a screamer group. I shot two other screamer groups in club matches before the Nationals.

I built this rifle the way I did just get me by temporarily. However, I bought a good action and barrel, did a good job chambering the barrel, did a decent bedding job, and managed to get the stock setup and balanced so the rifle tracks very well. I also spend a LOT of time tuning the rifle.

That is about as cheap as I could make a rifle that shoots at a top tier level. I couldn't have made it work had I used lesser components.

Does it make me morally superior because my cheap rifle beat a lot of expensive rifles? No. Am I a snob because I insisted on using a BAT M action and Krieger barrel? No. I simply knew where money needed to be spent and what I needed to spend time on.

That said, I am replacing my current stock with an LRB stock for next season. It will cost me an additional $500-$800 over what I have in the cheap stock. The rifle will not shoot any better with the new stock. All it will do is look better and eliminate me having to adjust my rest when I change from light gun to heavy gun. Is it worth another $800 to me to have a nicer looking gun and less rest adjustment? Absolutely.

For a lame attempt to get back on topic, I can say the same principle applies to chronographs. An LabRadar won't make a rifle shoot any better than a Pro-Chrono. Yet the LabRadar is without question much nicer, easier to use, and more flexible.

The only way that becomes controversial is when someone tries to say the ProCrono is better than the LabRadar, or someone says that the ProChrono won't work.

 

[JimSC]

Well the Labradar will certainly work, at least when a external trigger is used. As far as better in that would be debatable and like a lot of things is simply opinion

Accuracy wise it would be a draw. I had .3 FPS difference in the 10 shot average in my test. Hardly earth shattering. Nine of the ten were less than 10 FPS difference the tenth had a 11 FPS difference. The Magnetospeed scored perfect the Bryan Litzs tests someone linked above so we will use it as the benchmark in accuracy. In that respect the Prochono matched up closer to the Magnetospeed in its averages and SD's

Vibrations, positioning and wind affect the Labradar readings , sun position, and chrono alignment can affect the ProChrono. The Labradar's faults can be worked around by clamping the little lightweight factory base to the bench, always putting it in the same place and shooting on a windless day. The Prochronos faults can be worked around by buying a laser boresight for setup and alignment, using a old piece of target to making a sunscreen to go on top of the sunscreens.

Ease of use from a bench - ProChrono
Ease of use prone - Labradar, Magnetospeed tied
Ease of use on a indoor range - Labradar and Magnetospeed. ProChrono needs optional lighting and access to to forward of firing line availability

Ease of use as far as controlling the unit and data transfer - ProChrono by a mile, Labradar second, Magnetospeed Sporter a distant 3rd

The digital link has never failed to connect over the years. I have used a older Samsung phone, 2 different Apple IPhones, a Samsung Tab A, and my Motorolla Moto G. Control from the bench is essential for any optical. With the Digital Link ap I can add strings, switch strings get instant FPS readings and export the data as either a short text summary, full text summary for import in a text document or CSV for importing into a spreadsheet. You can even take a pic of the target and incorporate it into the record. Makes keeping a reloading log simple and convenient. see attachments

Both Labradar and Magnetospeed need to come up with something similar

again just my opinion from having used all three. I currently own a Magnetospeed sporter and a ProChron. I was a early adopter of a LabRadar but returned it over external power connector problems, missed shots, needing external triggers, bluetooth connection problems and needing to go in and change options for various firearms. All these issues still exist 3 years later.

edited for spelling errors