Another Key To Success

Mick Garvey reports on the effectiveness of a ‘budget’ thermal spotter

- Mick Garvey

It’s always sad to see something good leave. The guys at Scott Country International sent me the Pulsar XM22 Axion Key. I had it for around two weeks and used it just about every time I went out, with great success for both airgun and centrefire rifles, but all good things come to an end and I had to return it.

The XM22 is another tiny, hand-held thermal spotter at an amazing price of £870 … yes, £870! It’s budget-priced, but certainly not a ‘budget built’ thermal spotter. It really is palm-sized and slots into your pocket easily with room to spare. The magnification is 2x to 8x and it has fixed focus, like many scopes available out there. Standard issue, eight colour palettes are all accessible by a long touch of the rear button, and a short press of the same button switches between the three different viewing modes. The 950m man-sized detection range is more than adequate for my use with airguns and rimfire, which I think is the market best suited for the XM22. I was spotting foxes easily at 600m when out with the centrefire and had absolutely no doubt about what I was looking at.

TECHY STUFF

The techies among you will appreciate the 320x240 12um core and 960x720 LCOS display and obviously a 22mm focal length objective lens. The eyepiece is same as the XM20 Key that I tried out, and feels hard against your eye, but after the constant use I have become used to it.