La Rue Tactical Po Boy Special first impressions

My bro M4 Guru recently picked up an Aimpoint magnifier with the LT-602 QD mount. Since he's a high speed type guy, he hadda get the LT 649-30 tip off mount. When he saw that the difference in price between the tip off mount and
the tip off mount with the Hensoldt optic (The Po Boy Special) was $45, he hadda get the PBS. Since he didn't have a rifle to use it on just yet, he loaned it to me for a little while. I decided to write up my first impressions, since I haven't been able to get to the range with it yet.

The glass is very, very clear, to my eye at least as good as the Aimpoint magnifier. Its a 2.5 power optic instead of the Aimpoint's 3 power, so the the magnification isn't quite as much (duh). Its a little difficult to tell apart without a fixed target to put them side by side with.

The plus side: decent magnification, very reasonable cost, and very good optical purity. The minus side is that its a very small objective lens, so the field of view
is not very wide. Its also not as sexy as the Aimpoint magnifier, but for the price
I think I can live with it. The best part, I think, is that if you decide to upgrade to
a different magnifier at a later time, you already have the awesome LaRue mount. If you want to run a magnifier and don't have deep pockets, this is probably one of the best ways to get there.

One interesting thing I found in researching magnifiers is that moving your magnifier around doesn't change your zero on your dot sight at all. Additionally, if you have optical imperfections like I do-I have astigmatism in both eyes-the magnifier "cleans up" the dot, especially at higher intensities. It appears that it
can also be run at really low intensities compared to running the sight without a magnifier. That has yet to be proven on the range, though. I haven't used it outside very much yet, so that supposition still has to be proven. I'm really
looking forward to wringing this thing out at Binkley's.