Riton 5 Tactix 1-­10x24mm: Full Review

How scopes are made is a complicated subject. A handful are made in the United States, while a few more are designed in the U.S. and made with parts manufactured overseas with assembly completed in the U.S. or another country. Many optics are completely designed and manufactured overseas with only management, distribution and/or advertising departments located in the U.S.

The advantages of U.S.-­made optics — politics aside — concern the quality and customer service. The disadvantage is cost. American labor rates and taxes mean that the dollar can only buy so much. If you want more quality, you typically have to spend more. The advantage of the U.S.-­design/foreign production business model is that customers generally get what they want for an affordable price. Unfortunately, such companies typically have less control of product quality. Optics designed and manufactured overseas are plentiful and cheap, but long-­term durability and high-­performance standards are where optics can struggle.

I recently stumbled across Riton’s scopes. This is an American optics company that does its design work in the U.S. and then has the scopes built in Japan or China. Normally, I would focus attention on Japanese-­made optics because Japan has a history of strong optics performance. However, Chinese-­made scopes offer a lower price point that consumers crave, so I thought I’d study one of those models for this column. I was surprised.

Chinese-­manufactured scopes have a way to go before they can be considered “premium,” but few scopes are in that category anyway. What China is capable of doing is building very good scopes at an affordable price, provided they have the right direction. Good direction for China involves designing a scope that caters to its strengths, mitigates its weaknesses, and creates a desirable product.

The Riton 5 Tactix 1-­10x24mm low-power variable optic (LPVO) is a great example of making what the market wants based on an excellent design, while taking advantage of China’s lower-cost manufacturing capabilities. Measuring 111/4 inches and weighing 1.6 pounds, this LPVO is longer and heavier than some of its peers but it has excellent optical performance. Making the scope long and using doublet and triplet lenses allow Riton an effective aberration-management strategy. All that means is the scope uses more lenses than usual to keep the image clear and sharp. Doublet and triplet lenses are epoxied together, so there isn’t the light loss due to reflection that using many individual lenses would incur. This result is a scope with a sharp and bright image that doesn’t require expensive or exotic lenses. That’s a small price to pay for a scope that’s a little bit longer and a little heavier than its more expensive competition.

Another advantage this scope enjoys as a result of using doublet and triplet lenses is that the thicker lenses are easier to immobilize once installed. In this scope, lens groups and housings are threaded into place. Then, Riton squirts epoxy around the housing to ensure they never move, even accidentally. The number one cause of a point-of-impact shift for any optic is lens movement from incidental contact. Lean the rifle against a tree and, if tipped over, you can have a point-of-impact shift. This happens because one of the lens groups moved inside the scope. The best way to prevent that from happening is to bed the lenses by using epoxy to glue them in place once they’re in the scope. Riton does exactly this.

Riton also conducts impact testing to ensure that the lenses don’t move under simulated recoil and side impacts. (Side impacts are most likely to cause a shift.) The recoil simulation is done at 1,200 g (gravitational force), which is about 21/2 times the recoil of a .50-­caliber rifle. Side impact testing is done to 700 g. Impacts like those are substantial, so designing a scope and building it to shrug off such abuse is a big deal.

The 5 Tactix 1-­10x24mm has a 30mm tube, a good choice in this case. It’s not uncommon for shooters to think that a 34mm tube is preferable because it allows for more elevation travel of the erector assembly, and/or that the larger tube yields a brighter image. The more travel for greater adjustment range is theoretically correct, but this scope comes with 40 mils of travel. That gets my competition rifle chambered in 6.5 Creedmoor out to about 2,100 yards, which is why I don’t think additional internal travel is necessary. The argument that a larger diameter maintube yields a brighter image is just false. The only thing a larger maintube offers the consumer is a larger field of view while retaining a large zoom ratio, provided that the design engineers took advantage of the larger diameter.

Using a 30mm maintube on this scope made more sense because it kept costs down while sacrificing a small amount of field of view. Spending another $500 might add 10 percent to the field of view, but that would come with a 50 percent price increase. The other advantage of using a 30mm maintube for this scope is that the smaller lenses reduced some weight on an already portly optic.

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One specification that stood out to me was the 4-plus inches of eye relief, i.e., the distance from the shooter’s eye to the ocular lens. Normally, it would be impossible to have that much eye relief and still present a large field of view, especially when considering the 30mm maintube. Riton achieved this by designing a long eye piece (the fat section of the scope closest to the shooter’s eye). While the length might be a turn-­off to some, it’s negligible compared to the advantages of having lots of eye relief. Eye relief is important when shooting from compromised shooting positions, such as over and around cover. Long eye relief is also comforting when shooting a hard-­recoiling rifle, especially when the shooter might not be able to get his body square behind the rifle to absorb recoil. When shooting from prone, uphill, very little buttpad is usually in contact with the shooter’s shoulder. An extra inch or so of eye relief makes the possibility of getting “scope eye” in any of those positions less likely.

A lot of thought went into designing the 5 Tactix 1-­10x24mm, which was encouraging to me. Riton’s designers took into account Chinese manufacturing capabilities, and the end result was a slick LPVO that costs less than expected — $960. Yes, that retail price is still close to $1,000, but it’s a competitive price for a 1-­10X LPVO offering a first-focal-plane illuminated reticle.

Riton Tactix 1-10x24mm

• Power: 1X-­10X
• Objective: 24mmTube
• Diameter: 30mm
• Elevation adjustment: .1 mil per click
• Windage: .1 mil per click
• Reticle: 3OT, FFP, illuminated
• Length: 11.25 in.
• Weight: 1 lb., 10 oz.
• Eye Relief: 4 in.
• MSRP: $960
• Importer: Riton, ­855-­397-­4866, ritonoptics.com