I bought my first thermal monocular this week. The Infiray Finder FL35R. This is a new model for Infiray. I chose it because it has removable batteries, an inbuilt laser rangers and a 35 mm objective lens. I have only ever used a thermal monocular once previously. A Pulsar, that I borrowed from a bloke at my LGS. I have been running an ATN X Sight 4K Pro on my .204. The ATN was an upgrade from the Pard NV007 add on, I was running previously.
Long story short. I am very happy with my choice so far. The image quality is excellent, particularly on black hot. I mainly go fox shooting and I have to say, it has no trouble with detecting a fox size target on the place I shot at last night. We saw foxes that we would have struggled to detect with our IR scopes. My shooting buddy and I have been progressing to “going dark” for about the last two years by switching to IR scopes. We both use decent illuminators we imported from the UK. The difference between detection capability with thermal as opposed to IR was really very stark. So stark that after just one night using the thermal spotter, I am seriously considering buying a thermal scope to use on my .243.
The Infiray makes detecting and keeping track of the foxes whilst we are getting into shooting range so much easier. As I have only ever used one other thermal spotter, I can’t say how mine compares to others on the market. What I can say though, is my only regret is buying the ATN and not putting that money towards a thermal scope.