Riflescope reference
Find the scope by what it has to do.
Pick the kind of shooting first, narrow by brand second, and read the specifications that actually decide it — magnification, objective, tube, focal plane, reticle. No prices, because they are wrong within weeks.
Start with the type of scope
Or start from a brand →-
Long-range scopes
High-magnification riflescopes built for deliberate shots past 500 yards, where the reticle and the turrets have to agree with each other exactly.
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Hunting scopes
General-purpose variable scopes weighted toward low light, light weight and a simple reticle, for shots taken inside a few hundred yards.
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Rimfire scopes
Scopes parallax-corrected for the short distances a .22 LR is actually shot at, typically fixed near 50 yards instead of the 100 to 150 yards a centrefire scope assumes.
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Air rifle scopes
Scopes rated for the double recoil impulse of a spring-piston airgun, which destroys ordinary centrefire scopes, and focusing far closer than a rifle scope needs to.
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AR-15 scopes
Optics chosen around the AR-15’s flat-top rail and higher bore axis, which needs more mount height and a wider eye box than a bolt gun.
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LPVOs
Low-power variable optics that start at or near 1x so they can be shot with both eyes open up close, then zoom for distance — one optic instead of two.
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Red dot sights
Unmagnified reflex sights projecting an illuminated aiming point onto a single lens, with no magnification and effectively no eye-relief constraint.
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Holographic sights
Sights that reconstruct a laser-lit hologram of the reticle in the target plane rather than reflecting a dot off a mirror — a different optical principle from a red dot, not a better grade of one.
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Prism scopes
Fixed-magnification optics using a prism instead of a long lens train, so they are short, and with an etched reticle that stays visible when the illumination is off or dead.
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Night vision scopes
Optics that amplify existing light — starlight, moonlight, an infrared illuminator — into a visible image. Digital sensors have largely replaced the analogue image-intensifier tube at consumer prices.
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Thermal scopes
Sights that image heat rather than light, so they see an animal against a cool background in total darkness, through light cover and regardless of camouflage.
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Shotgun scopes
Low-magnification scopes with the long eye relief a 12-gauge slug gun demands, parallax-corrected for the 50 to 100 yards a slug is effective at.
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Rangefinder scopes
Riflescopes with a laser rangefinder and a ballistic calculator built into the same housing, so the scope measures the distance and shows the hold itself.
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Spotting scopes
High-magnification observation telescopes for glassing and calling shots — not mounted to a rifle, and the one category here that is not a sight.
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