Vortex Diamondback 6-24x50 thoughts

[Tarowah]

Hey all, I picked up a Vortex Diamondback 6-24x50 MOA a few months ago and I’ve had the chance to put 100-120 rounds through my Grendel build and thus far I am extremely happy with the scope.

The glass is excellent and to my untrained eyes appears to be exceptionally clear all the way out to 24 power which is where I start to notice some chromatic aberration (I had to look it up, it looks like a greenish shadow which causes some things to look a bit out of focus), I’ve only shot out to 100 yards thus far but my groups have been much, much better with this scope over the Primary Arms 4-14 I had.

So if you’re looking for decent glass under $500 give the Diamondback Tactical 4-24 a look, no it isn’t anywhere close to high end optics clarity, but it’s probably the best scope I’ve owned so far, I found mine on sale for $350 and mounted it on a WARNE 20 MOA scope mount and this setup has been dead nuts for me so far, but again, I am an amateur when it comes to scopes and long range shooting.

As far as I know the scope comes in either MOA or MRAD, I went with MOA because I “sort of” understand it and know nothing about “MIL”.


I’ll report back tomorrow after I get a chance to attempt shooting out to 600 yards with it, I’ve got some decent “dope” data and I’ll see if I can get everything dialed in tomorrow.

Here is a pretty good video review of the scope if anyone is interested.

 

[jmccracken1214]

Hey all, I picked up a Vortex Diamondback 6-24x50 MOA a few months ago and I’ve had the chance to put 100-120 rounds through my Grendel build and thus far I am extremely happy with the scope.

The glass is excellent and to my untrained eyes appears to be exceptionally clear all the way out to 24 power which is where I start to notice some chromatic aberration (I had to look it up, it looks like a greenish shadow which causes some things to look a bit out of focus), I’ve only shot out to 100 yards thus far but my groups have been much, much better with this scope over the Primary Arms 4-14 I had.

So if you’re looking for decent glass under $500 give the Diamondback Tactical 4-24 a look, no it isn’t anywhere close to high end optics clarity, but it’s probably the best scope I’ve owned so far, I found mine on sale for $350 and mounted it on a WARNE 20 MOA scope mount and this setup has been dead nuts for me so far, but again, I am an amateur when it comes to scopes and long range shooting.

As far as I know the scope comes in either MOA or MRAD, I went with MOA because I “sort of” understand it and know nothing about “MIL”.


I’ll report back tomorrow after I get a chance to attempt shooting out to 600 yards with it, I’ve got some decent “dope” data and I’ll see if I can get everything dialed in tomorrow.

Here is a pretty good video review of the scope if anyone is interested.

I liked mine but my beef with it was the turrets... they dont move up and down, so after adjusting, you dont know where you're at as far as how many revolutions you've went.

Outside of that, decent scope for the money.

 

[Jerzsubbie]

I swapped my Viper 6.5-20x44 for the new DB Tactical 6-24x50 FFP, mainly because they used the same glass, the DB was FFP, the DB has nicer turrets, and it only cost me about +$90. Mine sits on my Savage .308 bolt and I like it so far but haven't had an opportunity to shoot more than like 30rds. I'm a bit of a Vortex fan, they're typically tough to beat on value, great quality, great warranty, and impossible to go wrong with.

 

[East of Here]

I currently run one on my CZ455 rimfire trainer because it has the EBR-2C reticle like my Razor and my Viper PST's. I think it is a great little scope for the money, and works pretty well on a .22 precision/match/trainer rifle. The optical quality is obviously not as good as the Razor or PST, but I only run it out to 500 yards on the .22, so optical quality is not really a limitation except under the worst mirage conditions. My generic criticism of the scope mirrors jmccracken1214 above, and that is the lack of a zero stop. Mine will dial up about 48.25 MOA from zero, or just over 3 full 15 MOA revolutions. So when I get myself lost on the dial occasionally, I have to dial it up until it stops, then come back down 3 full revolutions to find my zero. That is a minor aggravation, but easily manageable and not usually a big deal, given that this is a sub-$400 scope. One use-specific criticism I have is that when you dial the magnification up to 24X, it eats up a full 1/3 of the reticle. This would not a be a problem at all if I was using the scope on a 6.5 (or something that requires less than 48 MOA at distance). But when I am shooting my .22 at 400+ yards and need to spot my own misses, this becomes much, much more problematic because I need the bottom 1/3 of that reticle, and have to sacrifice a good bit of magnification to get it. In fairness to the scope, that is kind of a "first world" problem, in the sense that Vortex didn't intend for this scope to be used for extreme range applications. Overall, I think the Diamondback Tactical is a pretty good value for what it is, as long as you also understand and accept what it isn't.

 

[Tarowah]

I made it out to “The Range Complex” today and was able to beat up on some AR500 plates and the Diamondback really did exceed my expectations, because of my lack of knowledge I ended up using “Kentucky Windage” rather than attempting to dope the scope.

I started off shooting my wife’s 16” 5.56 AR with a 1-6 Strike Eagle and I was able to wear out the B26 sized silhouette with ease, 500 yards was a bit more challenging but I was able to get plenty of hits, just not nearly as consistently as 400 yards, again do my lack of skill & knowledge.

I was also able to stretch out the .458 Socom to 300 yards with a Primary Arms 1-4 scope, I got a few hits at 400 but I ran out of scope beyond 300, but man did those 325gr FTX bullets put a whooping on the plates! I had a couple of people stop by the table to see what kind of sorcery I had going on lol.

The 6-24 Diamondback was more than enough scope for 600 yards and the clarity was really good, the only real issue I had was dealing with the mirage coming off of the barrel after putting 3-4 magazines through the gun fairly quickly, once I figured out the hold for a specific load I could drop shots on the 500 yard plate as fast as I could pull the trigger, since I wasn’t adjusting the turrets and using holdovers for distance and windage 600 yards was far less consistent but I managed to knock off a bit of paint.

Now that I know the rifle and my hand loads are capable of getting on target I’ll start working on actually learning to use the turrets!

 

[Downeast]

I just put the same model scope on a 30-378 as a "stress" test. We'll see what happens.