# Armasight Spark Mini Review



## infantryman (Jun 4, 2013)

I came across this forum doing some research on budget night vision for predator hunting and general use. I am somewhat spoiled when it comes to nightvision from being in the military, but cannot come close to being able to afford Gen3 kit. I've looked through probably half a dozen Gen1 units, and they all were close to useless. Ive used pvs-14's, pvs-15's, ANVIS-9's, pvs-22's and the Raptor while deployed as a SDM in Iraq so my expectations were rather high. There was very little end user info on CORE technology online, that I could find, but it seemed to be more along the lines of what I was looking for than Gen1, since it is advertised as having the same resolution as Gen2/Gen2+.

After having the Armasight Spark in my shopping cart at Amazon for a month or so, my wife being as awesome as she is, sold her Cannon 7D and bought it for me. I ended up getting a 3x adapter and the IR810W illuminator as well. The Monocular itself was $499 with free shipping (Amazon Prime) and got to my door in 18 hours.

One of the first things that caught my eye was the versatility of the unit. Being a 100% disabled, I cant afford to buy a unit that fills just one role. It really turned me on that it could be weapons mounted, head/helmet mounted, camera mounted or handheald, and has three dovetail mounts for various mounting and accessorizing. It can also accept 3x and I believe 5x lenses.

It also doesnt look like a toy, as do most gen1 devices.

Once I got it in hand, two things imeadiatly stood out. The first was the resolution. It has a much clearer and more definitive picture than any gen1 device, and was on par with all the Gen2 units that Ihave used. The second thing was the lack of "fish eye" effect found in Gen1 night vision. All but the very edges of the picture were crystal clear, and even the edges were pretty good. Gen1 gets more distorted towards the peripheree, leaving only a small portion of the center usable.

There were also no artifacts in the picture. Im not sure if I just got a good tube, or if that is just the way this technology works. Even the Mil-spec stuff I have used had artifacts, albiet, most were small.

Being that the tube is ceramic as opposed to glass as in gen1, it can handle 500 G's of recoil, compared to 250 G's. I believe Gen2 and 3 tubes are also rated at 500 G's with the exception of some of the filmless tubes, but I'm not 100% certain on that.

Another bonus is that the controls are identical to that of the PVS-14's, to which I was already accustomed.

Cons:

There is only really one con, and I dont think it can be considered a con, given the price range. That is the FOV. It has a 30 degree FOV compared to the 40 degrees of the pvs-14. However, most of the gen1 monoculars had a smaller FOV yet.

It is also a little more picky on focus than a Gen3 monocular, meaning that it took a little focus transitioning from an object 100 yards away to an object 25 yards out. Once again, not a big deal considering the price.

With the illuminator, I feel like I could reasonably ingage coyotes out to 150+ yards with the laser, and probably further weapons mounted.

Overall, I feel like I got more product than I (err, my wife) paid for.

For now I am wearing it head mounted and using a UniMax Ir laser on my rifle. it seems to work quite well, although the laser is a little bright for the night vision. It was not near as bright through the ATN NV360 gen1 unit I used for comparison.

Here are some pictures.

The first is the rifle I have set up as my night time gun, with the Lasermax Uni mounted in front of a Vortex Razor HD. The paint is just Rustoleum. The barrel is a 16" .223 Wylde I made out of a hand lapped Montana Rifleman blank. It will flat shoot the lights out. The suppressor is a "form 1" hombuilt job.

The next pic is my mailbox illuminated with a 120 lumen Streamlight.

Then is a picture through the ATN NV360 Gen 1 with the IR810W adjustable focus illuminator.

Finally there is a picture through the Spark with 3x lens and the IR810W.

The pics are just iPhone pics and dont show a good representation at all, but it does show the difference between the two units.

Thanks for reading.


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## infantryman (Jun 4, 2013)

oops, wrong rifle pic. Here is the one I referred to above.


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## infantryman (Jun 4, 2013)




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## jswift (Dec 24, 2012)

WOW- lots and lots of information here. We don't hunt with night vision but thanks for all the first hand knowledge.

Good wives are hard to come by- sounds like you have a winner!

Nice pics to boot-Thanks for sharing.


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## youngdon (Mar 10, 2010)

Sweet rig. I'll look forward to pics of a coyote coming to the call. Yeah I've looked through gen 1 before and it is pretty much junk. You made a good choice....on both counts. (wife and NV)


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## bar-d (Feb 3, 2010)

Congrats I-man. Thanks for your service and welcome to PT.

:hunter:


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## azpredatorhunter (Jul 24, 2012)

Sweet... nice set-up...


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## infantryman (Jun 4, 2013)

Thankyou. I have a camera adaptor on the way, and am hoping to get some video of some dogs looking for the Fox Pro speaker....we will see how that goes.

And yea, I will say I have made at least one good decision in life, too bad she cant say the same! She is a hunter as well, so I'm sure there was some ulterior motives there.


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## Rick Howard (Feb 25, 2012)

Cool stuff and great info!


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## Fishshoot (Feb 22, 2013)

Thanks for the informative review!


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