Primary Arms PLxC 1.5-12x review: light and compact, but you cannot dial it

Key points: Primary Arms PLxC 1

• The scope fills the gap Primary Arms left when it discontinued the GLX 2.5-10x; the host bought this one himself for about $2,000 after a long pre-order wait and shot it on an IICAR out to 1,000 yards and on a Mark 1 inside 400.
• His one-line summary is that it is the PLxC RDB 1.5-8x LPVO taken to 12x, carrying over the same ACSS PLx reticle — which he rates among the busiest available, with redundant ranging features that get in the way of spotting and calling a miss.
• The 1.5x low end is flat, bezel-less and free of warping, fast enough for aiming from roughly 60 to 150 yards, but the best 1.5x is still worse than the worst 1x: both eyes open will not blend into a single image, so a piggyback red dot is needed for 10 to 50 yards.
• Red dot bright illumination is a quality-of-life win with auto on and auto off that survived a week in the range bag, but it dims and flickers off-axis at high magnification and sits under the drop dots, costing contrast when shooting into deep daytime shadow.
• Size is the headline feature at 20 ounces and a 36 mm objective, smaller than both a Leupold Mark 5 and a Nightforce compact — so tight that most scope-body ring mounts for a piggyback dot will not fit; a LaRue worked, and he suggests a ring topper instead.
• Top-end image is the disappointment: resolution is decent and the picture is flat, but chromatic aberration is heavy and the view degrades quickly in anything short of bright daylight, leaving him unable to spot misses at dusk and mostly working at 8 to 10x, where he rates the Nightforce NX6, Leupold Mark 5 and Steiner clearly ahead at the price.
• The supplied exposed turret is the deal-breaker: unlocked, with no zero stop and no rotation indicator, so a bag or gear bump can leave you guessing whether you are 10 mils high — he calls it a safety concern and a disqualifier on a fighting rifle, while conceding the capped, hold-only configuration makes the scope genuinely good for shooters who never dial.

About this Gun Review video

Primary Arms PLxC 1.5-12x RDB review: Brass Facts bought the $2,000 medium-power scope with his own money after a long pre-order wait and shot it out to 1,000 yards, and calls it the PLxC 1.5-8x LPVO scaled to 12x — a 20-ounce, bezel-less, red dot bright illuminated optic smaller than a Leupold Mark 5 or a Nightforce compact, let down by top-end glass that falls apart in anything but bright light and by an exposed turret with no lock, no zero stop and no rotation indicator. The verdict: a well-designed capped scope for holding behind a piggyback red dot, and the wrong buy for anyone who dials.

Transcript: Primary Arms PLxC